Time for a pop quiz!
Below are four quotes. Each is from one of two sources: the Qur’an or the Bible. Although, just to make things interesting, there’s also a chance all four are from one book. Two were edited for length and one of those was also edited to remove a religion-specific reference. Your job: identify the holy book of origin.
Ready? Go!
~ “Wherever you encounter (nonbelievers), kill them, seize them, besiege them, wait for them at every lookout post.”
~ “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
~ “If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’ ... do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death.’
~ “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”
So, how did you do? If you identified the first quote as being from the Qur’an (9:5) while the last three as being from the Bible (Matthew 10:34, Deuteronomy 13:6-9, Numbers 31:17-18), then I congratulate you on that degree in theology. However, if I’m correct in guessing, most of you found it hard to place each quote in the proper book. And, if I’m again correct in guessing, most of you have noticed a certain theme in these quotes.
There is a point here: people should stop cherry-picking warlike quotes from the Quran to “prove” the evil of Islam. This sort of stuff is all over the web. Just a few days ago I was doing some research for a paper I was writing when I came across a website that listed Qur’anic exhortations to violence to prove that Islam is a religion of hate and murder.
Websites such as that one really get under my skin. People browsing the Internet come across these sites and read the verses. In reading these verses they begin to think, “Wow! There is so much violence in this book! So many verses commanding Muslims to slaughter and kill!”
As time wears on, these verses may lead them to believe Islam is a violent religion; they may begin to view Muslim as people ready and willing to cut down any nonbeliever and those who dare speak out against Islam. Or, if such beliefs already existed in a person, what they read can serve only to deepen those convictions.
The problem is, most of these verses that seem to advocate murder and whatnot are time specific. For example, the verse listed above that originates from the Qur’an (9:5) is one such time specific verse. In his English translation of the Qur’an, M. A. S. Abdel Haleem writes a short description of Surah al-Tawba, the chapter in which the verse in question can be found. He writes:
‘The sura opens by giving notice of the severance of the treaty with the idolaters because they had broken it, but the bulk of the sura deals with preparations and recruitment for the expedition to Tabuk, which took place in the heat of the summer of AH 9 (631 CE).’
As one can see, 9:5 does not necessarily apply to now nor is it a general command to kill all nonbelievers. Rather, it was a command to kill because the idolaters (idolaters, not even disbelievers in general!) had broken a treaty. Plus, if one were to read further, they would find the next part: ‘…but if they turn to Allah, maintain the prayer, and pay the prescribed alms, let them go on their way, for Allah is most forgiving and merciful. If any one of the idolaters should seek your protect [Prophet], grant it to him so that he may hear the word of Allah, then take him to a place safe for him, for they are people with no knowledge [of it].’ Quran 9:5-6
But, how many people are actually going to pick up a Qur’an and read more than just that one ‘violent’ verse? My guess is probably not too many. Instead, they’ll read what these Islamophobic websites have to say and they won’t investigate further.
As rhetorical devices go, cherry-picking warlike quotes from the Qur’an is a cheap parlor trick, a con job to fool the foolish and gull the gullible and for anyone who has spent quality time with the Bible, its shortcomings should be obvious.
If not, see the pop quiz again. The Quran is hardly unique in its admonitions to take up the sword. The Bible is full of such ‘violent’ quotes.
However, the purpose of this post is not to analyze any of those troubling quotes. I’ll leave it to religious scholars to contextualize them, to explain how they square with the contention that Islam and Christianity are religions of peace. For the purpose of this post, it is sufficient to note that, while both Christian and Muslim scholars will offer that context and explanation, only Christians can be assured of being taken at their word when they do.
Christians get the benefit of the doubt. Muslims get Glenn Beck asking a Muslim congressman to “prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.”
Because Christianity is regarded as a known – and a norm. Muslims, meantime, have been drafted since Sept. 11, 2001, to fulfill the nation’s obsessive, historic, paranoiac and ongoing need to rally against an enemy within. We lost the Commies, but along came the Islamofascists. The names change. The endless capacity for irrational panic remains the same.
As in people who send out emails insisting upon the rightness of holding over a billion people – that bears repeating: over a billion people – responsible for the actions of what? A few hundred? A few thousand? But then that’s getting into stereotyping – another topic for another time insha’Allah.
Some of us use lies, exaggerations and rhetorical gobbledygook to instill in the rest of us that irrational panic they breathe like air. Yes, it is only sensible to fear the threat we face from terrorism. But panicked, irrational people are capable of anything.
It might be wise if we chose to fear that too.
