Thursday, February 10, 2011

Well, he is a politician ...

... Not Far Enough. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

More and more Western politicians, alas, have turned themselves into Islamic theologians, taking it upon themselves to assert that the jihadists have misunderstood their religion. The sobering truth is that jihad—the effort, in whatever form it may take, to bring the “House of War” (that is, the non-Muslim world) under sharia—is consistent with the teachings of the Koran and the example of Mohammed.

Well, yes. But a certain reading of the Bible could lead one to advocate policies frighteningly similar to those of the paleo-Muslims. Most Christians have moved beyond, that and I see no reason why Muslims could not as well.

1 comment:

  1. I don't think it's a "moving beyond" sort of thing, which always makes it sound like we've "outgrown" the Old Testament in a New Agey kind of way. The Bible is a story of an evolving people, trying to figure it out as they go along. That's why the Book of Joshua is very different from the voice of Isaiah. That's what's remarkable about the whole thing: it wasn't a text written at one time, or even over a single century.

    To refer to Christianity via certain passages in Leviticus or the nastier psalms is to miss the sweep of the text as a whole. (Have you read René Girard's take on all this?)

    I've studied the Koran, but long ago and not in enough depth to know how it stands vis-a-vis jihad. It's mostly the story of a single prophet, I believe, and retells a few Biblical stories with a different spin.

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