Jenkins - Laying down the sword: why we cant ignore the bibles violent verses

Introduction
Motes and Beams

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.

W ILLIAM J AMES

W E HAVE A GOOD idea what was passing through the minds of the September 11 hijackers as they made their way to the airports. Their al-Qaeda handlers had instructed them to meditate on al-Anfal (the Spoils) and at-Tawba (Repentance), two lengthy suras, or chapters, from the Quran. The passages make for harrowing reading. God promises to cast terror into the hearts of those who are bent on denying the truth; strike, then, their necks! God instructs his Muslim followers to kill unbelievers, to capture them, to ambush them:

Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.

O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites! Be harsh with them. Their ultimate abode is hell.

The word used for striving or struggle in the final verse quoted above gives rise to the term jihad, and later advocates of jihad ground themselves in these passages.

The hijackers should not shrink from killing prisoners. As they were instructed, God told Muhammad that no prophet should have prisoners until he has soaked the land with blood. Everything contributes to advancing the holy goal, as described in al-Anfal : Strike terror into Gods enemies, and your enemies. Perhaps in their final moments, the hijackers took refuge in these words, in which God seemingly lauds acts of terror and massacre.

Other extremists have found inspiration in these passages. After U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan went on a murder rampage at Ford Hood in Texas in 2009, authorities sought clues about his ideological development. They found that two years previously, Hasan had lectured his puzzled non-Muslim colleagues about the demands of the Quran, as he focused on one verse from at-Tawba: Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.

Parts of the Quran can shock. One verse warns, Those who make war against God and his apostle... shall be put to death or crucified. Another begins, When you meet the unbelievers on the battlefield, strike off their heads. When Osama bin Laden issued his declaration of war against the West in 1996, he quoted this verse, together with others from al-Anfal and at-Tawba .

Violence and the Quran

S UCH TEXTS HAVE A special power because faithful Muslims believe that the Quran is the inspired word of God, delivered verbatim through the prophet Muhammad. That is one of the great differences between the Quran and the Bible. Even for dedicated Christian fundamentalists, inspired Bible passages come through the pen of a venerated historical individual, whether it is the prophet Isaiah or the apostle Paul, and that leaves open some chance of blaming embarrassing views on that persons own prejudices. The Quran gives no such option. For believers, every word in the texthowever horrendous a passage may sound to modern earscame directly from God.

Western critics portray the Quran as the engine driving violent jihad and global terrorism. These critics might be secular conservatives, evangelical Christians, or Zionist defenders of Israel, but all agree in presenting the Quran as a terrorist tract loaded with hate propaganda. How, they worry, can the vast Muslim world possibly reconcile itself to modernity when the scripture on which the religion is based is so deeply flawed? One essay that appears on multiple anti-Islamic websites states simply, All you need to see that Islam is not a religion from God but a dangerous cult that promotes hate and violence, is [to] read the Quran. Christian evangelist Franklin Graham believes that the Quran preaches violence. Dutch politician Geert Wilders faced hate-crime charges for his film Fitna, in which he demanded that the Quran be suppressed as the modern-day equivalent to Hitlers Mein Kampf . American conservatives Paul Weyrich and William Lind argued that Islam is, quite simply, a religion of war, and urged that Muslims be encouraged to leave U.S. soil. For televangelist Pat Robertson, Islam is not even a religion, but a violent political system bent on the overthrow of governments of the world and world domination. In 2009, a survey of U.S. Protestant pastors found that 70 percent regarded Islam as a dangerous faith. Images of Quranic violence were much in evidence during the 2010 debate over the creation of an Islamic Center at New Yorks Ground Zero.

Such critics condemn any attempt to separate the atrocities of a movement such as al-Qaeda from its religious roots, any claim that the terrorism committed in the name of Islam is a perversion of the faith, or that authentic jihad is nothing more than an inner spiritual struggle. To the contrary, say critics, violence and terrorism are the natural and inevitable outcomes of Islam and its scriptures. In 2008, for instance, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed that Islamists were twisting the true meaning of the word jihad. Conservative critic Andrew McCarthy protested: