Attacks on Islam

I mentioned in my last post that I've recently begun reading Why I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq. I'm now in the fourth chapter and it's obvious that his book is an all-out attack on Islam.

He states that his inspiration for writing the book was the Salman Rushdie affair. Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses in 1988. The phrase "satanic verses" refers to some Quranic verses supposedly produced and later retracted by Muhammad about the pagan Meccan goddesses being daughters of Allah. The publication of Rushdie's book caused an outrage in the Muslim world and a fatwa was issued against him by Ayatollah Khomeini. Warraq was disturbed by Western criticism of Rushdie and even support of the fatwa.

In the introduction, Warraq states that he wouldn't be offended if his book were called an extended bibliography and that is an accurate description; he mainly gathers together, filters, and summarizes writings by many authors throughout history, both Muslim and non-Muslim. He draws extensively on Islamologists who have done extensive research on the veracity of the Quran and Hadith.

As the title of this post suggests, his book is beyond critical to the point of being hostile. As with all of my reading, I take it with a grain of salt and don't just blindly accept all of the claims made but it does raise a number of good points about which to think. Since he is very hostile, he makes no attempt to sugar-coat his arguments or keep them politically correct. This allows him to bluntly state his point and be very clear.

I haven't even finished the first four chapters but he's made many connections between the beliefs and practices of Islam and those of its immediate influences, Judaism and pre-Islamic Arabian paganism. He states that Muhammad, having initially learned pieces of Judaism and Christianity on his travels, set out to become a Jewish prophet. After failing to convince the Jews of his prophethood, his goal changed to simply creating a new religion for the Arabs and reached back to their Ishmaelite and Abrahamic roots, seeing himself as a new Moses for the Arabs. Islam obviously takes many stories and tenets from Judaism but many connections are made to Jewish writings outside of the Old Testament with which Christians would not be familiar. He draws many parallels between practices at Hajj and pre-Islamic pagan rituals, which aren't very hard to accept. Additionally, he makes a very good point that the Quran makes comments about the Christian trinity being composed of God, Jesus, and Mary, which is blatantly wrong and, one would think, something it should get correct considering it is refuting the trinity. In fact, the Quran's understanding of the trinity, leading to most Muslims' understanding of the trinity, is a pretty far cry from the accepted trinitarian theology.

He then produces many arguments stating that the Quran and Hadith were actually created after the fact to legitimize a created religion and the battles, hijrah, and various other events in early Islam never actually happened.

In any case, there's a lot of stuff to think about and carefully analyze and I still have the majority of the book to read.

Islamic Law

I received an email response to my blog entry that addressed Jesus' peaceful teachings versus Mohammad's occasionally unpeaceful teaching. The response pointed out that along with the different messages, the men had very different roles in society. Whereas Jesus was only a preacher, Mohammad was a community leader. In this respect, it would be much more fair to compare Mohammad to Moses or Joshua than to Jesus. When that comparison is made, Mohammad comes out to be the the more peaceful of the group. Whereas Islam's spread permitted the conquered inhabitants to remain in their land and even retain their religion, the Israelites conquering the Promised Land drove out and killed all previous inhabitants. Even this comparison, however, is unfair as Islam's conquests were not aimed at procuring land but at expanding the empire and, in some cases*, to spread Islam.

In any case, blanket statements calling Jesus peaceful and Mohammad violent would be far from accurate. Jesus' teachings address personal behavior whereas Muhammad addresses all aspects of life just as the Jewish law does.

Since I seem to be retracting previous statements, I guess this would be a good time to confess my lack of understanding of the various levels of Islamic code. I've heard of some things being Sunnah, which means that they're not mentioned in the Quran but they were stated by Muhammad. Because of this, they're apparently not mandated but are strongly suggested since the Quran does say to obey the teachings of Muhammad. There are also laws that are fiqh, which are interpretations and rulings. The Quran and Sunnah are immutable whereas the fiqh are interpretations of the Quran and Sunnah to address topics not explicitly covered. An analogy can be made in which the Constitution (if we imagine that there's no possibility of amendments) is like the Quran and Sunnah and the rulings of the Supreme Court are like the fiqh.

I'm not terribly sure what belongs to the different classes or what comprises Sharia. Wikipedia claims that sharia technically consists only of the revealed law, code in the Quran and Sunnah, whereas fiqh does not qualify. However, it also states that in many cases, fiqh is wrongly considered part of sharia law. In the one brief conversation I've had with a Muslim friend, it turned out we were both wrong and confused so I won't hold it against others who also make mistakes.

Anyway, I'm now even less sure what Islam says about different things and into which category the various things I've heard fall. I guess that is just more incentive for me to read and gather my own information rather than relying on other (possibly faulty) sources.

I have more things scribbled down about which to write but it'll have to wait for another day.

Mohammed versus Jesus

First of all, I noticed that I just spelled Muhammad as Mohammed instead. I've seen both used and I don't know when or why I use one versus the other. I guess I'll just use whichever pops into my head when I'm writing. Such is transliteration.

Although in general, Jesus, Mohammed, and all the prophets teach primarily the same thing, there are a few topics in which their teachings seem to differ greatly. This is especially true of Jesus' teachings as Muhammad's line up fairly well with the Old Testament prophets. This is fine if justified with the "new covenant" argument of Christianity that states that Jesus came bringing a new message of grace and forgiveness, to abolish the old law and establish a new one in which belief in him and living a Christian life are the new requirements for eternal life. However, if one sticks to the Muslim argument that all the prophets' teachings were consistent but were simply modified, Jesus' teachings have to be drastically altered to attain consistency.

Whereas Jesus taught to turn the other cheek when someone strikes you (Luke 6:27-36), Mohammed allowed and even encouraged violence at times. Although Christianity has a long history of violent mission work bringing about forced conversion, that is not a product of Jesus' teachings but, rather, the corruption of power and ethnocentrism resulting from Christianity's dominance in the Western world. The early church spread and grew not through violence but simplly through personal evangelism and the faith and conviction demonstrated through martyrdom.

I suppose the same progression happened with Islam but on a much faster time-scale. Since it happened during the life of Mohammed, it definitely can't be argued that it was a result of corruption of his teachings and Islamic beliefs. It can easily be argued, on the other hand, that Christianity's violent turn was against Christ's teachings.

The warring against unbelievers under the direction of Mohammed does draw definite parallels to Israel's history. The entire book of Joshua in the Old Testament follows Israel's entry into the promised land across the Jordan River after forty years of wandering through the desert. Under Joshua's guidance, they invade city after city, killing almost everyone and claiming the land and its wealth.

I can accept that some corruption of Jesus' message happened but that seems like a major difference. They were in very different situations, Jesus having a small following within Judaism for a short time span as opposed to Mohammed having a large following over a much longer span. However, I can't imagine Jesus would teach only lessons applicable to the immediate situation and ignore the future, growing church.

I'm currently finishing up a collection of ahadith (sayings and teachings of Mohammed that were not part of the divinely given Quran). Most of the teachings are commonsense, habits to help you lead a good life, keep good relations with others, and maintain one's health. Some of them do strike me as somewhat specific to the Arab culture, as I've already mentioned, not having any practical grounding, but most of them would probably be accepted as guidelines for any religion, Eastern or Western, mono- or poly- (or even a-)theistic. There were a few that almost offended me as a Christian; I wish I had marked them of written them down. I feel like most of them have to do with relations with non-Muslims. Whereas Christianity (at least I feel) teaches one to love, honor, and respect everyone regardless of creed, Islam has a very different official position regarding non-believers, especially non-Judeo-Christians.

That strikes me as odd because Islam is not an exclusive religion into which you have to be born. People convert (or revert, in the Islamic lingo) to Islam all the time. Muslims are expected to spread Islam to non-believers. I just don't understand how that's supposed to happen when there is a mandated separation between Muslims and non-Muslims.

I don't experience this in my everday dealings with Muslims. I've always found them to be friendly and accepting of me, even before I had developed even the slightest curiosity about Islam. However, the ahadith teaches that separation from (and even slaughter of) non-believers. I'm sure I'm being a bit harsh. I'll try to pull up a couple examples of the ahadith that bug me.