I have
argued in a previous post that Islam is not the cause of ISIS and the other
brutal Jihadist movements killing thousands around the world; the real cause is
the mass of poor, purposeless, unemployed, poorly-educated young men in the
Middle East ripe for exploitation by charismatic leaders. Islam is simply the
convenient lever by which they can be recruited and motivated by power-hungry
leaders, since they are already Muslim.
Having
said that, it is still in fact the religion of Islam, or at least one particularly
harsh Sunni version of it (Wahhabism), that is being used for this purpose by
ISIS and the many associated jihadist movements. And in fact Islamic traditions
and Islamic history support many of their brutal acts. The Prophet was not a nice man by current
Western standards. He led a brutal army of conquest, practiced ethnic cleansing,
and encouraged his followers to kill unbelievers. ISIS is in fact following
fairly accurately in the footsteps of the Prophet. The fantasy ideology which
ISIS follows envisions returning the entire world to a 9th century Islamic
empire ruled by harsh Sharia laws. It is, of course, ridiculous to think of
returning the Middle East to a medieval prehistory based of what unlettered and
uneducated desert people a thousand years ago believed, or didn’t understand.
And yet…..and
yet Christianity in some of its forms is just as extreme, just as brutal, and
just as ridiculous. We certainly had our period of ruthless crusades, murdering
everyone in sight without regard to their religion, plundering cities, and raping
women, all in the name of our own version of a primitive Middle Eastern desert religion
of two thousand years ago. Here in New Mexico the Spanish Christian priests in
the original conquest were just as ruthless toward the native Americans as ISIS
is today. In Europe Catholics and Protestants happily fought wars and burned each
other’s leaders at the stake for hundreds of years.
Lest you
think this is all old news - past history that we can feel bad about for a moment
and then move on - consider what is still, this very day, going on in the name
of Christianity:
Christian
groups throughout the country are attempting in every way they can to prevent
women from controlling their own reproductive plans by denying them not only
abortions, but in some cases even birth control (need I mention that if men
could get pregnant this would not even be an issue?) – all based, not on anything
Jesus is reported to have said, but just on the misogynistic speculations of
some sexually-repressed medieval male clerics as to when something speculatively
called “the soul” entered the body of a fetus – and this by people who didn’t
even understand the anatomy and physiology of the human body! And on the basis of these unscientific speculations
a thousand years ago, some modern day Christians oppress women, and the more
extreme even bomb or shoot up Planned Parenthood clinics, as just happened again
this week.
(And no,
one can't invoke the 6th commandment to support this position. Christians
have always been more than happy to kill when it is convenient, and still are.)
Christian
groups throughout the country are attempting in every way they can to obstruct and
oppress people whose sexual orientation is not straight heterosexual. Why? Based on some clear modern understanding of human
physiology and psychology? No, based
rather on cultural norms of a certain group of Middle Easterners who lived thousands
of years ago, and reinforced once again by those sexually-repressed Medieval
male clerics.
There
are other examples, but these will suffice to make the point. Yes, ISIS is following
a particularly brutal form of Islam based on a relatively primitive and unlettered
culture centuries in the past. But some Christians - a good many of them – are doing exactly the
same thing, trying to impose on everyone concepts from a primitive culture
centuries in the past and completely out of touch with either modern knowledge
or modern culture.
Remember Matthew 7:4: “How can you say to your brother,
'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in
your own eye”
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