Dave Andrews, The Jihad of Jesus: The Sacred Nonviolent Struggle for Justice,  Wipf and Stock, 2015.

Dave begins: I do not write this as an expert… [but] as a Christian, in conversation with Muslim friends  This is for Christians who’ve been listening to too many crusading combative pastors, like Mark Driscoll, and for Muslims who follow extremist preachers, like Abubakar Shekau. And for others who subscribe to neither religion, but watch with horror, as Christians and Muslims slaughter one another in the name of God (Preface, xv). 

Many Christians, Muslims and Jews have killed their Abrahamic brothers and sisters, using the violence advocated in the Hebrew Bible as justification. ‘Christians and Muslims make up over half the world’s population. So it’s absolutely vital for the future welfare of the human family that we examine our frequent utter disregard for human rights, diabolical persecution of unorthodox traditions and heterodox religions, and total destruction of “infidels” in genocidal “Holy Wars” waged in the name of our “great God”.’ (52)

Is there a balanced approach to this fraught and contemporary issue? Was Jesus a radical messianic activist (Reza Aslan)? Or, as Andrews argues, (with Muslim poet/intellectual Ahmad Shawqi), Jesus [is] a model of nonviolent jihad. Or: Kindness, chivalry and humility were born the day Jesus was born. No threat, no tyranny, no revenge, no sword, no raids, no bloodshed (Al-Shawqiyyat; p. xvi). 

Dave Andrews tells it like it is, but with respectful love. His heroes are compassionate, irenic Christians like Francis of Assisi, Dom Helder Camara, Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Desmond Tutu, Mother Teresa and Leymah Gbowee. And also Muslims like Muhammad Ashafa, Badshah Khan, and many others…  

He begins with Christianity’s ‘dark side’:  the horrors associated with the Crusades, Inquisition, Luther (the ‘greatest anti-Semite of his time’), Calvin, the Conquistadors, witch-hunts, Hitler’s Holocaust against ‘Christ-killers’ whereby ordinary Germans – many of them Christians – were implicated in ‘the worst single atrocity the world has ever known…’ Then there’s George Bush – a devout, Bible-believing Christian, who proudly claimed that ‘God told me to strike al-Qaeda,’ resulting in over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed, and 50,000 imprisoned. Then Afghanistan plus drones, and now Islamic State.

‘And so it goes on…Predominantly Christian states have killed more Jews and Muslims than predominantly Muslim states have have killed Christians or Jews.’

But he’s equally merciless describing Islam’s ‘Holy Wars’. To his credit, he’s mainly drawn on Muslim rather than Christian sources of critical reflection.

There’s the 627 ‘Battle of the Trench’ when, according to a Sunni Hadith, 900 members of a Jewish tribe were beheaded; in 1009 the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim attacked Christian hospices and churches in Jerusalem: ‘he persecuted Christians under his rule, destroying 30,000 churches’; the Mughal Empire’s oppression and persecution in India, Circa 1000-1700 CE’: ‘Timur… executed more than one hundred thousand Hindu captives’. In the 20th century Ottoman’s ‘Armenian holocaust’ between 1 and 1.5 million were killed – “half of the entire Armenian population”. Then, more recently, we have the atrocities associated with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Janjaweed (‘devils on hoseback’) slaughter of 400,000 lives and displacement of over 2,500,000 people in Darfur, Boko Haram, ISIL, et. al. 

Responses by Muslim leaders? Well, back in the 2007 ‘Common Word’ a wide range of Muslim leaders wrote an open letter to Christians, affirming that ‘the basis for peace and understanding already exists: love of the One God, and love of the neighbor… Of the necessity of love for neighbor, the prophet Muhammad said: “None of you has faith until you love for your neighbor what you love for yourself”.’

Re ISIS: ‘Senior British Imams… [have decreed] ISIS is an illegitimate group who do not represent Islam in any way.’ Australian Imams: ‘We are making an unequivocal, clear statement that we’re against violence, we’re against acts of terror, regardless of who perpetrates these acts’. 

In Part Two: The Jihad of Isa, Dave Andrews discusses Jihad as a method of nonviolent struggle, quoting Khalid Muhammad Khalid with approval: ‘The Spirit of Barabbas glorifies force, violence and tyranny. With Muhammad, the faithful, we declare “Christ not Barabbas, the true not the false, love not hatred, peace not war, life not extinction” (79).

How do terrorist groups (like Jemaah Islamiyah) socially condition their warriors? First, by framing killing as saving lives; second, portraying the enemy as sub-human; third, demanding every soldier’s obedience to their leader; fourth, developing each unit’s capacity for collective violence; and finally, increasing the distance between the trigger and the target. 

Dave writes: ‘When my Muslim friends told me they [must] interpret the Qur’an according to the Bismillah (In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate) even if it contradicts a human interpretation of sharia law, I jumped for joy. That’s wonderful! I said. I think Jesus would think what you are doing is great: he did exactly the same with the Torah; including being willing to challenge closed set human interpretations of the Law in the light of God’s open set grace and compassion. (92).

‘As Maulana Wahiduddin Khan says, “In all the chapters of the Qur’an, with their hundreds of verses, there is not a single verse which gives the command to kill an abuser of the Prophet”.’ (99). In his book Reconstructing Jihad… Halim Rane notes that in the Qur’an the word for “war” is not jihad but qital. The word jihad means “struggle” not “war”. He says that there are 6,000 verses in the Qur’an and only 35 verses refer to jihad; out of those 35 verses twenty times jihad  is used ambiguously. Eleven times jihad is used unambiguously in terms of peace, and four times jihad is used unambiguously in terms of war”.’ (101)

And what was Jesus’ approach? In a magnificent paragraph (p. 116) Dave Andrews summarizes his whole thesis: ‘Jesus argued for a totally different approach to that taken in the Mosaic law. Jesus explicitly, specifically, and repeatedly contradicted the Mosaic law that legitimated retaliation. He said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth’. But I tell you, Do not resist [or retaliate against] an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt 5:38-39). Jesus told his disciples you should always be ready to die for your faith, but never kill for your faith (author’s interpretation of Matt 16:24).’

The last word belongs to Khalid Muhammad Khalid who said ‘Jesus was his message. He was the supreme example he left. He was the love which knows no hatred, the peace which knows no restlessness, the salvation which knows no perishing.’ (120).

Well-known progressive evangelical author Brian McLaren put it well: ‘The kingdom of heaven comes to people who crave not victory but justice, who seek not revenge but mercy, who strive for peace and who are courageously eager to suffer pain for the cause of justice, not inflict it.’ (Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, 2007, 177).

Brian, a friend of Dave’s, writes in his commendation of The Jihad of Jesus: ‘I can think of no book ever written anywhere that so effectively… shows how the teachings of the Christian savior and Muslim prophet, Jesus, can make a difference in today’s world. I wish we could buy a copy of this book for every Christian and Muslim young person in the world – not to mention their parents and grandparents’.

I agree.

Rowland Croucher

August 2015

~~~
Islam and Christianity: Truth and (or?) Love

Two issues are probably well ahead of all others in terms of public policy debates around the world: Islamic Terrorism and Marriage Equality for LGBTI’s. (On Marriage Equality, see here: an article under re-construction. For a cleaner version visit here.)  

Below are 20+ quotes I’ve culled from my library about how Christians (and one or two others) feel about Islam. They represent the good, the bad and the ugly sides of the debate.

[Note: there have been varying spellings over time of ‘Muhammad’ and ‘Qur’an’ which have mostly been retained]. 

1. Love for the other and truth are two attributes to be held together, the one complementing the other. Truth without love can be harsh and even cruel, but love without truth can be equally as dangerous Mark Durie, The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom, 2010,  231. 

2. The kingdom of heaven comes to people who crave not victory but justice, who seek not revenge but mercy, who strive for peace and who are courageously eager to suffer pain for the cause of justice, not inflict it. Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, 2007, 177. 

3. When my Muslim friends told me they [must] interpret the Quran according to the Bismillah (In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate) even if it contradicts a human interpretation of sharia law, I jumped for joy. That’s wonderful! I said. I think Jesus would think what you are doing is great: he did exactly the same with the Torah; including being willing to challenge closed set human interpretations of the Law in the light of God’s open set grace and compassion. Dave Andrews, The Jihad of Jesus: The Sacred Nonviolent Struggle for Justice, 2015, 92. 

4. What do Muslims globally, the mainstream majority, really think? Terrorists want to kill us, but most Muslims want us to stop making the world an even more dangerous place The future of Islam depends on our moving beyond facile and failed paradigms like ‘They hate our way of life’, which reduce relations between the Muslim world and the West to an inevitable clash of civilisations, values, or interests. Gallup World polls from 2001 to 2009 have shown that our Western way of life is not the source of hatred in the Muslim world. Every European and American knows that the West is not monolithic; so too there is no monolithic Muslim world. John L. Esposito, The Future of Islam, 2010/2013, 143. 

5. The Muslim signatories of the October 2007 letter, “A Common Word Between Us and You, proposed that the two greatest commandments according to Jesus Christ, namely to love God and to love our neighbours, were later affirmed by the Prophet Muhammad and therefore describe the most basic attitudes, values, and practices that Muslims and Christians hold in common. Shortly after the letter was released, many key Christian leaders from a wide spectrum of Christian traditions welcomed the Muslim initiative by signing Loving God and Neighbour Together. Each of these two documents affirmed irresolvable differences as well as this central commonality between the two religions [But] do Muslims and Christians understand the same thing when they envision and endeavour to live out their love for God and their love for neighbour? Miroslav Volf, Ghazi bin Muhammad, and Melissa Yarrington, A Common Word: Muslims and Christians on Loving God and Neighbour, 2010, xii. 

6. It would be as inappropriate to engage in robust debate with congenial Muslim traditionalists as to engage in soft dialogue with radical Islamists. Christians should allow for the fact that some types of engagement, which move outside their comfort zone, may well be appropriate for some other Christians engaging with different kinds of Muslims. Those committed to dialogue should not delegitimize the efforts of the debaters, nor should the reverse occur. If such eclecticism is used by both Christians and Muslims in their mutual engagement, we can hope that greater openness will result from this expanded interaction, rather than the continuation of the wall of silence and mutual suspicion that has characterised so much Christian-Muslim interaction in the past.  Peter G. Riddell, Christians and Muslims: Pressures and Potential in a post-9/11 World, 2004, 213. 

7. The love of Allah of the Qur’an is conditional. The love of YHWH of the Bible is a gift of grace. The concept of grace as God’s faithful love to sinners – ‘Amazing grace, how sweet the sound’ – is central to the Christian faith, but not in Islam. The closest equivalent in Islam would be Allah’s mercy shown to the righteous, to those who submit to him. Mark Durie, Revelation? Do We Worship The Same God?, 2006, 128. 

8. For more than a century, Christians have been re-examining their history, and apologising for their errors. Reconciliation with Jews and with indigenous victims of colonisation is well advanced. Popes too have uttered their apologies. But the Muslim world has not to this day apologised to non-Muslims for jihad and dhimmitude. Muslims have not allowed themselves to confront their bitter past. For example, secular Turks, having a historical consciousness shaped by Islam, still deny the genocide of the Armenians, and bitterly oppose commemorations of this event by its survivors. Mark Durie, The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom, 2010, 218. 

9. The Turks were evil incarnate, Luther proclaimed. The Koran was a foul and shameful book, and Mohammed was a destroyer of the Lord Christ and His kingdom. Especially loathsome was the Muslim belief that Christ was a mere prophet, not divine, and lesser than Mohammed. The sword, Luther said, was the essence of the Turkish faith And so war itself was a necessary evil when it was fought as a defensive measure. Disavowing the pacifism of the Anabaptists, he did not oppose resistance against the Turks, so long as it was interpreted as defensive war rather than crusade. Luther’s hymn A Mighty Fortress is our God would be used as a rallying cry against the Turks. Holy war was the antithesis of Christ’s message. James Reston Jr., Defenders of the Faith: Christianity and Islam Battle for the Soul of Europe, 1520-1536, Penguin, 2009, 182-3, 267.   

10. While I was asking what-can-I-do, the TV displayed the Palestinians who rejoiced and applauded over the massacre [on September 11]. The words I write are nothing but tears. The most despicable sin with which the Left has sullied itself is the sin of… fostering Islamism in Europe. Half a century ago the Left was victimised by McCarthyism. Today it is the Left which victimises all others with McCarthyism. I am not a Conservative. I don’t sympathise with the Right more than I do with the Left. It is immigration, not terrorism [which has] penetrated the West and transformed Europe into Eurabia. Is it a moderate Muslim who cudgels his wife or wives or kills his daughter if she falls in love with a Christian? Moderate Islam is another invention of ours. The Koran is the Mein Kampf of a religion which has always aimed to eliminate the others. Wake up, West, wake up! They have declared war on us, we are at war! And in war we must fight! Oriana Fallaci, The Rage and the Pride, 2002, 20,21; The Force of Reason, 2006, 210, 280, 294, 299, 305, 306.

11. ‘Muslim moderates, along with Western liberals and the woefully misguided Christian clergy, argue that Islam is not what the Ayatollah Khomeini has applied in Iran. Khomeini himself responds to Western apologists and Muslim moderates: Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled or incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of [other] countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country of the world. The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of [Koranic] psalms and Hadiths urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim’. Amir Taheri, quoted in Ibn Warraq, Why I am not a Muslim, 1995/2003, 11, 12. 

12. Today close to a quarter of all people in the world identify themselves as Muslim, and the top ten refugee-producing nations are also Muslim. Western democracies [must] understand better how to integrate the newcomers into our societies: how to turn them into citizens. Muslims are reared to believe that Muhammad, the founder of their religion, was perfectly virtuous and that the moral strictures he left behind should never be questioned. The Quran, as revealed to Muhammad, is considered infallible: it is the true word of Allah, and all its commands must be obeyed without question. Many Western textbooks gloss over the fundamentally unjust rules of Islam and present it as a peaceful religion. Institutions of reason must cast off these blinkers and reinvest in developing the ability to think critically, no matter how impolite some people may find the results. There are five core concepts in Islam that are fundamentally incompatible with modernity: 1. the status of the Quran as the last and immutable word of God and the infallibility of Muhammad as the last divinely inspired messenger; 2. Islam’s emphasis on the afterlife over the here-and-now; 3. the claims of sharia to be a comprehensive system of law governing both the spiritual and temporal realms; 4. the obligation on ordinary Muslims to command right and forbid wrong; 5. the concept of jihad, or holy war. Voltaire said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations, 2010 xvi, xvii, xix; Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now, 2015, 263.

13. In the social legislation of the Quran, Muhammad does not break with tribalism completely. The Quran sees revenge as a mark of virtue and a social and religious duty. Muslims must retaliate exactly, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. It is difficult for people who have been brought up with the Sermon on the Mount to accept this. We find it abominable that a sacred book should recommend that a thief should have his hand chopped off, and we cannot understand why Muhammad does not outlaw revenge and preach a message of forgiveness.  Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet, 1991, 228. 

14. In assessing the achievements of Muhammad, when any sort of balance is struck between his undoubted abilities and his possible failures it must be said that if the creation of the umma was his greatest achievement, the commitment of that umma to a political agenda founded on violence, and the provision of a backward-looking social code was his most profound and significant failure. Peter Cotterell, Muhammad: the man who transformed Arabia, 2011, 166.

15. The peculiar concerns of Islam have created communities in almost every society on earth that grow so unhinged in the face of criticism that they will reliably riot, burn embassies, and seek to kill peaceful people over cartoons. This is something they will not do, incidentally, in protest over the continuous atrocities committed against them by their fellow Muslims. The reasons why such a terrifying inversion of priorities does not tend to maximise human happiness are susceptible to many levels of analysis. We know that killing cartoonists for blasphemy does not lead anywhere worth going on the moral landscape. Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science can determine Human Values, 2010, 74-75.

16. Any move by a Western government to reduce expenditure on anti-terrorism measures will be met with alarmist complaints from the terrorist-industrial complex that the government is making the country vulnerable to attack. They can try to use the media and moral panic to whip up fears. They have a vested interest in maintaining a war without end. Keith Suter’s Local Notebook: 50 things you want to know about Australia and world issues but were too afraid to ask, 2007, 246. 

17. The teachings of Islam are ambiguous about violence. Like all religions, Islam occasionally allows for force while stressing that the main spiritual goal is one of nonviolence and peace. The Quran contains a proscription very much like the biblical injunction Thou shalt not kill [commanding] the faithful to slay not the life that God has made sacred (6:152). The very name Islam is cognate to salam, the word for peace, and like the Hebrew word shalom, to which it is related, it implies a vision of social harmony and spiritual repose. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: the Global Rise of Religious Violence, 2003, 80.  

18. One of the people released from Guantanamo Bay because his capture had been a mistake was a 93-year-old Afghani shepherd. He was blind, lame, and incontinent. Because of his age and frailty, he could barely hobble around the camp. He spent two years in Guantanamo shackled to his walking frame. Other inmates reported that he spent most of his time weeping, in distress and confusion. Julian Burnside, Watching Brief: Reflections on Human Rights, Law and Justice, 2008, 144.  

19. We are particularly concerned over the increasing number of books on Islam and religion that are being banned [in Malaysia]. The space for discourse is narrowing and Malaysian readers are being deprived of ideas and debates by renowned scholars and writers, published by reputable institutions such as the Oxford University Press. The womens rights group Sisters-in-Islam, South East Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), Malaysia Bans 18 Books on Islam, 4 July 2006, viewed 21 November 2008,  http://www.seapabkk.org/newdesign/newsdetail.php?No=489. Cited in David Claydon, ed., Islam: Human Rights and Public Policy, 2009, 94.

20. We cannot look to Christians to learn what Jesus taught, nor can we look to Muslims to determine what Muhammad taught. It does not matter how many terrorists call themselves Muslims, and it does not matter how many Nazis or Crusaders called themselves Christians. Instead, we must look directly at the teachings and actions of Jesus and Muhammad as they are recorded in the most reliable sources. There is a big difference between looking at the sources yourself and relying on other people to tell you what those sources say. I believe that is why Muslims do not understand Jesus, and Christians do not understand Muhammad. Mark A. Gabriel, Jesus and Muhammad: Profound Differences and Surprising Similarities, 2004, vii.   

21. While Christianity’s apocalyptic eschatology condemned the world so fiercely that it left little room for a functioning political order to ameliorate our plight on this side of the grave, Islam’s ethical eschatology demanded precisely a political order to rectify immediately the world’s evils. ‘Things are so bad that nothing can be done about it’ is countered by ‘Things are so bad that something must be done about it.’ Shabbir Akhtar, Islam as Political Religion: the Future of an Imperialist Faith, 2011, 240f, Cited in Richard Shumack, The Wisdom of Islam and the Foolishness of Christianity, 2014,   215.

 22. Two from Tariq Ali: In an article published in CounterPunch, Tariq Ali responded to the Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy and said: ‘The Bavarian is a razor-sharp reactionary cleric. I think he knew what he was saying and why. In a neo-liberal world suffering from environmental degradation, poverty,  hunger,  repression the Pope chooses to insult the founder of a rival faith. The reaction in the Muslim world was predictable, but depressingly insufficient. Papal Insults: A Bavarian Provocation, by Tariq Ali for  CounterPunch,  17 September 2006.