Jesus vs. Mohammed, part 1
By Uwe Siemon-NettoUPI Religious Affairs Editor, September 17, 2004
This is the first installment of a new UPI book review series on the chasm between Islam and Christianity. Three authors, one American, two Germans, show with scholarly precision their differences the discussion of which is stifled by political correctness.
PARIS (UPI) – Alvin J. Schmidt, a U.S. sociologist and theologian of note, is not one for mincing words. In his new book, The Great Divide, he describes Islam as the most violent religion the world has ever known.
This, of course, is not the most fashionable thing to say, even though millions might entertain this notion, especially after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York and Washington, the terrorist attacks on commuter trains in Madrid in March, and the recent kidnapping of 1,200 students, teachers and parents in Russia, an event ending in the massacre of some 350 children and adults.
“Criticism of Islam,” Schmidt notes, “is not permitted today because it is defined as ‘mean-spirited.'”
Better to sanitize Islam by omitting from a book on the Koran all passages commanding violent behavior in jihad (holy war), as did Michael Sell in his 1999 volume “Approaching the Qu’ran: The Early Revelations,” according to Schmidt, who does the opposite by listing 35 such passages verbatim.
We remember: Immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, Western commentators, this columnist included, tried to counter anti-Muslim sentiment by pointing out that the term, Jihad, had two senses: On the one hand, it meant taking up the sword on behalf of one’s religion. But the other, more significant, meaning was the effort to overcome what Germans call der innere Schweinehund, or the internal pig-dog, in other words, weak faith.
There is no reason to be ashamed of this. As journalism professor Marvin Olasky reminds his readers in his foreword to Schmidt’s book, even now quite correctly, Muslims should not be blamed for the brutality committed in the name of their religion. But Islam should not be exonerated either.
Contrary to the currently trendy mantra, Islam is not a “religion of peace.” Schmidt makes this clear by stressing that while, to quote Tertullian, the blood of its martyrs was the seed of the Christian church, Islam grew by killing those who opposed it.
This is the point where Islam’s apologists counter, “Yes, but what about the Crusades? What about the Inquisition?” Postmodernism has a funny way of fudging historical timeframes. As Schmidt states, “Early Christianity grew and expanded during its first 300 years without resorting to any form of violence, even when countless numbers of Christians were severely persecuted.”
Schmidt eloquently condemns the Crusaders’ bloodshed for what it was — contrary to the Gospel. But he hammers home the uncomfortable truth that, while nowhere in the New Testament Jesus counsels bloodshed for the propagation of faith, Mohammed wantonly had people massacred, and indeed participated in their slaughter.
The Great Divide is really about all that – and more. It is about the little talked-about differences between the two seemingly related religions; it is about differences in meaning with dire consequences for the contemporary world.
Take the word, martyr, which in Greek signifies witness, and thus something positive. Writes Schmidt:
“For the longest time, the term martyr in history referred to a Christian who, in the early church under the Romans, was persecuted and often executed for bearing witness to Christ’s life, death and resurrection. Martyrs died for their convictions without resisting or resorting to any form of violence.”
“But now,” Schmidt continues, “Muslims, and many in the media, have turned the meaning of martyr on its head. Now it is commonly used to refer to an individual who sacrifices himself as an Islamist suicide bomber when he, for example, blows up a busload of innocent people.”
There is a tendency, even among Christian theologians, to make light of the Divide Schmidt is talking about. As one Jesuit scholar recently opined before mainline Protestants in the United States, “In order to get along better with Islam, Christians will simply have to become less Christian.”
Less Christian? Does that mean that they will have to follow Christ less faithfully on the issues Schmidt deals with – such as the concept of the separation of church and state, which the authors of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution imported from “Christ’s Caesar-and-God teaching,” according to Schmidt?
Less Christian? Does that mean we should “frown and turn (our) back” on a blind man, as Mohammed has done, according to the Koran’s Sura 80:1-2, instead of emulating Jesus, who took compassion on the lame, the deaf and the sick — and healed two of them (Matthew 28:29-34).
Should we ignore the crucial difference between the two religions concerning the treatment of women? Jesus’ views on women greatly influenced the West’s treatment of them, Schmidt rightly states.
Mohammed, who left nine widows when he died in 632 A.D., set an entirely different example to his followers. The horrors suffered by women to this day in the Islamic world, and of late even in Muslim ghettos in the West, are described ghastly detail in The Great Divide and a newly released German study titled Frauen und die Sharia (Women and the Shari’a) by two of Europe’s most outstanding Islamic studies specialists, Christine Schirrmacher and Ursula Spuler-Stegemann.
Their highly scholarly account of the tortures, beatings, stoning, rapes, forced marriages and other indignities in the name of religious law will be the topic of the next installment of this series.
“The wisest woman is worth less than the dumbest man,” is the guiding attitude in Islam’s patriarchal society, according to Schirrmacher. One wonders to what length political correctness is prepared to go to digest even that appalling statement.
Schmidt, Alvin J. The Great Divide, The Failure of Islam and the Triumph of the West (Boston: Regina Orthodox Press, 2004), 332 pp, $ 19.95.
Schirrmacher, Christine, Frauen und die Scharia, Menschenrechte im Islam (Munich: Heinrich Hugendubel Verlag, 2004), 254, 20,60 Euros (ca. $ 25).
® 2004, United Press International