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2 The Koranic quotations
trap By Spengler
Robert
Spencer, the publisher of the JihadWatch.com
website and the author of a number of volumes
attacking Islam, bridled at my comment in last
week's essay (Are the Arabs already
extinct?, May 8):
The available literature on Islam
consists mainly of a useless exchange of Koranic
citations that show, depending on whether one is
Karen Armstrong or Robert Spencer, that Islam is
loving or hateful, tolerant or bigoted, peaceful
or warlike, or whatever one cares to show. It is
all so pointless and sophomoric; anyone can
quote the Koran, or for that matter the Bible,
to show whatever one wants.
Spencer
protests that I misrepresent his view; his considered
response can be found on his
webpage. [1] I was referring to a review of his
most recent book [2] by the odious Karen
Armstrong, a renegade nun who attempts to reduce
all religions to an indistinguishable and insipid
spiritual gruel. Armstrong opined in the April 27
Financial Times:
The traditions of any religion are
multifarious. It is easy, therefore, to quote so
selectively that the main thrust of the faith is
distorted. But Spencer is not interested in
balance. He picks out only those aspects of
Islamic tradition that support his thesis. For
example, he cites only passages from the Koran
that are hostile to Jews and Christians and does
not mention the numerous verses that insist on
the continuity of Islam with the People of the
Book: "Say to them: We believe what you believe;
your God and our God is one."
It irks
me no end when people with whom I would like to
agree, such as Spencer, are wrong, and people whom
I despise unconditionally, such as the odious Ms
Armstrong, are right. Fiat justitia, ruat
coelum: judge fairly even if the heavens fall
in consequence.
Islam-bashing, whether
justified or not, is a waste of time. Armstrong is
quite correct that the statements of the Koran are
multifarious, ranging from direct instruction to
kill unbelievers to the peaceable sound-bite
quoted above. Spencer has missed his adversary's
mortal weakness: by insisting that the Koran is
clear, consistent and unambiguous in preaching
violence, Spencer has conceded the most important
weapon in the arsenal of Islam's critics, namely
the integrity of the Koran. It is possible to
admit multiple authorship of the Hebrew Scriptures
and remain a believing Jew, just as it is possible
to concede inconsistencies among the Gospels and
remain a believing Christian. But the premise of
Islam is that the Archangel Gabriel dictated the
Holy Koran to Mohammed as the final revelation to
humankind. Therefore it is extremely difficult,
perhaps entirely impossible, for Muslims to
concede multiple authorship of the Koran and
remain believers.
Pope Benedict XVI made
just this point at a private seminar at his summer
residence during the summer of 2005. As Father
Joseph Fessio reported his comments:
The Holy Father, in his beautiful
calm but clear way, said, well, there's a
fundamental problem with that because, he said,
in the Islamic tradition, God has given his word
to Mohammed, but it's an eternal word. It's not
Mohammed's word. It's there for eternity the way
it is. There's no possibility of adapting it or
interpreting it, whereas in Christianity, and
Judaism, the dynamism's completely different,
that God has worked through his creatures. And
so it is not just the word of God, it's the word
of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the
word of Mark. He's used his human creatures, and
inspired them to speak his word to the world,
and therefore by establishing a Church in which
he gives authority to his followers to carry on
the tradition and interpret it, there's an inner
logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it
and requires it to be adapted and applied to new
situations.
Under the title "When even
the pope has to whisper", I reported Father
Fessio's comments, originally made to an American
radio interviewer. He afterward apologized for
speaking out of turn. [3]
As I wrote on
Spencer's website, there are any number of factual
problems in his approach, of which two stand out:
1) Mohammed may never have existed, and 2)
If he existed, he may have had nothing to do with
the Koran, which well might be an 8th- or
9th-century compilation.
If that is the
case, writing biographies of Mohammed and citing
the Koran may be entirely beside the point. I do
not know whether this is the case, partly because
the threat of violence has driven
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