No, the NT is not the entire Christian Bible. However, the NT is where you have to look to find Christ and Christ’s teachings. Without Christ and Christ’s teachings, Christianity is theologically indistinct from Judaism. So, insofar as we are talking about the inherent violence or bigotry of Christianity, it makes perfect sense to ask for a “slay the idolaters” quotation from Jesus. Absent such a quotation, “A new commandment I give you…” serves pretty succinctly to counter the notion that Christianity endorses violence against anyone.
You haven’t really countered my contention that those HB passages with a “slay the idolaters” slant to them ought to be interpreted as God’s judgment against specific sins committed by the nations, rather than as a commission to go out and engage in unrestrained warfare against non-Yahweh-worshipers. Nevertheless, I will grant you that there are passages with a “slay the idolaters” slant to them in the Hebrew Bible. In fact, I said as much in my first post to this thread, wherein I suggested that a better parallel case to the Koran’s putatively pro-terrorist incitements might be drawn from a comparison of TNK and the Koran.
No, the NT is not the entire Christian Bible. However, the NT is where you have to look to find Christ and Christ’s teachings. Without Christ and Christ’s teachings, Christianity is theologically indistinct from Judaism. So, insofar as we are talking about the inherent violence or bigotry of Christianity, it makes perfect sense to ask for a “slay the idolaters” quotation from Jesus. Absent such a quotation, “A new commandment I give you…” serves pretty succinctly to counter the notion that Christianity endorses violence against anyone.
You haven’t really countered my contention that those HB passages with a “slay the idolaters” slant to them ought to be interpreted as God’s judgment against specific sins committed by the nations, rather than as a commission to go out and engage in unrestrained warfare against non-Yahweh-worshipers. Nevertheless, I will grant you that there are passages with a “slay the idolaters” slant to them in the Hebrew Bible. In fact, I said as much in my first post to this thread, wherein I suggested that a better parallel case to the Koran’s putatively pro-terrorist incitements might be drawn from a comparison of TNK and the Koran.
Well, but that’s exactly the point he was trying to make, I think. People can and have found exhortations to violence in both Christian and Muslim holy writings. That doesn’t neccesarily mean they’re reading them correctly, or that either religion mandates violence. It’s all about the interpretation put on the text.
Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time in my life that I have ever argued with someone over something about which we didn’t actually disagree.
But then again, if that’s the point that’s being made, then I don’t understand the need to point out that Christianity has historically been prone to un-scriptural perversion, when everyone who is posting to this thread already seems perfectly willing to grant that interpretation – and therefore, potentially, miscommunication – takes place whenever ideas get transmitted. It just seemed like this was turning into a jumping off point for more recriminations about the Crusades, or the Inquisition, or whatever.
Maybe I was overreacting. No blood, no foul, I hope.
I want to step in here and redirect the thread back to Ibn Warraq’s critque of Islam. Like CallMeachem, I’ve read the book (although its been several years since I’ve read it) and I do find some of his arguments convincing.
Sure, much can be said about the violence and atrocities that were committed in the name of Christianity, but from a historical perspective, those atrocities occurred AFTER Christianity was adopted and sanctioned as an official religion. It took several hundred years before the persecution of Christians abated and was finally accepted by the Romans.
Islam, on the other hand, had only a brief period when adherents were persecuted (the period when Mohammed fled Mecca to Medina). Thereafter, Islam became the dominant religion throughout the Arabian Peninsula and quickly spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa by conquest.
Now, while Islam itself may not necessarily be inhernetly violent/intolerent, from a historical perspective it sure does appear that the first adherents of Islam benefited from an interpretation that did sanction violence towards those who were non-believers. The same cannot be said for the early history of Christianity (For those who know more about the early history of Christianity, please correct me).
I personally do not beleive that Islam is inherently intolerent/violent (this is where I disagree with Ibn Warraq), but I do beleive that it’s difficult to seperate what Islam truly is from the historical context from which it sprang. Maybe that’s what Ibn Warraq is trying to tell us - that we really can’t seprate the two (Islam and the historical context) in order to understand the mindset of those that espouse violence in the name of Islam.
Islam was originally an ethnic religion that sought conversion only from Arabs. The idea of Islam as a universal religion of equals was a slow-developing idea that wasn’t completely accepted until the Abbasid regime took power in 749 ( over a century after Muhammed’s death ).
The original impetus for expansion was thus two-fold. One, to bring the Arabs of Syria ( Christian, Jew, and pagan ), who by then formed a majority of Syria’s population, into the fold.
Two, the Muslim state was extremely fragile in its first decades. Arabia was only superficially Islamicized and the fractious Arab tribes were by nature not inclined to accept centralized rule. Once conquests in Syria began, the booty acquired( loot and territory ) and heady status of being the top caste in a new Imperial regime served as, essentially, bribes to wield these naturally divisive factions into a coherent force. This was helped both the enormous good fortune of coming across the Byzantine and Persian Empires when they were prostrate from war and internal divisions and by the militant language of the Koran. The Koran and Islam were indeed formulated under war-time circumstances and their internal language and the circumstances of their short history were easily adapted to expansionism.
Early Christian leadership was not synonomous with secular power. Quite unlike Islam under the Caliphate ( to at least the 10th century ). We have two very different circumstances.
But one can point to the campaigns against the Saxons, Slavs, and Baltic peoples. Though the were pragmatic in nature ( like the early Islamic conquests ), territorial expansion really, they were couched in terms of “Christianization”. Indeed, one of William the Conquerer’s justifications to the Pope for invading England, was to “stamp out the last vestiges of Celtic Christianity” .
I am in full agreement. Islam is more militant and perhaps more easily turned to violence, owing to its roots. But it is not inherently inhumane or evil.
Perfctly reasonable comment, quite unlike some from ibn Warraq, which do read at times like the frothing fervor of the deprogrammed fanatic. One can quite reasonably accuse folks of glossing over the bad at times. I think he glosses over the good .
I haven’t read that book myself. However, by your leave I would like to pass along a review of it by an intelligent gentleman, Jeremiah McAuliffe, who has a doctorate in religious studies and is like myself an American convert to Islam. He’s been a notable voice for moderate, liberal Islam on the newsgroup soc.religion.islam. http://www.city-net.com/~alimhaq/text/warraq.htm
I do not like to see debates about Islam redirected into Christian-bashing. I hate that! I’ve got nothing against Christianity and in fact I like it a lot (I just don’t belong to it, that’s all). There is a sure sign of rhetorical weakness, a dead giveaway that you’re about to lose the debate: when you selectively present only the nastiest stuff you can dredge about your opponent (and contrast it with the idealized picture of your own side). I see cut-rate religious polemicists, Muslim and anti-Muslim, doing this to each other all the time. It’s nauseating. This is one of the flaws McAuliffe criticizes in Ibn Warraq’s book. Read some of the other essays on McAuliffe’s site and you’ll see a more balanced approach that adresses the reader’s intelligence instead of insulting it.
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