Sophisticated students and scholars of world religions understand, as the islamaphobes apparently do not, that "Holy Scriptures" (i.e. the Bible and Qur'an) do not convey unified and lucid moral messages. Instead, each book is a "cafeteria" of vague and often conflicting moral teachings. As one wit put it, "the Bible (also the Qur'an) is like a prisoner of war: torture it enough and you can get it to say anything."
Accordingly, the Bible and Qur'an do not instruct behavior as much as they justify it. Are you a Moslem who is enraged by the slaughter of over a million of your co-religionists in "the global war on terror"? If so you will want to strike back. Will the Qur'an condone this? "Seek and ye shall find." So in the Qur'an (5:34) , there is this: "Slay or crucify or cut the hands and feet of the unbelievers, that they be expelled from the land with disgrace and that they shall have a great punishment in the world hereafter."
But also in the Qur'an, there is this: "Even if you stretch out your hand against me to kill me, I shall not stretch out my hand against you to kill you," and "if anyone murders an innocent person, it will be as if he has murdered the whole of humanity."
Orthodox Jews claim that the land of Israel (including Palestine), was given by God to "the seed of Abraham" -- namely, the Jews. But the Arabs are traditionally believed also to be "the seed of Abraham," through Ishmael, the son of Hagar. But never mind that., say the Zionists. "This land is our land."
In sum: we take from the holy books what we need to confirm our pre-existing inclinations, and we ignore "inconvenient" verses. I know of no orthodox Jews who have killed their neighbors for working on the Sabbath, as instructed in Exodus (35:3). Nor am I aware of any Christians, outside of Trappist monasteries, who have sold all their possessions and given to the poor.*
Most significantly, perhaps, the Qur'an teaches tolerance to Christians and Jews -- "the people of the book."
Fanatics in each of the Abrahamic religions have been unspeakably vicious and cruel to "infidels" under their control. I offer no excuses whatever for the savage executioners of ISIS and Al Qaeda, nor for the torturers of the Spanish Inquisition, nor for Israeli massacre at Sabra and Shatila in 1982.
In contrast. all three religions have provided examples of righteous compassion and toleration toward members of other faiths. Both doctrine and history testify that in this regard, Islam takes the moral prize.
First of all, toleration of Christians and Jews ("people of the book"), is a central tenet of Islam. The Qur'an expressly forbids "compulsion in religion." (2:256) Abraham, Moses and Jesus are all regarded by devout Moslems as authentic prophets of Allah, with Jesus second only to Mohammad. On the other hand, neither Judaism nor Christianity recognize Mohammad as a prophet.
As for history, when the Moslem armies overran Egypt, they encountered the Coptic Christians, a sect of Christianity older than Roman Catholicism. The Copts have survived and flourished in Egypt to this day under Moslem rule.
When Pope Urban II launched the crusades in 1095, a prominent objective was to drive the "infidel" Moslems from the Holy places in Jerusalem. When the Moslem warrior Saladin recaptured Jerusalem in 1185, he allowed Christian pilgrims access to the Holy sites, a guarantee that endured throughout the Islamic occupation of Palestine. And when the Jews were driven out of Spain in the fifteenth century, they found safe refuge in Moslem countries.
In a square in central Damascus stands enduring evidence of Moslem toleration, for there, side by side, one will find Christian church, a Jewish synagogue and a Moslem mosque. For centuries, Christian and Jewish structures and communities have flourished peacefully throughout the Moslem regions of the world.
From the ninth century through the eleventh, Baghdad was the pinnacle of civilization. There the sciences flourished, and ancient historical, literary and philosophical texts were translated and preserved. The western number system, originally from India, was refined, and algebra (an Arabic word) was advanced. To this day, most of the prominent stars above bear Arabic names.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, a much better astrophysicist than historian, places the blame for the decline of Islamic science and scholarship on one man: the theologian, Al Ghazzali, who persuaded the Caliph to ban the teaching of mathematics and science.** Though I am no historian, this strikes me as much too simplistic. If Al Ghazzali had a hand in the triumph of Islamic fundamentalism over science and scholarship, then surely he must have been as much a symptom as a cause of this cultural defeat. And might not the fall of Baghdad to the Mongol Hordes in 1258 have had something to do with the end of the Golden Age of Islamic science?
Whatever the cause, the decline of Islamic civilization at the hands of religious fundamentalists bears an urgent warning today, as fundamentalists in Congress and state legislatures deny science, seek to slash the budgets of the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences, and defund the teaching of science in the public schools and universities. And in Texas, which is leading the headlong rush back to the tenth century, the state Republican platform advocates t he banning of instruction in critical thinking in the public schools.
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