Last fall, Dutch pranksters put a cover from a Quran over a Bible and then asked passersby to read aloud homophobic, violent or sexist passages that violate modern moral sensibilities. The texts shocked people who had never immersed themselves in the Iron Age world of the Bible writers, a world in which daughters can be sold as sexual slaves and most of us deserve the death penalty: you included. By one count, the Quran has only 532 cruel or violent passages, while the Bible has 1,321. Christians respond that the Bible is longer, so the cruel, violent passages make up a smaller percent of the whole. ISIS terrorists claim that their scripts for jihad, executions, sexual slavery and theocracy come straight from the Quran, and they cite chapter and verse to back up their claim. But Christians who find ISIS horrifying might be even more horrified to learn that similar scripts can be found in their own Good Book, including endorsements of terrorism that rival the most vile atrocities committed in the name of Allah.
Any discussion of terrorism, if it’s to meaning and value at all, should begin with a definition of the concept. Without that, any discussion is compromised from the outset by the prejudices, politics, religion, and/or preconceived notions of whoever might take it upon themselves to do the defining.
Before we get too far along, let me propose a working definition of terrorism for the purpose of our discussion. It comes from James Poland, author of Understanding Terrorism.
Without delving into sectarianism, Poland’s definition is pretty simple and unassailable. He defines terrorism as
a means (intimidation) to an end (social control over someone other than the victim):
Terrorism is the premeditated, deliberate, systematic murder, mayhem, and threatening of the innocent to create fear and intimidation in order to gain a political or tactical advantage, usually to influence an audience.
It’s from this definition that we can extrapolate that those who had a hand in writing the Bible, while lacking high-grade explosives and the means to instantly disseminate graphic and gruesome photographs extolling their exploits, innately grasped terrorism. Much of the Good Book is centered around creating fear and intimidation in order to gain political, theological, and/or tactical advantage. Read the Bible, and it’s difficult not to come away with the conviction that violence intended to exert social and ideological control over a population was nothing if not commonplace.
The more things change….
In fact, the Bible condones some astonishingly atrocious examples of terrorism.
In the Bible God controls humans by raining down death, destruction and terror on those who defy or anger him.
The Bible both opens and closes with graphic descriptions of torment and fear inflicted by God and designed to keep the faithful in line.p
In addition to inflicting terror directly, God does so via human and nonhuman agents.
During armed conflict, God and his messengers command the Israelites to slaughter civilians and destroy their homes and means of food production including livestock and orchards.
As in ISIS, sexual enslavement of conquered women is one means of humiliating enemy combatants.
In the New Testament gospels, even Jesus threatens violence and torment against those who don’t fall in line.
The Bible is rife with examples of violence, threats of violence, and various and assorted forms of intimidation. It’s made clear in many passages that believers who don’t fall into line will suffer the consequences: famine, disease, violence up to and including death…and the list goes on. There’s no way to credibly argue that the Bible is the literal word of a benevolent God. Not that Scripture doesn’t contain teachings of peace, love, acceptance, tolerance, and inclusion, but those who wrote the Bible lived in a time when “live by the sword, die by the sword” was more than a motto: it was a way of life.
Fortunately, most modern believers are both wiser and kinder than the writers of their sacred texts, who could not even imagine the varied, intricate world of landscapes and cultures. Many Christians claim what is spiritually nourishing from Bible (like passages opposing terrorism) and discard the rest.
But the rot remains. Christian fundamentalists who see themselves on a crusade against godless infidels, and right-wing politicians who pander to those fundamentalists, find biblical sanction for bigotry and atrocity when they seek it. This fact is not lost on Islamists, who assert that they are fighting defensive jihad while simultaneously inflicting their own Quranic version of bigotry and atrocity on anyone within reach.
As long as Christians continue to bind together the words of our Iron Age ancestors and call them Good and Holy and “God breathed,” they will have little argument against terrorists who cite other sacred texts to justify destruction and death in the name of God.
I find it interesting that so many Christians (et tu, Franklin Graham?) are so quick to condemn Islam as a religion of terrorism, a faith tradition whose teachings not only condone random, senseless acts of violence directed at “infidels,” but actually DEMANDS such brutality and cruelty. Yet even as some will expound at considerable length about the “evils” of Islam, about how Muslims are committed to a no-holds-barred theology that sanctions violent jihad, they display an astonishing ignorance about Islam…and jihad.
Jihad is not about wild-eyed Islamofascist zealots who live and breath an unwavering commitment to destroying non-Muslims. In its purest form, jihad is about living one’s faith, in the same way Christians are implored to lead Christ-like lives.
[T]he religious duty of Muslims to maintain the religion. In Arabic, the word jihād is a noun meaning the act of “striving, applying oneself, struggling, persevering”.
Of course, jihad can and frequently has been twisted by those with an agenda into something hateful, destructive, and/or inimical to Christianity. This is very often done by those who don’t understand Islam and have no desire to educate themselves. They KNOW in their heart of hearts that Islam is a religion dedicated to evil, to the destruction of Christians and Christianity by whatever means necessary.
These are also the same people who willingly ignore the myriad (and far more frequent) incidents of terrorism undertaken by Christians- radical anti-abortionists, Right-wing militias, and others dedicated to an intolerant, inflexible, and wholly devoid of compassion interpretations of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, refusing to consider and/or discuss a problem doesn’t make it go away…especially when said problem poses a far graver clear and present danger than the threat you’re willing to acknowledge.
We can’t solve the problem of terrorism by refusing to acknowledge and discuss the biggest part of the threat. It shouldn’t be “Islamic terrorism’ or “Christian terrorism,” it should be “terrorism.” If that can’t happen, we can’t hope to adequately address that threat while we’re whistling past the graveyard.
No one ever solved a problem by only dealing with a small portion of it and ignoring the rest.
