A man attends a mosque several times a week for prayer, participates in Islamic religious observances, and self-identifies with the faith. He opens fire on a room full of people one morning, killing them all. When asked why, he says “God told me to do it.” He’s called an Islamic extremist.
Another man attends a church every Sunday and prayer meetings every Wednesday. He participates in Christian religious observances and self-identifies with the faith. He opens fire on a room full of people one morning killing them all. When asked why, he says “The Bible told me to do it.”
Last night, I had a conversation with two Christians who argued that that the gentleman in the second scenario should not be labeled a “Christian extremist” because the phrase is an oxymoron. According to them, no true Christian would ever kill people in the name of God. A person who would do such a thing is simply considered a murderer, but certainly not a legitimate member of the Christian faith.
I find this line of reasoning utterly confusing. Most Muslims also view Islam as a religion of peace. How can the first man be a legitimate Muslim in our eyes if, when using the same criteria, the second man is not a legitimate Christian?
There’s a really interesting double standard when it comes to Muslim and Christian extremism. It seems that when Muslims do ugly things in the name of their religion, we brand all of that religion’s followers with responsibility for the ugly acts of its minority. But when Christians do ugly things, we denounce the perpetrators. We declare them illegitimate… We kick them to the curb and declare our churches, our doctrines, and the Bible “not guilty.”
Many churchgoers will say that Christianity is a religion of peace despite the past and present actions of its followers, but are unable to affirm that Islam is a religion of peace without choking on the words as they come out of their mouths. Many Christians gloss over the ugly, violent texts found in the Bible, but speak of the Muslim faith in a negative light because their holy texts contain violence. Is the Bible’s violence somehow more justified than the Quran’s? And is our understanding of Jesus really as peaceful as some say? As I pointed out last night:
…Many Christians believe that Jesus will lead a battle of Armageddon against all of the world’s non-believers upon his return. I don’t personally read the book of Revelation with that interpretation, but I did in my days as an Evangelical as it was the most commonly accepted view of the end times. According to most Evangelicals, the Christian story begins in a Garden and will end with a blood bath. Jesus himself will lead a slaughter that most Christians consider “justified.” And orthodoxy teaches that God/Jesus will subsequently torture remaining non-believers for eternity in a lava chamber called Hell. I would say that the Christian story as many understand it has a history of violence and is expected to culminate in violence because of the Bible’s most commonly approved narrative. I don’t think the problem is with one or two verses. I think it’s an issue of greater context.
I often wonder how we can be so blind to our biases about extremism. Christian history is plagued with it, and it still persists in many forms today. This is not something I can personally explain… I only know that it’s my responsibility to avoid such biases whenever possible. In the mean time, I would like to leave you with another comment I made during last night’s discussion:
I think it’s irresponsible for us to say: “Here’s a book. This book is from God. God condones all of the actions in this book. Read it and do likewise…”, and THEN say– “We are not responsible for what people do with this book.” People who do violence in the name of Christianity believe the Bible provides them with the all permission they need for their actions. We’re naive to pretend that the Bible is without fodder for extremism. When it comes to reading, teaching, and understanding the Bible, we have a lot of work to do. We can’t do that work until we start taking responsibility for our texts AND the actions that have arisen from applying them.
That is all.
You May Also Enjoy Reading:
1. How Visiting A Mosque Impacted My Spiritual Journey
2. My Response to: “You liberal Christians use the Bible selectively.”
3. A Few Thoughts on Hell and The Power of Religion
Once again, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's so easy to label others in ways you'd never accept for yourself. The bottom line is that blind religious zealotry, regardless of the religion, is not wise. I've heard people argue that there are no morals without religion. However, the Bible may be used to advocate slavery. It was our human reasoning that recognized that slavery is wrong and therefore abolished it. The Bible may be used to advocate the subjugation of women. Our human reasoning recognizes that this is wrong as well. So if our modern humanity negates such Biblical “morals,” then why do people continue to insist that one must have religion in order to have morals? I've never heard of a secular humanist or agnostic declaring holy war and killing in the name of God.
Thank you, Kay. It's true. There has probably been more violence in our world due to religious ideological differences than any other underlying cause. In my experience with Christianity, instead of wondering what we can do to curb the violence– many of us wonder what we can do to prove that we are more “right” than other religions. John Shelby Spong has said on several occasions that religion needs to get out of the “morality” business. We don't need a religion to legislate morality for us. Moral decisions can be made outside the confines of religious constructs. We need religions to chart the path to spiritual transcendence, which is what they alone are uniquely endowed to do.
Right on! While it's true that no one who honestly follows Jesus commits acts of violence (seriously, what part of “live by the sword, die by the sword” is so hard to understand?), not everyone who identifies him/herself as a Christian follows Jesus' teachings. So if “Christian extremist” is an oxymoron, then “Islamic extremist” must be one, too.
I'm reminded of an NPR story I heard about a year ago when they compared the violence in the Bible to violence in the Quran. Apparent the Bible has more violence, but Christian conservatives explain that the violence in the Bible was all stuff that happened in the past, while the violence in the Quran is an on-going call for violence. I've read only bits and pieces of the Quran, so I personally can't say how “violent” Islam is. But as you and I both know, any piece of text can be taken out of context.
Travis, I've never heard of that NPR story… I'll have to search for it. Sounds VERY interesting. Thank you!
Crystal wrote:
-snip-
“According to them, no true Christian would ever kill people in the name of God. A person who would do such a thing is simply considered a murderer, but certainly not a legitimate member of the Christian faith.”
Crystal,
This is a very common logical fallacy known as the “No True Scotsman” fallacy:
“No true Scotsman is an intentional logical fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion. When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it.”
The term “No true Scotsman” comes from philosopher Anthony Flew who coined the phrase with an example of a Scotsman reading the paper and discovering that a Scotsman has committed a heinous crime. When confronted with this fact, he exclaims “No true Scotsman would do such a thing.”
@Steve… Thanks for sharing that with me. I googled “no true scotsman” and found an interesting website with explanations of quite a few logical fallacies. I remember learning something like this in undergrad (many many many many many many moons ago lol) but haven't thought about it in quite some time. Great info.
By the way, here's the website I found in case others are interested: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/