By Cathy Young
Reason, Dec, 2002
PRESIDENT BUSH HAS stressed repeatedly that America's war on
terrorism is not a war on Islam, which, he asserts, is a "religion
of peace" perverted by fanatical extremists. But from the
start dissenting voices have said that Islam itself poses a threat
to Western civilization and that its inherently violent and oppressive
nature was being whitewashed for the sake of political correctness.
One of the first salvos was fired by the Rev. Franklin Graham,
who in October 2001 called Islam "a very evil and wicked
religion." (He later insisted he was denouncing Islamic extremism,
not all Muslims.) More recently, the Rev. Jerry Falwell told 60
Minutes that Islam's founder, Mohammed, was a "terrorist."
Curiously, in this debate the defense of Islam is usually the
province of secularist liberals, while the harshest criticism
comes from religious ultraconservatives whose views sometimes
overlap with those of Islamic fundamentalists.
In fact, the question "Is Islam a religion of peace or a
religion of violence?" is virtually meaningless. Like any
major faith, Islam has many faces.
The religion's critics argue that the Koran itself provides the
foundation for bigotry and aggression toward non-Muslims, pointing
to Mohammed's bloody wars against infidels. "In my opinion,"
Falwell told 60 Minutes, "Jesus set the example for love,
as did Moses, and I think that Mohammed set an opposite example."
Yet as the religious scholar Alex Kronemer has pointed out, Mohammed
was no bloodier a figure than Moses--and the Bible contains plenty
of language no less violent than the Koran's. At one point, Moses
takes the Israelites to task for sparing the women and children
of a vanquished enemy tribe and instructs them to kill all the
male children and all the women, except for virgins, who can be
taken as slaves and concubines. Mosaic law also makes idolatry
or the worship of other gods a capital offense, along with a host
of other crimes, including adultery, cursing one's parents, and
sodomy.
In his new book The Name, Graham writes, "Islam--unlike
Christianity--has among its basic teachings a deep intolerance
for those who follow other faiths." Yet the basic Christian
teaching that salvation can be found only through Jesus Christ
can surely be seen as a foundation for intolerance. Throughout
history, people professing to follow Christ have killed, tortured,
and persecuted countless men and women (most of them also Christians)
in the sincere belief that they were not only protecting good
Christians from the danger of being seduced by heresy but saving
their victims' souls from eternal damnation.
While witch hunts and the persecution of heretics are generally
associated with the Catholic Church, Protestantism does not have
a stellar historical record either. Early Protestant leaders urged
rulers to root out Catholicism in their domains, just as the popes
urged Catholic princes to suppress Protestantism. In Calvin's
16th-century Geneva, even private practice of Catholic rites was
punishable by expulsion from the city, attendance at sermons was
mandatory, and the theological dissident Michael Servetus was
burned at the stake for rejecting the doctrines of the Trinity
and infant baptism.
Christian history is also marred by often brutal persecution
of the Jews, including forced conversions. Indeed, it is a little-disputed
fact that in the Middle Ages, Jews in Islamic countries, while
relegated to second-class status, enjoyed far more toleration
than in most of Christendom. Virulent anti-Jewish bigotry can
be found in the writings of major Christian figures. Luther's
1543 polemic The fews and Their Lies urged Christian princes to
rid their lands of the "abominable blasphemy" spread
by Jews and "act like a good physician who, when gangrene
has set in, proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh,
veins, bone, and marrow." His advice included "to set
fire to their synagogues," to destroy Jewish homes, to confiscate
"all their prayer books and Talmudic writings," and
to forbid rabbis to teach "on pain of loss of life and limb."
One legitimate counterpoint is that during the last 500 years
mainstream Christianity has evolved to embrace tolerance and religious
freedom. Lutheran churches, for instance, have formally repudiated
Luther's anti-Semitic writings, whereas equally repellent anti-Jewish
rhetoric is standard fare in much of the Arab press today.
But it is far from certain that this evolution was due to something
inherent in Christian teachings rather than to other circumstances.
While the split caused by the Reformation initially led to bloody
religious wars, it was eventually recognized that some degree
of tolerance was necessary to preserve civil peace. The secular
ideals that arose from the Enlightenment also played a major role.
Meanwhile, church authorities often actively resisted religious
liberty. The idea that individuals have the right to practice
and preach whatever religion--let alone irreligion--they choose
was denounced as dangerous lunacy by a succession of popes throughout
the 19th century and well into the 20th. In Pope Pius XII stated
that "error and false religions cannot be the object of a
natural right." This stance did not change until 1965, with
the Second Vatican Council and Pope Paul VI's decree Dignitatis
Humanae.
In an October 2001 essay in The New York Times Magazine, Andrew
Sullivan, himself a Catholic, wrote, "It seems almost as
if there is something inherent in religious monotheism that lends
itself to...terrorist temptation. If you believe that there is
an eternal afterlife and that endless indescribable torture awaits
those who disobey God's law, then it requires no huge stretch
of imagination to make sure that you not only conform to each
diktat but that you also encourage and, if necessary, coerce others
to do the same."
Not that religion should be singled out as the source of intolerance:
The worst acts of individual or state-sponsored terrorism during
the last 100 years were driven by aggressively secular ideologies
that promised an earthly paradise. It's more accurate to say that
every belief system that lays claim to the One Truth carries within
it the seeds of violent intolerance.
Searching the texts of various faiths to discover which is the
most inherently bellicose may be an interesting exercise, but
what's relevant is whether there is something in Islamic culture
today that encourages the spread of violent fanaticism. Some scholars
who reject attempts to demonize Islam itself nonetheless agree
that Al Qaeda-style terrorism is not a fringe phenomenon but a
reflection of a dangerous and pervasive brand of Islamic extremism.
Why this extremism has emerged is a complicated question that
includes a mix of historical, social, economic, and religious
factors.
The inescapable fact is that in many places around the globe
Islam has been backsliding toward more rigid and intolerant orthodoxy,
culminating in the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Yet the
same hatred of secularism and modernity that animates Muslim radicals,
in a more moderate form, has also driven the rise of Christian
religious fundamentalism in the West.
This is not to say that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell would
send young men to blow themselves up in discos or fly airplanes
into buildings, or that the Southern Baptist Convention, which
passed a resolution a few years ago urging wives to "submit
graciously" to their husbands, wants to impose Talibanesque
restrictions on women. But in their railings against sexual freedom,
women's liberation, pornography, godlessness, and other purported
evils of modernity, the two groups do mirror each other eerily.
After September 11, Falwell famously declared that "the
pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays
and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative
lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way--ail of them
who have tried to secularize America" had helped cause the
attacks. The terrorists who actually carried them out might agree.
