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Muslim-Christian smackdown
Dr. Rusty Shackleford over at The Jawa Report made an excellent post about The Qu’ran and The Bible (both Old and New Testaments). And since we seem to have many similar opinions about this subject, I’d like to share it here.
I got this letter from a Muslim urging me to refrain from making fun of his religion (view here) , I felt it necessary to respond publicly.
As regular readers know, I’m totally cool with Muslims. It’s Islam I don’t like. As a non-Muslim, I can’t know what true Islam is—just as a non-Catholic and non-Protestant I can’t know what true Christianity is. That’s an internal debate that you Muslims need to be having (and are having) with yourselves.
And even though I don’t consider myself a traditional Christian, I do consider myself a follower of Jesus and I’ve read the Bible dozens of times. So, while I’m not an expert on true ‘Christianity’, I do have a fairly in depth knowledge of the Old and New Testaments. I do have an opinion, then, on what the Bible says and means.
I have also read the Quran. All of it. Several times. I’ve also read many of the hadiths (traditions). So, I’m not an expert about true Islam, but I do believe I have enough information to have an opinion on what the Quran says and means.
So, here are my opinions about them.
Old Testament: Pretty bloody horrifying. Luckily, Judaism does not treat the Old Testament as the literal word of God. Further, as the story of the Old Testament unfolds, Jehovah seems to get a lot nicer. Good on you LORD for growing up. (If you don’t think that God can handle criticism, then I’d suggest you don’t know that many Jews.)
New Testament: Pretty cool, except for all the pacifism stuff. Jesus seems to clearly be a pacifist in my reading. Which is fine, as long as Christians were in the minority. But once Christians became a majority–in other words, once they controlled the state–pacifism doesn’t seem all that great to me. Luckily, theology was able to take care of dangerous pacifism. Further, no theologian I know of treats the New Testament as the literal word of God. Even fundamentalists only claim that it was inspired of God–that the words are those of Paul, not God’s.
Quran: Pretty frightening. Not only does it have all of the bad stuff from the Old Testament, but Islam treats the words of the Koran as the literal word of God. These are God’s words, not Muhammed’s (or Gabriel’s). The Quran is not a collection of stories, but, as Reza Aslan says, it is the “Divine monologue.”
If these are God’s words, then I’m a monkey’s uncle. Either I am very wrong about God being a pretty cool dude, or the God described in the Quran is not God at all. In fact, Allah, if we take him at his word (as he himself reveals it in the Quran), is an asshole. He’s worse than Hitler.
So, I won’t apologize for making fun of the Quran. I do not believe it is the word of God. If I’m wrong, and Allah is God, then he certainly does not deserve to be worshipped or followed. Further, I do not believe that it has any redeeming value whatsoever. I do not believe any of it. None.
Hadiths: Don’t teach us much, except that Muhammed is not someone I would like to hang out with. He was a pedophile. He marries a 6 year old, but we are to believe that it’s okay, because he really doesn’t have sex with Aisha until she’s 9. Yeah, that makes everything better. He is a genocidal maniac. He wipes out entire tribes. He’s a fascist. He thinks it’s cool to kill any one who gives up the faith. So, no I don’t believe he was a Prophet.
There is no God named Allah and Muhammed is not a Prophet.
Incidentally, I don’t believe Sidhartha actually found enlightenment under the Bodi tree. But I have a great deal of respect for the Buddha. I don’t believe that Baha’u'llah was a Prophet. But I do have a great deal of respect for the content of his writings and the Baha’i faith.
Muhammed, I have no respect for. It’s not so much that I reject him as a Prophet–there are a lot of people who I don’t accept as a Prophet, but whom I respect–as it is that he was a sick S.O.B. who also had a lot of destructive things to say.
If you want to follow Muhammed that’s your right. But it is also my right to criticize him. If you want me to refrain from criticizing him, then I’d first suggest that you take away my right to bear arms. Because, you will find that I will give up both of those rights over my cold, dead body.
If you want me to end my criticism, then you’ll have to first convince me that Muhammed and the Quran are worth respect. Since I’ve read a lot of the hadiths, and the entire Quran, I know better.
If it makes you feel better, if your Quran actually doesn’t have all the bad stuff in it, and you don’t take as authoritative the stuff about Muhammed screwing a child and engaging in genocide, then I’m totaly hip to your Islam. But, then, your Islam is not traditional Islam. In that case, I’m not criticizing Islam as you know it, or the Quran as you know it, or Muhammed as you know him, but I am criticizing some other Islam, some other Quran, and some other Muhammed.
If such is the case, what is the problem?
You can read the original letter (and Rusty’s comments back to the writer) here at the bottom of his post. Check it out, the entire back-and-forth is pretty good.
Posted by FullMetalPatriot
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT
