Taking North Korea at its (S)word

Kim Jong-un
NK News
Rodong Sinmun

In an article published by North Korea News, B.R. Myers argues for "Taking North Korea at its word" (February 13, 2016):

Isn't it time . . . that we paid more attention to the DPRK's own declarations of its intentions? Reiterated in Kim Jong Un's New Year's address, and featured in garish new wall posters, the slogan of "autonomous unification" seems harmless to most outsiders, as the regime knows only too well. To the North Koreans themselves, it has always stood for the conquest or subjugation of South Korea after nullification or removal of the U.S. military presence.

Myers then makes an interesting analogy:

For our part, we must at least stop acting as if the only motive for North Korea's armament too preposterous to discuss were the one that the country has reiterated, and acted in accordance with, for the past seventy years. Our initial response to 9/11 was to reduce it to a protest against U.S. support for Israel. Only recently have we begun to understand that the jihadists quite literally want the whole world. It is wishful thinking to assume that the ultra-nationalists in Pyongyang, who are far better armed than Islamic State, do not at least want the rest of their ethnic homeland.

In other words, we should take North Korea's threats to unify the Korean peninsula by military force as seriously as we've learned to take jihadists' threats to conquer the whole world through military force. They might both lack the military capacity, but that fact may be irrelevant in their calculations.

For the record, I was already convinced in the 1990s that jihadists wanted the world. I became interested in understanding Islam in 1979, when Iranian revolutionaries - with Islamist approval - occupied the American Embassy in Tehran and took the diplomats and staff hostage, so I read the Qur'an, expecting a message of God's love and consequent gift of peace at its core, which would show that the taking of hostages was wrong. I didn't find either love or peace as Islam's central message. I did find a few verses of peace, but more of war. so I concluded that the text was contradictory.

Eventually, however, I learned of the principle of abrogation: later revelations abrogate earlier ones if there are contradictions. The sword verses therefore abrogate such peaceful verses as the no-compulsion-in-religion verse, for Islam does use compulsion, as we can all now see, and Islamists repeatedly proclaim their aim of taking over the world..

Myers' insistence on taking North Korea's threats seriously may thus be the position to assume and therefore the one to prepare for.

Qur'an: Subject to Reason?

Google Images

Only yesterday, I posted on static texts in changing times, and afterwards found this article, "Liberal Iraqi Shi'ite Scholar Sayyed Ahmed Al-Qabbanji Calls For Reason In Islam," by Yotam Feldner for Memri (Inquiry and Analysis Series Report No. 937, February 21, 2013), which says the following on the views of the liberal scholar mentioned in the title:

Al-Qabbanji's take on the Islamic religion is entirely unorthodox. In his lectures, he methodically deconstructs the Islamic perceptions of Allah, the Prophet Muhammad, the Koran, the shari'a, and all the taboos of conventional Islam. His underlying assumption is that nothing in religion can be true -- not even the Koran -- if it does not pass the litmus test of reason.

In a lecture on "Rationality in Jurisprudence," Al-Qabbanji explained the difference between his own perception of the shari'a and that of conventional Islamists. He broke down the conventional perception of the shari'a into the following five principles: The shari'a: 1) is eternal; 2) is total; 3) is beneficial; 4) is uninferable; and 5) trumps reason.

According to Al-Qabbanji, the Islamists, especially the Wahhabis, hold to these five points and maintain that:

Whenever contradiction arises, the shari'a takes precedence over reason. Al-Qabbanji explained that the Wahhabis openly adhere to this fifth principle, which is conceptualized in Ibn Taymiyyah's book The Rejection of the Conflict between Reason and the Revelation.

Al-Qabbanji argues for the precedence of reason, which demonstrates that some parts of the Qur'an are outdated:

The mere suggestion that anything in the Koran is a thing of the past defies the conventional Islamic belief that views the Koran as the literal word of God, as revealed to the illiterate Prophet Muhammad. But Al-Qabbanji rejects the concept of the Koran as the word of Allah, saying instead that it is full of untruths, contradiction, superstition, and immoral behavior. When the Koran was formed, he says, "there was not a single iota of falsehood in it. It was all true." Today, however, it must be accepted that the Koran rulings were appropriate [only] for their time. The treatment of women, justification of slavery, and jizya poll tax for Christians and Jews are frequently cited by Al-Qabbanji as examples of how the Koran's rulings were in keeping with what was deemed just and reasonable at the time, but which today are considered unjust, irrational, and immoral.

As one might expect, Al-Qabbanji has been arrested for his intriguing attempt to bring Islam into the modern world. Click on the link and read the entire article by Yotam Feldner, who has written this report as a preliminary draft of a chapter for an upcoming book on liberal Arab scholars.

Free Expression: Rage, Respect, Reading, and Rights

Muslim Rage?
Daily Beast

That image above comes from the cover of this week's Newsweek, or so the internet informs me, for my hard copy has a cover image of a Myanmar Punk, replete with colorful Mohawk haircut! But inside the magazine that arrived by Korea's postal service is the same article by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, though I have yet to read it because I'm preoccupied with thinking.

I'm thinking about hypocrisy.

My mind turned to cases of this deceptive gesture toward virtue as I was reading the words of one Muslim protester outside the American Embassy in Cairo, who said:

We never insult any prophet -- not Moses, not Jesus -- so why can't we demand that Muhammad be respected? (David D. Kirkpatrick, "Cultural Clash Fuels Muslims Angry at Online Video," NYT, September 16, 2012)

Never? Really never?

But in a collection of Hadith by Sahih Bukhari (Volume 4, Book 55, Number 657), Abu Huraira reports Muhammad foretelling that when Isa (Jesus) returns, "he will break the cross," which means that Isa (Jesus) will personally destroy Christianity. From a Christian perspective, that's certainly an insult to Jesus, for it has him destroying what Christians hold as their faith's most crucial symbol for depicting the manner in which Jesus became the sacrifice for sins.

And what about this kind of behavior?

A Muslim imam called Abu Islam took part in a protest in Cairo and destroyed a Bible, as reported by Mary Abdelmassih in "Muslim Cleric Tears Bible At Protest Outside the US Embassy in Cairo" (Assyrian International News Agency, September 14, 2012)?

He starts tearing the bible and throwing the leaves towards the mob, amid chants of Allahu Akbar and . . . saying: "To all the cross worshippers around the world we will not keep quiet . Today, we tore it." [Also,] a man in blue beside him burns the bible raising it for everyone to see.

This desecration of Christian scripture would surely constitute an insult to various prophets, or such would be the view of Christians -- derogatorily called "cross worshippers" by the imam -- and note that this same imam added these words, "Next time I will urinate on it [i.e., the Bible]," thereby compounding the insult.

So much for Islam's reputed respect toward what Muslims call a "prophetic" religion. Now what about Islam's treatment of a non-Christian religion, say, the Taliban's destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas?

Was that respectful? Or is respect due only to Islam's sacred symbols?

The list of insults and destructive violence could extend to accounts of Muslim attacks against various religions, with the list going on and on . . .

Of course, these insults and attacks are solely the actions of a tiny minority of Islamists who claim to represent Islamic orthodoxy and cite authoritative texts as proof but are rejected by the vast majority of Muslims, who regularly oppose the Islamists in peaceful counterprotests aimed at demonstrating that Islam actually is a religion of peace, as everyone says.

Be that as it may, my view, as readers already know, is that speech -- even insulting speech, whether uttered by Muslim or non-Muslim -- must be protected speech, so I agree with the author of The Satanic Verses, the controversial Salman Rushdie, who lives under a fatwa of death and whose position on free expression is reported by Michiko Kakutani in "Rushdie Relives Difficult Years Spent in Hiding" (NYT, September 17, 2012):

Gradually, . . . he came to see that "the violence and menace of the response" to his novel "was a terrorist act that had to be confronted," and that he "wanted the world's leaders to defend his right to be a troublemaker."

It was about more than his book. It was about "the era of fear and self-censorship that the fatwa [against Satanic Verses] had brought into being." It was about standing up for literature, which "encouraged understanding, sympathy and identification with people not like oneself," at a time when "the world was pushing everyone in the opposite direction, toward narrowness, bigotry, tribalism, cultism and war."

He was fighting, he realized, for "freedom of speech, freedom of the imagination, freedom from fear, and the beautiful, ancient art" of storytelling, "of which he was privileged to be a practitioner."

Like Rushdie under a death threat but regaining his nerve, we simply must raise and protect our free, unintimidated voices.

James V. Schall on Islam's 'Fragility'

James V. Schall

(Image from Georgetown University)

The Jesuit political philosopher James V. Schall has a recent short, reflective essay "On the Fragility of Islam" published at The Catholic Thing (August 23, 2011). In our time of aggressive Islamism, such a title is surprising, but perhaps it shouldn't be. Aggressiveness is often a cover for uncertainty, for lack of confidence. But why does Schall consider Islam "fragile"? Not out of ignorance, certainly. Schall first notes Islam's military success, its rapid spread through warfare from Arabia to "North Africa, the Mediterranean islands, much of Spain, the Balkans, the Near East, the vast land area from southern Russia to India and Afghanistan and even parts of China." Islam dominates in these places, as Schall notes with especial reference to formerly Christian territory, and appears powerful:

The Muslim conversion of former Christian lands seems to be permanent. What few Christians are left in these lands are second-class citizens. They are under severe pressure to convert or emigrate. Many forces within Islam desire a complete enclosure of Islam that would exclude any foreign power or religion. The Muslim world is divided into the area of peace and the area of war; the latter is what Islam does not yet control.

Given Islam's power, why does Schall consider Islam weak?

So with this background, why talk of the "fragility" of Islam? This instability arises from the status of the text of the Koran as an historical document. The Koran is said to have been dictated directly in Arabic by Allah. It has, as it were, no prehistory, even though it did not come into existence until a century or so after Mohammed.

Scholars, mostly German, have been working quietly for many decades to produce a critical edition of the Koran that takes into consideration the "pre-history" of the Koran. Due to the Muslim belief that any effort to question the Koran's text is blasphemy, the enterprise is fraught with personal risk to the researchers. The idea that the text cannot be investigated, of course, only feeds suspicion that even Muslims worry about its integrity . . . .

The fragility of Islam, as I see it, lies in a sudden realization of the ambiguity of the text of the Koran. Is it what it claims to be? Islam is weak militarily. It is strong in social cohesion, often using severe moral and physical sanctions. But the grounding and unity of its basic document are highly suspect. Once this becomes clear, Islam may be as fragile as communism.

Schall's argument reminds me somewhat of the secularization thesis, the long-held view that the secular forces of Modernity would undermine religious belief through critical thought, among other things. Outside of Europe, that hasn't quite happened yet, and Europe itself seems to be gravitating back toward religion, either through the growth of Islam there or in reaction to that growth among Europeans now becoming more aware of the Christian element of Western identity.

Moreover, if one compares Islam's textual situation with Christianity's, one sees that Christian fundamentalism, with its emphatic declaration of Biblical inerrancy, is partly a reaction to Modernity, especially to the threat of the scholarly world's modern approach to Biblical criticism, characterized by a hermeneutic of suspicion bent on demonstrating the incoherence of the text through focus upon inconcinnities that imply textual development reflecting theological struggles among early Christian communities rather than a divinely inspired textual revelation of theological truth at the outset, e.g., high Christology is seen as a late development of theological reflection rather than an early consequence of divine revelation. Christianity, in both its Catholic and its Protestant forms, has not fallen into theological ruin at such Biblical criticism.

But Schall might have a point. The Qur'an holds a uniquely central place in Islam, roughly analogous to the position of Christ in Christianity, and it is Allah's only verbal communication with mankind that has remained uncorrupted by those who have received it and is therefore as inerrant today as it was when the angel Gabriel dictated it directly to Muhammad. If critical hermeneutics applied to the Qur'an demonstrates that the text developed over time, i.e., that it drew upon previous scriptures and was rewritten in the decades following Muhammad's death, then Islam could suffer a critical shock, particularly if the very early Qur'anic texts found in the attic of an old mosque in Yemen should turn out to have significant textual variants.

But I don't think that a deconstruction of the Qur'anic text will happen without a fight, and not a purely academic one, at that.

Ann Barnhardt would be in trouble with the 'Law' . . .

Jamil Khir Baharom

(Image from Wikipedia)

Ann Barnhardt, whose 'performance art' I linked to a couple of days ago in an examination of "free expression," would be prosecuted for her performance under Malaysian law as one of those "non-Muslims who quoted or interpreted Quranic verses freely on their own understanding and do [sic. did so] so without sincerity were deemed to have insulted the Holy Book." The authorities wouldn't be able to get her for lack of sincerity, but she did quote the text rather freely, and offer her own, fiery hermeneutic, so they'd get her for that.

Or so I gather from the words of a "Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department," a certain "Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom," quoted in the ominously titled article, "Reciting from Quran only allowed if it's to understand religion," The Star (April 11, 2011). Jamil Khir Baharom cites the "National Fatwa Council edict on Islamic affairs," according to which, "the Government can take appropriate action against parties that abused Quranic verses for ulterior motives or to question Islamic practices."

Why?

"[T]o ensure that racial harmony is maintained."

Oh, that's all right, then . . . because Islam is a race, of course, not a religion. Right. And of course, the best way to ensure racial harmony is to prosecute non-Muslims for questioning the words of the Qur'an. By this law, anything deemed 'Islamic' by the National Fatwa Council would be protected from 'racial-hatred' speech, such that any remark considered critical of Islam would be castigated as 'racism'!

I take it that Islamists now consider racism worse than unbelief? What a surprise! Also interesting. Being an infidel is preferable to being a racist.

Jamil Khir Baharom and the National Fatwa Council of Malaysia definitely have their political correctness down pat.

At least, she read it first . . .

Ann Barnhardt

(Image from iOTW)

Ann Barnhardt is a name that may become more widely known than that of Terry Jones. Like Jones, she has recently burned a Qur'an. She did so in response to Senator Lindsey Graham's criticism of Mr. Jones because Senator Graham advocated curtailing Americans' freedom of speech. Here's what Senator Graham said on Face the Nation:

You know, I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war. During World War II, you had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy.

That statement begins about 2:22 into the video. Ms. Barnhardt properly holds Senator Graham accountable, reminding him that free speech is more than a "great idea" in America; it's Constitutionally protected, and Mr. Jones has the legal right in the United States to express his opinion of the Qur'an. One might object that burning a Qur'an is hardly 'speech', but the Supreme Court has upheld such enacted expressions of opinion as protected under the Constitution.

Ms. Barnhardt then proceeds to express her opinion just as forcefully by also burning pages from the Qur'an, though after first reading aloud the verse that she objects to and stating "Evil, evil garbage." She does so after reading verses urging believers to battle against the pagans, advocating the beating of one's disobedient wife, and the like.

Interested readers can watch two videos of Ms. Barnhardt -- one criticizing Senator Graham and the other 'criticizing' the Qur'an -- and judge for yourself whether or not you agree with her.

I defend her right to freedom of expression, but personally, I would rather that people not burn Qur'ans. I'm not in favor of burning books. I prefer that people read a book, state what is in it that is offensive, and explain why it is offensive. This means putting the verse in context and showing why it is still offensive despite context. Reading without context, one could cite Psalm 137, verse 9:

Happy [shall he be], that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

And like Ms. Barnhardt, one could respond, "Evil, evil garbage."

Context, however, might justify a different response, such as was considered on a previous blog entry: Richard Swinburne: 'The Violence of the Old Testament'." On the other hand, one might disagree with Professor Swinburne and still consider the verse "Evil, evil garbage." And if one then proceeds to burn that page of the Bible, one is free to do so -- at least in America.

I don't think that many Jews or Christians would threaten violence in response, and that might say something good about what Judaism and Christianity teach the faithful in their religions.

But if any did threaten violence and carry it out, then they are the ones who should be held accountable . . .

Geert Wilders: Not a Fan of Muhammed?

Geert Wilders

(Image from Partij voor de Vrijheid)

Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Freedom Party (Partij voor de Vrijheid), had made a name for himself in European politics by calling the Qur'an to be banned as hate speech, which is not quite what the framers of hate-speech legislation had in mind, and has recently had an op-ed piece published in the Dutch magazine HP de Tijd titled "Time to unmask Muhammad" (March 30, 2011). The article is also available at the Freedom Party's website.

This article isn't likely to appeal to Muslims, for Mr. Wilders has nothing positive to say about the founder of Islam, whom he considers as either clinically insane or outright evil -- or both, since Mr. Wilders probably won't allow Mohammad to claim innocence by reason of insanity.

I'm not too keen on medical diagnoses of people long dead -- Paul of Tarsus, for instance, has been labeled an epileptic -- but Mr. Wilders does point to problematic passages in traditions about Mohammad that are considered authentic reports in the Muslim world. For instance, Mr. Wilders notes problematic passages on violence:

The sources describe orgies of savagery where hundreds of people's throats were cut, hands and feet chopped off, eyes cut out, entire tribes massacred. An example is the extinction of the jewish Kurayza tribe in Medina in 627. One of those who chopped off their heads was Muhammad. The women and children were sold as slaves.

And there's sex, too, with a rather young wife:

Numerous hadiths contain testimonies by Muhammad's favourite wife, the child wife Aisha. Aisha literally says: "The prophet married me when I was six years old, and had intercourse with me when I was nine."

Mr. Wilders offers no specific citations to back up these statements, but I've seen the sources myself, so I know that he could support these points with citations that Muslims themselves consider authentic. This presents a problem, as Mr. Wilders points out:

[An] insuperable problem with Islam is the figure of Muhammad. He is not just anyone. He is al-insan al-kamil, the perfect man . . . . The Koran, and hence Allah, lays down that Muhammad's life must be imitated.

The Muslim sources present a complex image of Mohammad, but the portrait offered there includes actions that most people would not consider proper, so modeling one's own behavior after Mohammad's actions in every respect would be highly problematic, to say the least.

If Islam is going to reform itself, as many think that it needs to do, then it will have to deal with these disturbing traditions about Mohammad. But that might be easier than expected, for the rules for determining the "authenticity" of a tradition are somewhat arbitrary from a modern perspective. I recall, for instance, reading that a man who has urinated in an improper fashion cannot be a reputable link in a chain of oral transmission about Mohammad. I suspect that an enlightened examination of many reports considered authentic would lead to their dismissal as inauthentic.

But Muslims themselves will need to do this analytical work . . .

International Burn a Koran Day?

Terry Jones

"Burn, baby, burn!"

(Image from My Fox Memphis)

Pastor Terry Jones, of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, has announced an International Burn a Koran Day for September 11, which is coming up tomorrow, Seoul time.

No, not International Burn a Korean Day! That would also be a bad idea -- and a crime in any country!

As for International Burn a Koran Day, such an action would constitute legally protected free expression according to US law. It happens to be a very bad idea, but I'm strongly supportive of free speech, so I acknowledge the legal right of Pastor Jones to express his views by burning a copy of the Qur'an.

I'd prefer that Pastor Jones not do so, and I think that he will regret the consequences of his ill-considered act when he finds himself the target of a fatwa calling for his execution, an outcome that will surely, if belatedly concentrate his mind. Related fatwas will undoubtedly target others than Pastor Jones.

The predictably violent reaction expected from the Muslim world has already served to concentrate the minds of the rest of us in advance, and thereby accounts for the widespread condemnation of this scheduled Qur'anic event, for almost everybody would assuredly yawn with boredom if a Bible were scheduled to be burned.

Readers might therefore be interested to learn that the first recorded burning of the Qur'an was a conflagration of many Qur'ans in fires ordered by the third "rightly guided Caliph," Uthman ibn Affan (644-656 A.D. ). According to Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 6, Book 61, Number 510, as narrated by Anas bin Malik:

Hudhaifa bin Al-Yaman came to Uthman at the time when the people of Sham and the people of Iraq were Waging war to conquer Arminya and Adharbijan. Hudhaifa was afraid of their (the people of Sham and Iraq) differences in the recitation of the Qur'an, so he said to 'Uthman, "O chief of the Believers! Save this nation before they differ about the Book (Quran) as Jews and the Christians did before." So 'Uthman sent a message to Hafsa saying, "Send us the manuscripts of the Qur'an so that we may compile the Qur'anic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you." Hafsa sent it to 'Uthman. 'Uthman then ordered Zaid bin Thabit, 'Abdullah bin AzZubair, Said bin Al-As and 'AbdurRahman bin Harith bin Hisham to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. 'Uthman said to the three Quraishi men, "In case you disagree with Zaid bin Thabit on any point in the Qur'an, then write it in the dialect of Quraish, the Qur'an was revealed in their tongue." They did so, and when they had written many copies, 'Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. 'Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur'anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt. Said bin Thabit added, "A Verse from Surat Ahzab was missed by me when we copied the Qur'an and I used to hear Allah's Apostle reciting it. So we searched for it and found it with Khuzaima bin Thabit Al-Ansari. (That Verse was): 'Among the Believers are men who have been true in their covenant with Allah.' (33.23)

Such was the liberality of Uthman, that he would burn defective Qur'ans that differed even slightly from the one in the Quarish dialect. I don't imagine that anyone would try that today with a Qur'an, even if it did happen to have a few misprints -- and can Qur'anic misprints be utterly avoided in a written record of the Qur'anic utterance?

Indeed, if I recall correctly, the practice that developed in somewhat later Islam, though still early in that religion's history, was to bury any Qur'an that had deteriorated or been damaged. Burning would have been unacceptable, for even defective Qur'ans contained Allah's word. The Sana'a manuscripts, for example, were never burned, despite their divergences from the 'standard' Qur'an.

Pastor Jones, therefore, who considers the Qur'an so radically defective as to be almost entirely composed of Satanic verses and thereby deserving of being burned, is something of a throwback to the era of Uthman.

UPDATE: As Hathor notes below, the 'burning times' have been called off, with Pastor Jones saving face by expressing the (vain) hope that the so-called 'Ground Zero' mosque will in turn be built elsewhere.

Richard Swinburne: "The Violence of the Old Testament"

Richard Swinburne

(Image from University of Oxford)

I recently watched an interesting video -- made available by an Australian institute called the Centre for Public Christianity -- presenting a talk by the Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne as he explicates a Christian view on "The Violence of the Old Testament" (hat tip Paul Raymont).

I thought that this video might be interesting for readers here at Gypsy Scholar since my blog has often delved into the contemporary problem posed by Islamist violence in Islam. Christianity itself has at times had similar problems with violence, as perhaps every religion has, and Christian scripture itself even contains a number of problematic passages that present violence as having been condoned by God and men, so understanding how the Church Fathers dealt with such violent passages, in arguing for inclusion of the Old Testament as a Christian document, might be useful in considering the problem of violence in Islam.

Anyway, here's an edited transcript that I've copied down to record most of Swinburne's remarks in this video, "The Violence of the Old Testament":

[T]he first thing to understand about the Old Testament is why we've got it, and the objection that it depicts a vindictive God is one which was well known to Christians before they took the Old Testament as a Christian document. And there was a priest called Marcion at the end of the second century in Rome who said the Old Testament isn't a Christian document at all. We should not use it as that purpose. We ought to have just the New Testament, or just certain parts of the New Testament. So, there was a battle about whether the Old Testament should be included. In the end, it was those who wanted it included who won.

But what is interesting is the reason why, or the conditions under which, they got it accepted. And the leader of the party who wanted it accepted was Irenaeus, and he said that we must understand this document not just as a -- or [not] always as a -- historical document, but as [a document] having deep metaphorical meaning. And it was with that understanding that the Old Testament was adopted as a Christian document. And what that means is that quite a lot of the parts which seem to suppose that God is vindictive in some way have to be understood rather differently as making a quite different metaphorical claim.

The example I always use is Psalm 137, verse 9, where the psalmist pronounces a blessing on those who take the children of the people of Babylon and smash their heads against the rock. And Babylon, as I'm sure my hearers know, is where the people of Israel, or the leaders of the people of Israel, were exiled to in the 6th century [BC]. And many of the Christian theologians, the Fathers, said that we can't possibly take this literally because this is not a Christian sentiment. And so, how are we to understand it?

Well, they had a big program of how you understand the Old Testament. For example, talk about Babylon was talk of [metaphor]. Babylon was [understood as] a bad place, and so it was talk about wickedness and the powers of wickedness. The rock stands for Christ. Christ said that he would build his church on the rock, and he who builds on the rock will be saved. So, we are to understand this as telling us that the people who take the children of Babylon -- and the children of Babylon were meant to be the desires in us which come from wickedness -- and smash them against a rock, the rock of Christ, are indeed blessed. So, it's nothing to do with -- they were saying, the Fathers who interpreted this were saying -- it's nothing to do at all with literal Babylon. It's telling us to smash our bad desires against the rock of Christ, which is of course a truly Christian sentiment. And a number of the Fathers gave -- indeed, the most influential ones -- gave this interpretation.

Now, from our point of view, this sounds crazy. It's not what it meant, that [is,] it's not what the people who first wrote it meant. Well, maybe, maybe not. But what we have to realize is that the meaning of a text changes according to the context in which you put it. That is to say, the Old Testament was formed in a way that, first, there were little bits, say Psalm, or some of Psalm 137, and then these were put together into larger bits, perhaps a chunk of the Psalms, and then this was put into a larger bit still, and then into yet larger bits. And when you use a bit of the text that's been written by one person, and you compile a different book which uses that text, you don't mean the same as the person who first wrote it. You mean what it means in the larger context.

And so, this verse -- and this applied generally -- has to be understood in the larger context. And the larger context for the Christian is the whole Bible itself, including the New Testament teaching. So, it has to be understood in the light of the New Testament teaching. It may not have been what the first author meant by it, but it's what quite a number of the different authors in the subsequent development of the work meant by it. And therefore, that is what it must [mean], what a Christian must understand [by] that, and it was with that sort of way of understanding [Old Testament] scripture that scripture became a Christian document.

This allegorical method is of obvious use for transforming a horrific sentiment into its opposite. The verse apparently doesn't mean that one should kill Babylonian children but that one should 'kill' the desire to do anything evil . . . such as an evil desire to kill Babylonian children. I wonder what Swinburne does with the doctrine of eternal damnation in Hell. More to the point that I'd like to make today, however, I wonder how Swinburne would reinterpret biblical passages on "holy war," such as the following:

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy (charam) all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. (1 Samuel 15:3)

This apparently genocidal verse purports to be a direct command from God (cf. 1 Samuel 15:2), so it poses a sharper hermeneutic difficulty. Fortunately, it's not a general teaching about how to conduct warfare. It applied to a specific attack and what the Israelites were supposed to do in that particular case, but it's nevertheless a pretty horrific command and doesn't appear to reflect well on the character of God. I'd therefore like to see how Swinburne handles it. I have some notion of how he'd go about reinterpreting it, of course, but I'd still like to see him do it.

Clearly of crucial importance for Swinburne's approach to hermeneutics is what happens to constitute the relevant context. Swinburne points to the New Testament, and in a later part of the same video, he specifies the especially pacific teachings of the New Testament's Sermon on the Mount.

Given that Swinburne is a philosopher, I'd guess that he also would appeal to the larger context of a philosophical understanding of God's character as omnibenevolent and the benevolent consequences that follow from such an understanding.

Islam might also benefit from applying contextual hermeneutics to violence in the Qur'an, but my impression is that such an interpretive approach will prove more difficult since Islam does have a doctrine of warfare and since Muhammad himself served as a military leader and stands as a moral exemplar for Muslims. Moreover, Islamic theology seems quite different from Christian theology. For Islam, God often appears to be understood as pure will unrestricted by anything, thereby leaving a philosophical appeal to Allah's character unmoored.

But I'm no expert on that . . .

Islamism: Radicalism at the Core of Islam?

Core

of

Knowledge

of

Good and Evil

(Wikipedia)

I had a recent exchange with my cyber-friend Bill Vallicella, who had posted a blog entry of the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, but the issue that we discussed was Islamism. I began the discussion with a reference to his post:

Just read your post "Yet More on the Mosque and Matters Muslim." I haven't fully decided one way or the other yet on this mosque, but here's my take on Islamists versus moderate Muslims. Islamists are radicals, but they're radicals at the core of Islam, not at its peripheries (whereas moderates are distant from that core).

That's why Islamists pose a recurrent, tenacious threat.

Bill replied:

I hadn't thought of that way of putting it. Very interesting. Are you suggesting that true Islam is represented by the radicals? And that they are therefore not distorters of it? And as a corollary, that so-called moderates are not true Muslims but have watered the religion down to the point of distorting its authentic message?

I responded:

Yes, something like that. We usually think of radicals as extremists, people on the extreme fringe of a movement. This isn't the case with Islamists. They draw on core texts in Islam and core doctrines. Radicals in the true sense of the term, they go back to Islam's roots in the Qur'an and Shariah. They are thus radicals at the core of Islam.

Have you seen what I wrote on the three Islams?

This schema is coherent with my radicalism-at-the-core idea and also helps explain the world's recurrent problem with Islam.

Bill is taking a week off from blogging, so I've not yet heard a reply, but I thought that I might as well blog on the issue this morning since I'm also on vacation and can only seem to find time for light blogging.

The three Islams, by the way, refers to Ibn Warraq's use of Bernard Lewis's threefold distinction among Islam One (Qur'an), Islam Two (Shariah), and Islam Three (Civilization). In my meaning above, Islam One and Islam Two form the core of Islam. Herein lies the problem with Islam, as I've noted:

Islamists, taking the Qur'an and shariah very seriously, will always work to impose Islamic law upon Islamic civilization -- even as they will also advocate Islam's dominance over non-Islamic civilizations.

Hence the recurrent confrontation with Islam's offensive jihad, so beloved of Islamists. However, I would add that insofar as I can judge, terrorism seems to go beyond what is permissible at Islam's core, though we see that many Islamists nevertheless do support terrorism.

Ibn Warraq: Distinguishing Islams (and Christianities)

Ibn Warraq

(Collapse of Europe?)

In "Modernity and the Muslims," a panel discussion whose transcript is published in City Journal (Vol. 20, Nr. 3, July 15, 2010), ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq offers an interesting threefold distinction of Islam, which he borrows from the great scholar of Islam Bernard Lewis:

I like to make a distinction that I actually owe to Bernard Lewis; oddly enough, Lewis, to my knowledge, has never made use of it. It’s a very useful distinction that he made between Islam One, Two, and Three. Islam One is what's in the Koran, what the Prophet Mohammed did and enjoyed. Islam Two is the sharia and the theological construct that we call Islam, as developed by the theologians over the centuries. Islam Three is Islamic civilization, which is what Muslims actually did do as opposed to what they should have done, what actually happened in Islamic history. Often Islam Three -- that is, Islamic civilization -- was far more tolerant than what Islam One and Two demanded. For example, until very recently, Islamic society (Islam Three) was far more tolerant about homosexuality than the West was, whereas Islam One and Islam Two more firmly condemned it. There are several ambiguous passages in the Koran, but certainly Islam Two, the sharia, condemns homosexuality.

Islamic history has never been a relentless series of theocratic governments; it has varied from century to century, ruler to ruler. Sometimes it has been very intolerant, and sometimes it has been very tolerant. Just look at some of the poets who were given free rein -- for example, al-Mahawi, an Iraqi who was certainly an agnostic and very probably an atheist, but he was very critical. He was left alone; no one bothered him, so this is witness to the period of tolerance. This is, for me, the best way to approach the situation. For example, some of the terrorists are taking literally what is in the Koran. There are all sorts of intolerant passages in the Koran about killing infidels and not taking Jews and Christians as friends. It’s undeniably there, and you can't get away from it. Chapter four in the Koran: you can't get away from the fact that it gives men the power to beat women. It's no good pretending that somehow the real Islam is tolerant, the real Islam is feminist, and so on. There is a great deal of confusion because people do not want to tarnish with the same brush a billion believers. We don't want to be too crude in our defamation. We don't want to call all Muslims terrorists, so the best way is this distinction between Islam One, Two, Three.

This is a useful analytical distinction offering a schema for understanding the reputed tolerance of Islam. It truly has been tolerant, at times, if one is speaking of "Islam Three," Islamic civilization.

Civilizations are broader than the religions upon which they are founded -- to draw upon Samuel Huntington's theory for a moment --and can be far more tolerant as a consequence. Western civilization, for instance, is broader than Christianity, for it has integrated Graeco-Roman thought and culture with biblical faith.

By analogy to Ibn Warraq's use of a threefold distinction, one could do the same with Christianity:

Christianity One: Bible

Christianity Two: Theology

Christianity Three: Civilization

This is useful for comparison to the threefold distinction of Islam:

Islam One: Qur'an

Islam Two: Shariah

Islam Three: Civilization

By comparing these two schemas, we notice a striking difference. Islam Two, which is shariah, i.e., Islamic law, plays a different role in Islamic civilization than Christianity Two, i.e., theology, does in Western civilization. Ideally, for the Muslim, shariah ought to be the law of Islamic civilization. By contrast, theology does not specify a system of law for Western civilization, which draws instead upon pagan sources, whether one considers Roman law or common law.

Theology concerns what one ought to believe, and proper belief cannot be imposed but relies on persuasion. Law concerns how one ought to behave, and proper behavior can be imposed through force.

Huntington speaks of the clash of civilizations, and he finds clear evidence especially of the clash between Islamic civilization and those non-Islamic civilizations that share its "bloody borders." Others, such as Judith Miller, speak of Islamic civilization being at war with itself, a sort of civil war taking place before our eyes. These are not mutually exclusive views. Islamists, taking the Qur'an and shariah very seriously, will always work to impose Islamic law upon Islamic civilization -- even as they will also advocate Islam's dominance over non-Islamic civilizations.

An identical dialectic is at work in both struggles, for most Islamists consider force legitimate where persuasion does not work.

Mus'ab Hassan Yousuf: Uncompromising 'Islamist' Views?

Mus'ab Hassan Yousuf

(Image from Memri)

We've previously met this son of a Hamas leader, Mus'ab Hassan Yousuf, under a different spelling, "Musab Yousef," where we first learned that he had become a Christian, apparently an evangelical, and moved to California for safety since as an apostate from Islam, he faces assassination by Islamists, who wish to apply the death penalty required by shariah.

In an interview with BBC Arabic that was aired on March 12, 2010, Yousuf expresses some rather harsh views on Islam, and I quote from the transcript:

"[T]he God of Islam suffers from a split personality. All the Muslims who follow the God of Islam interpret Islam as they like, but this does not negate the terroristic and murderous character of Islam, which incites people, through the Koran, to kill people and blow themselves up."

Yousuf is clearly speaking rather carelessly about what the Qur'an literally says, for that book says nothing specifically about blowing oneself up. He has some hermeneutic space for backing up if necessary since the English term used here is the somewhat imprecise "incite." I'd be curious to know what he says in Arabic. At any rate, Yousuf is challenged by his interviewer to state where the Qur'an says this, so he cites chapter and verse:

"Go to Surat Al-Tawba, verses 5 and 29."

Let's take a look, and I quote from Pickthal:

5. 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. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

29. 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.

I can see pretty clearly a rationale here for the jihad of war with the aim of spreading Islam, but I can't quite see any justification for terrorism or suicide bombing. Yousuf would need to make a stronger case. There follows an exchange between the interviewer and Yousuf:

Interviewer: "But don't you agree that Islam recognizes other religions, exalts Jesus, recognizes Judaism, and so on? Do you or do you not accept this?"

Mus'ab Hassan Yousuf: "There are several unreliable views of several Islamic thinkers, but their authority does not supersede that of the God of Islam, who said: 'Slay the People of the Book wherever you find them.'"

Interviewer: "How can you say that? Did the Koran call to slay the People of the Book?"

Mus'ab Hassan Yousuf: "He said: 'Slay the polytheists wherever you find them.' Read the surah."

Interviewer: "But the People of the Book are not polytheists, are they?"

This is the question, of course. Strictly speaking, the Qur'an does at times accuse the Christians of polytheism, though it appears to misconstrue the Trinity as God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Mother (Mary). But the text does not explicitly call for the killing of People of the Book as polytheists. Indeed, it offers them protection if they submit to Islamic rule and accept third-class 'citizenship' (Muslim women being second-class 'citizens').

If Yousuf were speaking specifically about radical Islamists, he would be largely correct in characterizing their Islam as calling for the death of Christians and Jews as polytheists, and we see this Islamist influence in many parts of the world where Muslims outnumber Christians, but Yousuf too quickly imputes a radical Islamist view to the Qur'anic text. He needs to offer a more complex hermeneutic of the Qur'an and to acknowledge not only that are there "several . . . views of several Islamic thinkers" but that his own reading is one of these several views -- and acknowledge that he needs to provide convincing evidence that his is the reliable view.

Yousuf also does not make an entirely positive impression due to his excessive defensiveness and his overly combative demeanor, though I'm judging this based on watching him in the original Arabic on video, so I might be misinterpreting his tone and body language since I don't know the language or culture (and can thus only follow the subtitles).

Watch and listen for yourself . . .

Sandow Birk: Artful Observations on a Qur'an

"The Chargers"

Sura 100

Painted by Sandow Birk

(Image from NYT)

The prominent American artist Sandow Birk may have had a naive idea in creating an "American Qur'an" . . . but we shall soon see. The above image comes from Birk's hand-painted series to accompany each of the suras in the Qur'an. Not that Birk is really illustrating the Qur'an, for the text is not in Arabic but in English, as he explains:

"Really, technically, this wouldn't even be considered a Koran by Islamic scholars because it's not written in Arabic."

The man has a point, one backed up by the Islamic art and book-arts expert Marianna Shreve Simpson:

"The Koran only exists in the language in which the prophet Muhammad received the revelations, and he received and preached them in Arabic."

But that opinion might carry little weight among Muslims. In Culver City, the King Fahad Mosque's director of public relations, Usman Madha, gave his opinion that Muslims might see Birk's artistry as "insulting to the Islamic faith," for he offers a warning:

"There is no such thing as an American Koran, or European Koran, or Asian Koran . . . . If someone calls a work their own version of the Koran, they are misrepresenting the Koran as revealed to the prophet Muhammad by the angel Gabriel . . . . [and] could cause people to react in a hostile way . . . . If you look at Islamic history, we have never associated any revelations with imagery because it then becomes idol worship . . . . With all due respect to people's belief in First Amendment rights, the artist may be opening up a Pandora's box . . . . And that's the last thing we want in this day and age."

As for Birk, he doesn't appeal to the US Constitution's First Amendment but to his own interpretive understanding of the Qur'an:

"The Koran is supposed to be a message from God . . . . If God is speaking to human beings, I should be able to pick up this book and think about it. I should be able to contemplate what it means to me."

That sounds like a very Protestant expression -- the priesthood of all believers going back to Luther -- but it isn't the Muslim point of view. In Islam, the Ulema -- or community of religious scholars -- determines the limits of expression through application of Islamic law, sharia, based on the Qur'an, the sirah (life of Muhammad), and the hadith (traditions about Muhammad). There's no freedom of religious interpretation as one finds in the West, where such a thing is also increasingly endangered these days.

Birk himself has already encountered this sort of restriction. While developing a film based on his illustrations for Dante's Inferno, violent protests over the Danish cartoons ridiculing Muhammad were raging, and he was forced by the film's producers to excise the scene depicting Muhammad in hell. At the time, he strongly disagreed with the decision: "I thought it was wrong to act out of fear." He seems, however, to have acceded at the time . . . but perhaps he now wishes to test the limits of artistic expression? His 'respectful' Qur'anic illustration might prove useful toward this aim, whatever his intentions.

With that in mind, I find Birk's use of a contemporary stock-car race to illustrate Sura 100 an oddly compelling image to accompany his rendering of John Medows Rodwell's poetic 1861 English translation:

By the chargers, snorting, striking sparks of fire, attacking in the morning, leaving dust behind them, and cleaving midway through any host, mankind is indeed ungrateful to his Lord and he himself knows it, for he is sure [sic. surely] violent in love of worldly goods. Doesn't he know that when what is in the graves shall emerge and what is in hearts is found out that your Lord will know everything?

Note that Birk is only loosely following Rodwell's version, if you happen to check, and might in fact be using several English translations as guides, thereby putting his own personal version at several removes from the original . . . though I assume that the grammatical error is unintended.

Not that distance from the Arabic original will make a difference. What will make a difference, however, is how the Islamists decide to react. If they treat Birk's 'respectful' perspective as they did the Danish cartoonists' disrespectful perspective, then they will orchestrate violent riots around the world . . . but they might handle this differently since a violent response to one artist's well-intentioned perspective on the Qur'an might not do much for Islam's positive image, and even radical Islamists might be aware of that.

We'll see.

Contradictions in Religious Texts?

Eleventh-Century North African Qur'an

Housed in British Museum

(Image from Wikipedia)

A former student of mine posed the following query about a 'contradiction' in the Qur'an:

I was reading Koran and I came across a contradiction . . . . Please compare Albagharah (Second surah) 6-7 to Al-Anfal 12, 13, 14, and 39. Do you think this is a sound argument if one is trying to disapprove Koran?

I wonder if my former student really meant "disapprove" . . . or possibly "disprove." Anyway, I don't know the Qur'an very well . . . though I have read it. I'm a bit doubtful about finding contradictions in literary texts since so much depends upon interpretation of ambiguous words, but I sought online for a Qur'an and found this one, which conveniently supplies both Arabic and various English translations. Selecting Shakir's translation for no good reason other than its being listed first -- i.e., at random -- I found the following for al-Baqara 6-7:

Sura 2, Aya 6:

إِنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ سَوَاءٌ عَلَيْهِمْ أَأَنذَرْتَهُمْ أَمْ لَمْ تُنذِرْهُمْ لاَ يُؤْمِنُونَ

Shakir 2.6:

Surely those who disbelieve, it being alike to them whether you warn them, or do not warn them, will not believe.

Sura 2, Aya 7:

خَتَمَ اللّهُ عَلَى قُلُوبِهمْ وَعَلَى سَمْعِهِمْ وَعَلَى أَبْصَارِهِمْ غِشَاوَةٌ وَلَهُمْ عَذَابٌ عظِيمٌ

Shakir 2.7:

Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing and there is a covering over their eyes, and there is a great punishment for them.

Okay, sounds as though Allah prevents belief among some individuals. As for al-Anfaal 12, 13, 14, and 39:

Sura 8, Aya 12:

إِذْ يُوحِي رَبُّكَ إِلَى الْمَلآئِكَةِ أَنِّي مَعَكُمْ فَثَبِّتُواْ الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ سَأُلْقِي فِي قُلُوبِ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ الرَّعْبَ فَاضْرِبُواْ فَوْقَ الأَعْنَاقِ وَاضْرِبُواْ مِنْهُمْ كُلَّ بَنَانٍ

Shakir 8.12:

When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

Sura 8, Aya 13:

ذَلِكَ بِأَنَّهُمْ شَآقُّواْ اللّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ وَمَن يُشَاقِقِ اللّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ فَإِنَّ اللّهَ شَدِيدُ الْعِقَابِ

Shakir 8.13:

This is because they acted adversely to Allah and His Messenger; and whoever acts adversely to Allah and His Messenger -- then surely Allah is severe in requiting (evil).

Sura 8, Aya 14:

ذَلِكُمْ فَذُوقُوهُ وَأَنَّ لِلْكَافِرِينَ عَذَابَ النَّارِ

Shakir 8.14:

This -- taste it, and (know) that for the unbelievers is the chastisement of fire.

. . .

Sura 8, Aya 39:

وَقَاتِلُوهُمْ حَتَّى لاَ تَكُونَ فِتْنَةٌ وَيَكُونَ الدِّينُ كُلُّهُ لِلّه فَإِنِ انتَهَوْاْ فَإِنَّ اللّهَ بِمَا يَعْمَلُونَ بَصِيرٌ

Shakir 8.39:

And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah; but if they desist, then surely Allah sees what they do.

Okay, sounds as though Allah orders believers to fight unbelievers and slice off their heads and fingertips (fingertips?) . . . in what context, I don't know. Anyway, after looking at these verses, I replied to my former student:

[Y]our question prompted me to locate an online Qur'an.

As for contradiction . . . do you mean between Allah preventing the belief of some individuals (Al-Bagharah [Second Surah] 6-7) yet also punishing individuals for unbelief (Al-Anfal [Eighth Surah] 12, 13, 14, and 39)?

I guess that the possibility of contradiction depends upon how one interprets these verses.

Why does Allah prevent the belief of some individuals? Are they being punished for prior unbelief that they themselves chose? If so, then the apparent contradiction fades away.

But let's say that Allah predetermines unbelief, then punishes the individual for this unbelief. There is only a contradiction if one assumes that Allah is good, for the contradiction lies in one's expectations of what a most-perfect being would do. Yet . . . perhaps Allah is not good. If not, then the contradiction fades. Allah himself emerges as the problem in this case, however, though one response would be that Allah himself is ground of the distinction between good and evil, the point being that one cannot judge Allah. That response might not satisfy the unbeliever, but unbelievers are cursed by Allah anyway, so who cares what they think?

Just kidding.

Anyway, these are a couple of ways out of a potential contradiction. But I am not qualified to argue precisely about the issue, for I know neither the hermeneutics on these verses nor the Arabic necessary to read them for their nuances.

My former student replied:

Maybe it is not a contradiction but the way I read it, Allah sounds very cruel by ordering to cut off fingers of infidels eventhough Allah, himself, is preventing them from learning the truth! It seems to me simillar to punishing mentally disabled people for not fulfilling their obligations as healthy people ,if the analogy makes sense. Maybe the contradiction is not among these verses but I see it with the nature of 'the compassionate and the mercyful'.

Allah, of course, is often called "the compassionate, the merciful" in the Qur'an I replied:

[I]n literary texts -- broadly understood as literary -- contradictions are hard to pin down, and the Qur'an is a literary text, among other things.

One just has to keep asking questions, which is something that the Islamists don't like, but if questions are politely posed, they have to answer.

Except for those Islamists who prefer to shoot the questioner. For that sort, we need harder questions . . .

And a bullet-proof vest.

"Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour"

Edward Sorel, John Milton

Tempted by Censorship?

(The New Yorker, June 2, 2008)

I've finished reading Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept and am reflecting upon the implications of what he describes, especially the meekness with which too many Europeans, after the assassinations of such outspoken critics of Islamism as Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn, have accepted restrictions on their freedom to voice their opinions:

Across Western Europe . . . authorities were cracking down on free speech -- or trying to. Meanwhile, many artists, writers, and "cultural workers" were practicing pragmatic self-censorship -- taking down "offensive" artworks, cancelling screenings of "offensive" movies, thinking "offensive" thoughts but not daring to voice them. (While Europe Slept, page 216)

The offensive short film, Submission, written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and produced by Theo van Gogh -- and which had so enraged Mohammad Bouyeri that he had murdered van Gogh -- proved too controversial for the art world:

In February 2005, a scheduled screening of Submission at the Rotterdam International Film Festival was canceled by its producer, Gijs van de Westelaken . . . . The festival's theme, ironically, was "censored films"; in place of Submission, the festival audience saw two movies sympathetic to suicide bombers. (While Europe Slept, page 216)

As Bawer notes, "'Provocative'' art was all right, in short, so long as it didn't actually provoke anybody" (page 217).

When I consider our current need for a vigorous defense of free speech, I think of the line by William Wordsworth concerning John Milton: "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour":

London, 1802

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
O raise us up, return to us again,
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power!
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

I like those lines "Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free." Milton certainly defended free speech with great rhetorical power in an argument "For the Liberty of Unlicen'd Printing" expressed in his essay Areopagitica. This work was in direct response to the the Puritan Parliament's Licensing Order of 1643, which reinstated the pre-publication censorship of earlier royal and ecclesiastical censors.

At one point, Milton -- who evidently considers the Qur'an fictitious -- implies that "Alcoran" can only be protected by Muslims through restrictions on expression:

There is yet behind of what I purpos'd to lay open, the incredible losse, and detriment that this plot of licencing puts us to, more then if som enemy at sea should stop up all our hav'ns and ports, and creeks, it hinders and retards the importation of our richest Marchandize, Truth: nay it was first establisht and put in practice by Antichristian malice and mystery on set purpose to extinguish, if it were possible, the light of Reformation, and to settle falshood; little differing from that policie wherewith the Turk upholds his Alcoran, by the prohibition of Printing. 'Tis not deny'd, but gladly confest, we are to send our thanks and vows to heav'n louder then most of Nations, for that great measure of truth which we enjoy, especially in those main points between us and the Pope, with his appertinences the Prelats: but he who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attain'd the utmost prospect of reformation, that the mortall glasse wherein we contemplate, can shew us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares, that he is yet farre short of Truth. (Areopagitica, paragraph 19)

This is a dense passage, but I think that we can all understand Milton's basic point, namely, that preventing free speech -- whether by Catholics, Protestants, or Muslims -- entails restrictions on truth, and that, Milton implies, would be to settle on falsehood.

Forthrightness demands that I acknowledge that Milton himself placed some restrictions on free expression, more than I would wish to see.

In that, one might say that even Milton fell tempted by censorship.

Fitna

Qur'an, Sura 8, Verse 60

The film Fitna depicting 9/11

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've just watched the short anti-Qur'anic film Fitna by Geert Wilders, which one can find online at various places, such as LiveLeak.com, Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch, Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs, and . . . well, you can just Google the word "Fitna" along with the name "Geert Wilders" and find multiple sites online. Update: LiveLeak.com has removed Fitna, but the film has already 'gone viral' at Gates of Vienna.

Though some of the images are graphic and disturbing -- a jumper from the burning World Trade Center, Jack Hensley being decapitated -- the film itself is relatively tame. From the hype beforehand, I was expecting images and words more incendiary toward Islam.

Instead, we see and hear incendiary images and words from Islam.

The technique employed is rather simple. The film shows a violent quote from the Qur'an in both English and the original Arabic, reads it in Arabic, then follows the reading with images of Islamist atrocities accompanied by statements by radical Muslims. This sort of sequence is repeated about five times.

At the end, a hand is shown turning a page of the Qur'an, followed by a blank screen and a ripping sound, as though that page were being torn out, then by a caption stating that "The sound you just heard was a page being torn from the telephone book."

Why a phone book?

No deep message there, I think. Just a way of emphasizing that non-Muslims don't bear responsibility for removing violent verses from the Qur'an. Muslims do.

What's the film's aim? I doubt that Wilders expects Muslims to edit the Qur'an. I think that he instead aims to put Muslims into a bind by depicting Islam as an inherently violent religion and thereby dare them to prove him wrong by responding with reason rather than reacting with threats.

What's the bind?

If they respond with reason, then they have to begin engaging with non-Muslim deconstructions of the Qur'an. If they react with violence, then they serve only to demonstrate his point.

For the committed Muslim who prefers neither horn of the dilemma, pious silence would be the best strategy.

I don't think that we'll enjoy very much of that.

Adrian Pabst: Real Debate on Christianity and Islam?

Adrian Pabst

Stirring the pot...

(Image: Dept. of Theol/Relig Stds,

University of Nottingham)

A scholar of religion and politics at the University of Nottingham, Adrian Pabst (who also holds a position as research fellow at the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies), has written an interesting column for the November 13th edition (2007) of the online International Herald Tribune (IHT):

"Christianity and Islam: We need a real debate, not more dialogue"

A provocative title . . . though not the sort to provoke violence, I hope. Pabst was responding to a Muslim letter to the pope:

Last month, 138 Muslim scholars addressed an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders in which they call for a new dialogue between Christianity and Islam based on sacred texts.

Entitled "A Common Word Between Us and You," the document claims that the shared Muslim and Christian principles of love of the One God and love of the neighbor provide the sort of common ground between the two faiths that is necessary for respect, tolerance and mutual understanding.

The letter was a response to Pope Benedict's remarks about Islam in his talk at Regensberg, Germany about one year ago:

The publication of this letter coincided with the anniversary of a previous open letter in response to the pope's controversial Regensburg address on Sept. 12, 2006, when he appeared to link violence in religion to the absolute transcendence of God in Islam. His point was that according to Muslim teaching, God's will is utterly inscrutable and therefore unknowable to human reason -- with the implication that divine injunctions cannot be fully understood and must be blindly obeyed.

Against this background, the latest initiative by Muslim scholars marks an attempt to move interfaith dialogue away from debates about reason and revelation towards scriptural reading. Christian-Muslim relations, so their argument goes, are best served by engaging in textual interpretations that highlight shared commandments and common beliefs.

Pabst thinks that this suggestion in based on some mistaken assumptions:

But to suggest, as the authors of "A Common Word" do, that Muslims and Christians are united by the same two commandments which are most essential to their respective faith and practice -- love of God and love of the neighbor -- is theologically dubious and politically dangerous.

Theologically, this glosses over elementary differences between the Christian God and the Muslim God. The Christian God is a relational and incarnate God. Moreover, the New Testament and early Christian writings speak of God as a single Godhead with three equally divine persons -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Interesting. Does the New Testament speak so clearly in this way? A generous reading of Pabst's remark would parse his statement to mean that "the New Testament and early Christian writings" taken together -- and "early" taken to include the first several centuries -- "speak of God as a single Godhead with three equally divine persons." Joseph Cyr (of Tucson, Arizona), in a letter to the IHT editor, does not read him quite so generously:

Careful analysis of the New Testament, though, shows that the idea of a triune God does not exist in its pages. In fact, it was not until the fourth century that the doctrine of a Trinity was firmly established as Church dogma . . . . Rather than state, as a matter of fact, that scripture supports a Triune God, Pabst would do well to say that it is a result of tradition and church dogma. That would be a piece of truth to throw into the debate about God and holy writings.

I agree that the New Testament does not refer to a "Triune God" or to a "Trinity," and I wish that Pabst had been more clear (though he doesn't actually use the terms "Triune" or "Trinity"), but I'll continue to read him generously so as not to miss his point, which is:

This is not merely a doctrinal point, but one that has significant political and social implications. The equality of the three divine persons is the basis for equality among mankind -- each and everyone is created in the image and likeness of the triune God.

As a result, Christianity calls for a radically egalitarian society beyond any divisions of race or class. The promise of universal equality and justice that is encapsulated in this conception of God thus provides Christians with a way to question and transform not only the norms of the prevailing political order but also the (frequently perverted) social practices of the Church.

By contrast, the Muslim God is disembodied and absolutely one: there is no god but God, He has no associate. This God is revealed exclusively to Muhammed, the messenger (or prophet), via the archangel Gabriel. As such, the Koran is the literal word of God and the final divine revelation first announced to the Hebrews and later to the Christians.

Again, this account of God has important consequences for politics and social relations. Islam does not simply posit absolute divisions between those who submit to its central creed and those who deny it; it also contains divine injunctions against apostates and unbelievers (though protecting the Jewish and Christian faithful).

Moreover, Islam's radical monotheism tends to fuse the religious and the political sphere: It privileges absolute unitary authority over intermediary institutions and also puts a premium on territorial conquest and control, under the direct rule of God.

These (and other) differences imply that Christians and Muslims do not worship or believe in the same God; in consequence, across the two faiths, love of God and love of the neighbor invariably differ.

This latter statement will certainly generate some debate. Already, a letter to the IHT editor has taken issue with Pabst's remark about Christians and Muslims not worshipping the same God. Bianca Schlesinger, of Tel Aviv, demurs:

Pabst writes "These (and other) differences imply that Christians and Muslims do not worship or believe in the same God." How can they believe in different Gods if there is only one? If there is only one God, as declared by the monotheistic religions, than they all worship the same God; they only conceive of Him differently.

Schlesinger has responded as Pabst might wish, i.e., theologically, and thereby raised a crucial point. Do Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians. Schlesinger -- who is, I take it, Jewish -- argues that Muslims do so, based on the theological position that there can be only one God. The argument might need some refining, however, for by a similar intellectual move, I could argue that polytheists also worship the same God as Jews and Christians because there can only be one God, and the polytheists "only conceive of Him differently" -- radically differently, of course, but they nevertheless recognize the divine and treat the divine as an object of reverence. Yet, polytheism and monotheism can only worship the same 'God' at a very general, very abstract level (if at all). As Pabst himself says:

By ignoring these fundamental divergences, the authors of the open letter perpetuate myths about Christians and Muslims praying differently to the same God. Worse, they exhibit a simplistic theology of absolute, unmediated monotheism.

Anyway, go read the entire article and see what you think about Pabst's theological, political, and ethical points.

"Islamic ethics tends toward extreme theological voluntarism."

Qur'an, Ninth Century

إِنَّمَا قَوْلُنَا لِشَيْءٍ إِذَا أَرَدْنَاهُ أَن نَّقُولَ لَهُ كُن فَيَكُونُ

"For to anything which We have willed,

We but say the word, 'Be', and it is."

(Yusuf Ali, translator, Ayah 40, Qur'an)

Small Telyashayakh Mosque, Tashkent

(Image from Wikipedia)

The heading to this day's blog entry comes from an article by Daniel W. Brown.

You may recall that I cited him yesterday on Islamic divine voluntarism. Who, therefore, is Daniel W. Brown, and what are his credentials? According to Cultural Encounters: A Journal for the Theology of Culture, Dr. Brown has the following credentials:

Dr. Daniel Brown has lived in Egypt and in Pakistan where he was born and spent his first eighteen years. In 1993 he received his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago. He has been a visiting scholar at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, the Institute of Islamic Culture in Lahore, and Cairo University and has taught Islamic Studies at Mount Holyoke, Amherst and Smith Colleges.

Since 1997 he has been Pastor of Stony Brook Community Church in South Hadley, Massachusetts. He is the author of Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 1999) and A New Introduction to Islam (Blackwell, 2003).

From this information, I'd say that Dr. Brown appears reputable and trustworthy.

With that in mind, let me return to the passage that I cited yesterday, within the context of the passage in which it occurs:

Islam might be considered the defining case of ethical voluntarism. Among most Sunni Muslim scholars, past and present, voluntarism has been an undisputed assumption of Islamic ethical theory, finding reflection in Islamic credal formulations.

We confess that the decision concerning good and evil wholly depends on Allah. For whoever should say that the decision regarding good and evil depends upon another than Allah would thereby be guilty of unbelief regarding Allah, and his confession of the unity of Allah would become invalid. (Wasiyat Abi Hanifa, art. 6. Cited in A.J. Wensinck, Muslim Creed: Its Genesis and Historical Development (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1965), 126)

Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) offers the following stark elaboration of the majority position:

If God the Exalted had informed us that he would punish us for the acts of others . . . or for our own obedience, all that would have been right and just, and we should have been obliged to accept it. (Ibn Hazm, al-fisal fi'l-milal wa-l-ahwa' wa-n-nihal, 5 vols. (Cairo, 1890-1903), 3:92. Cited in Hourani, Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 174)

As Ibn Hazm's statement implies, and as Hourani points out, Muslim theologians, including al-Ash'ari (d. 935), Ibn Hazm and al-Ghaziili (d. llll), did not shy away from the most extreme consequences of voluntarism: Should God have commanded theft and idolatry it would have been right for humans to commit them. (Hourani, Reason and Tradition, 59)

Ethical voluntarism reinforces and is reinforced by the general tenor of Ash'arite theology, with its characteristic emphasis on the overwhelming power and sovereignty of God at the expense of human freedom. In the words of a standard credal formulation: "Allah has created the creatures, who are devoid of power because they are weak and impotent, whereas Allah is their creator and their sustenance; as He says: 'It is God who created you, who fed you, who, later, will cause you to die, and then will make you alive'" (Wasiyat Abi Hanifa, art. 12, in Wensinck, Muslim Creed, 126). Voluntarism accords well with such a view of the overwhelming power of the creator and the utter dependence of the creature. Further, voluntarism grants to God complete freedom -- He is unbound by any external standard of good, evil or justice. (Daniel W. Brown, "Islamic Ethics in Comparative Perspective," The Muslim World, Volume 89, Number 2, April 1999, pages 183-4)

Dr. Brown was writing this in 1999, two years prior to September 11, 2001, so he had no obvious axe to grind, and since he seems to have credentials and to be trustworthy, I see no reason to discount his presentation of the standard Sunni Muslim view of Allah's ethical directives as voluntarist and his treatment of Ibn Hazm's view as normative.

Now, this does not mean that a Muslim can do whatever he pleases, so I don't entirely agree with my friend Bill Vallicella's formulation of the problem:

The Muslim view is quite 'chilling' if one thinks about it. If God is not contrained by anything, not logic, not morality, then to use the words but reverse the sense of the famous Karamazov passage, "everything is permitted." In other words, if the Muslim god exists then "everything is permitted" just as surely as "everything is permitted" if the Christian god does not exist. In the latter case, everything is permitted because morality has no foundation. In the former case, everything is permitted because morality's foundation is in Absolute Whim.

To put it in another way, a foundation of morality in unconstrained and unlimited will is no foundation at all.

To 'feel the chill,' couple the Muslim doctrine about God with the Muslim literalist/fundamentalist doctrine that his will is plain to discern in the pages of the Koran. Now murder can easily be justified, the murder of 'infidels' namely, on the ground that it is the will of God. (William F. Vallicella, "Islam and the Euthyphro Problem," Maverick Philosopher, November 5, 2007)

Although one can conclude from Islamic divine voluntarism that 'everything is permitted' to Allah, one cannot infer that 'everything is permitted' to those who submit to Allah. Muslims must follow Allah's ethical directives . . . whatever they happen to be.

As to precisely what Allah's ethical commands entail . . . well, that is the 72-virginal-houri question.