You want a piece of me?
Richard Spencer’s new book Religion of Peace is out. I’ve often joked that Islam is a religion of piece. As in, “you want a piece of me?!”
Some years ago I read through the Koran, surah by surah, to see if my intuitive sense that it was informed with an overwhelming hostility toward unbelievers was accurate. It was. and I know enough of the New Testament to know that nothing could be further from that text.
You can pull out isolated verses. Jesus says, “I come not to bring peace, but a sword.” The Koran says, “There is no compulsion in matters of religion.” But it is not honest to interpret a text by isolating sentences. Both texts function as organic wholes, and neither of those isolated verses reflects its whole. Jesus does come to bring peace. I say that not as a believer, but as a text analyst. And the Koran cannot deny an emphasis on compulsion in religion.
I’ve heard it explained that Mohammed’s historical setting, and I’m willing to grant that. But this historicism undermines the transcendent claims of the faith’s strict adherents.
Texts matter. They are not infinitely malleable. They can be suppressed or distorted, but they always provide a grounding point which each generation may discover anew.
By wrenching or ignoring the manifest thrust of the text, you can overlook the hostility that pervades the Koran, or you can overlook the pacific character of the New Testament. Thus, you can become a Christian crusader, or you can become a Muslim pacifist. But please don’t tell me you arrived at either through strict reading of the urtext.
[Video interview here] [ht: Michelle Malkin]
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