Sunday, April 25, 2010
Exclusion, Inclusion, Coercion
These three words describe the manner in which the three monotheistic religions interact with the rest of the world. They represent Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, respectively. The observations are based on their behavior and their scriptural guidance.
The Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, is filled with injunctions to the Jews not to intermarry or associate with the inhabitants of lands that they conquered or migrated to. The primary concern was to maintain the purity of the people and the covenants with God. To this day, Jews do not evangelize, though the prohibitions among reformed and perhaps conservative Jews have been relaxed. They do intermarry with gentiles. For the Jews the strategy has brought persecution, but also they have survived as a people, drawing themselves from their Diaspora back to Israel.
Christianity, on the other hand, has followed the injunction to go forth and baptize the nations in the name of the Trinity. It took the shift from evangelizing only other Jews, to Paul’s sanctions of evangelizing the gentiles and letting them avoid all the Pharisaic rules and regulations. He was more concerned with their actions towards one another and the rest of the world. As a consequence, Christianity, partly due to the history with Rome, became the dominant religion of Europe. The important note was that it was as much orthodoxy as orthopraxy that provided the growth. A major characteristic of Christianity is that it is done by choice, including the practices of the faith, as well as the questioning. This is not to say that has always been the case during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but generally speaking it holds true, and certainly does today.
Islam evangelizes, and does so aggressively, BY FORCE. Where the Muslims conquered, they offered a choice of death, dhimmitude, or conversion. Depending on the burden of the jizzya or dhimmi tax, conversion might be more acceptable, to other than those willing to martyr themselves. Once converted, apostasy is punishable by death. Once a Muslim, always a Muslim, whether one wants to be or not. Needless to say, this is effective in numbers of converts, but one questions the strength of the faith. Apparently that is not a concern. When considering the scriptural basis of Muslim behavior, it is important to realize that like the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, there are passages that can be interpreted as gentle and others as violent or aggressive. However, the rule in Muslim interpretation is that the later sutras override the earlier ones. Interestingly enough, the later sutras are the ones that are the most aggressive and punitive to infidels.
At this point, I am going to offer some of my own interpretations and speculations. First, that the Muslim-Jewish conflict is not new, and did not start with the creation of Israel. That just handed a cause to the Muslims on a plate. Muslims have had it in for the Jews ever since Mohammed was rejected as a scholar by the “People of the Book” as he called them. The problem is that Islam is simply a corrupted version of Judaism through combining a rather poor memory of Hebrew scripture with the norms of nomadic Arabian culture. Try reading the Quran. It is hard, because it is incoherent. If one reads the history of Islam and the visions in sources that are sympathetic to Islam, it is hard not to see it as a simple justification for whatever Mohammed wanted to do at the time. I found it very suspicious that every time he ran into a problem, he would have a vision that commanded him to do what was the most expedient and not necessarily the most principled.
The Muslim-Christian conflict results simply from the fact that Christians are infidels. We are hated for who we are, and until we get that idea straight in our heads, we will be constantly on the defensive. From my perspective, any Jewish-Christian conflict is due to politics not religion. This is not the essay to address that.
I guess that is enough to get me a fatwa. Ever notice that Jews and Christians never condemn their critics or threaten them with death? Tends to support my theses above.
The Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, is filled with injunctions to the Jews not to intermarry or associate with the inhabitants of lands that they conquered or migrated to. The primary concern was to maintain the purity of the people and the covenants with God. To this day, Jews do not evangelize, though the prohibitions among reformed and perhaps conservative Jews have been relaxed. They do intermarry with gentiles. For the Jews the strategy has brought persecution, but also they have survived as a people, drawing themselves from their Diaspora back to Israel.
Christianity, on the other hand, has followed the injunction to go forth and baptize the nations in the name of the Trinity. It took the shift from evangelizing only other Jews, to Paul’s sanctions of evangelizing the gentiles and letting them avoid all the Pharisaic rules and regulations. He was more concerned with their actions towards one another and the rest of the world. As a consequence, Christianity, partly due to the history with Rome, became the dominant religion of Europe. The important note was that it was as much orthodoxy as orthopraxy that provided the growth. A major characteristic of Christianity is that it is done by choice, including the practices of the faith, as well as the questioning. This is not to say that has always been the case during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but generally speaking it holds true, and certainly does today.
Islam evangelizes, and does so aggressively, BY FORCE. Where the Muslims conquered, they offered a choice of death, dhimmitude, or conversion. Depending on the burden of the jizzya or dhimmi tax, conversion might be more acceptable, to other than those willing to martyr themselves. Once converted, apostasy is punishable by death. Once a Muslim, always a Muslim, whether one wants to be or not. Needless to say, this is effective in numbers of converts, but one questions the strength of the faith. Apparently that is not a concern. When considering the scriptural basis of Muslim behavior, it is important to realize that like the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, there are passages that can be interpreted as gentle and others as violent or aggressive. However, the rule in Muslim interpretation is that the later sutras override the earlier ones. Interestingly enough, the later sutras are the ones that are the most aggressive and punitive to infidels.
At this point, I am going to offer some of my own interpretations and speculations. First, that the Muslim-Jewish conflict is not new, and did not start with the creation of Israel. That just handed a cause to the Muslims on a plate. Muslims have had it in for the Jews ever since Mohammed was rejected as a scholar by the “People of the Book” as he called them. The problem is that Islam is simply a corrupted version of Judaism through combining a rather poor memory of Hebrew scripture with the norms of nomadic Arabian culture. Try reading the Quran. It is hard, because it is incoherent. If one reads the history of Islam and the visions in sources that are sympathetic to Islam, it is hard not to see it as a simple justification for whatever Mohammed wanted to do at the time. I found it very suspicious that every time he ran into a problem, he would have a vision that commanded him to do what was the most expedient and not necessarily the most principled.
The Muslim-Christian conflict results simply from the fact that Christians are infidels. We are hated for who we are, and until we get that idea straight in our heads, we will be constantly on the defensive. From my perspective, any Jewish-Christian conflict is due to politics not religion. This is not the essay to address that.
I guess that is enough to get me a fatwa. Ever notice that Jews and Christians never condemn their critics or threaten them with death? Tends to support my theses above.
// posted by Bill @ 7:22 PM 
