The Western intelligentsia just can’t get enough of hating Western civilization. My latest in FrontPage:
The Western intelligentsia’s capacity for self-flagellation and self-hatred seems to be endless. Jack Miles, Religion News Service tell us, is “author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘God: A Biography’ and a retired professor of religion at the University of California Irvine, now offers an erudite and highly readable close reading of Allah’s real nature.”
Miles’ “erudite” take on Allah is that the god of the Qur’an is “more merciful” and “more moral” than the God of the Bible. Miles is, of course, being feted and celebrated for this in all the right places by all the right people, those who know that teaching the people of Western Europe and North America to despise their own culture and heritage, and to love that of Islam, is a good and noble endeavor.
Miles’ claims, however, are completely wrong. In the first place, there is the evidence of present-day reality. There have been well over 30,000 jihad terror attacks worldwide since 9/11; virtually all of them carried out by Muslims acting upon Qur’anic dictates, many of them screaming “Allahu akbar.” There have been no terror attacks committed by Jews screaming the Shema or Christians screaming “Jesus is Lord.” No doubt Christians have behaved violently in the name of Christ throughout the history of Christianity, but in doing so they never invoked the violent passages of the Bible as justification for their acts.
But Miles says: “I offer examples of great violence from Jewish and Christian Scriptures and note that we don’t deduce from that that all Jews and Christians are terrorists in waiting. If we don’t do that for ourselves, we shouldn’t do it for Muslims.” Of course. All Muslims aren’t “terrorists in waiting.” But Miles ignores the real reason why there are so very many Qur’an-motivated terrorists and so few, if any, Bible-motivated terrorists: while there is a great deal of violence in the Bible, it is descriptive, not prescriptive. That is, it describes violent acts commanded by God, and that has created a number of theological problems that have preoccupied many Jews and Christians ever after, but nowhere does it present those violent acts as something to be imitated.
The Qur’an, by contrast, exhorts Muslims to wage war against unbelievers in commands that are presented as universal, that is, applying to all Muslims for all time. It tells believers that “Muhammad is the apostle of Allah. Those who follow him are merciful to one another, ruthless to unbelievers” (48:29). It commands Muslims to “kill them wherever you find them” (2:191, 4:89) and “kill the idolaters wherever you find them” (9:5, and remember, Islam considers virtually all other religions to be idolatrous in one way or another). It commands Muslims to wage war against and subjugate Jews, Christians, and other “People of the Book” (9:29).
The idea that these Qur’an passages are not limited to a long-past time and faraway place, but are open-ended and still valid for Muslims, has been taught by Islamic exegetes from Muhammad’s first biographer Ibn Ishaq up to the present day. Muslim scholars throughout the history of Islam have taught that these passages and others like them mandate offensive jihad against unbelievers as the highest and final stage of the Qur’an’s teaching on jihad.
And as for Allah being “more moral” than the God of the Bible, consider these passages from the New Testament and the Qur’an:
“God our Savior…desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (I Timothy 2:3-4)
“And if we had willed, We could have given every soul its guidance, but the word from Me will come into effect: I will surely fill Hell with jinn and people all together.” (Qur’an 32:13)
So Allah is saying that he could have saved everyone, but has instead decided to torture some people in hell for all eternity, just because. “We’re talking about the same being,” Professor Miles? No, we aren’t.
Walter Sieruk says
When Jesus walked the earth He taught mercy and peace, Mathew 5:6-9. In awful contrast the religion, Islam, which the false prophet ,Muhammad ,manufactured that has the god Allah is actually a death cult of violence and killing ..Surah 2:191. 5:33, 9;5,111. 47 :4.
In fact so much violence and killing that the god of Islam likes it when non-Muslims [Kafirs] die . About the god of Islam ,the television Imam Suliman Satari said “Annihilate the Infidels… Allah count them and kill them, to the last one and don’t leave even one.” Furthermore Imam Abu Hamza Al-Masri said “What makes Allah happy? Allah is happy when Kafiers get killed. [1]
.The above words of these Imams reflect the example of Islam’s prophet and the teachings of the Quran. “Muhammad now fell upon them [the Jews] slew all the men, nine hundred of them…”[2]
Moreover, the Quran reads “When ye encounter the unbelievers strike off their heads, until ye have made great slaughter among them. Verily if Allah pleased, He could take vengeance on them without your assistance, but He commandeth you to fight His Battles.” 47:4
In short, these Imams and their murderous prophet with their bloody Quran show the world what Islam really is. After all, Jesus did teach “by their fruits you will know them.” Matthew 7:20. [NKJV]
[1] The disc documentary OBSESSION: RADICAL ISLAM’s AGAINST THE WEST
[2] THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY: THE WHOLE STORY OF MAN by H.G. Wells
mortimer says
JACK MILES makes two scholarly errors … 1) he analyzes the Koran in a VACUUM without reference to the the hadiths, canonical commentaries, Islamic history and Sharia law which are required to illustrate and explain the RECEIVED meaning of Koranic intolerance and violence 2) he ignores the writings of rabbis who explained the meaning of the ‘angry’ texts of the Hebrew Bible. Jack Miles’s narrow focus on the personality of Allah misses the big picture … namely, the overall GOAL OF ALLAH … to crush resistance to Islam by violence.
In fact, when you look at the Bible and Koran, a neutral person will quickly see that ALLAH MAKES ALL MUSLIMS BOUNTY HUNTERS who hunt, kill and enslave non-believers and rewards the SUPREMACIST MUSLIMS with sex with slaves on earth and eternal sex with slaves in paradise. JEHOVAH DOES NOT DO THAT.
Danish scholar, Tina Magaard, PhD, came to opposite conclusions to those of Miles after comparing the sacred writings of 10 religions. She concluded that Islam is the MOST WARLIKE.
After three years analyzing the original texts of ten different religions, Tina Magaard concluded that the Islamic texts stand out by encouraging terror and fighting “to a far larger degree than the original texts of other religions. The texts in Islam distinguish themselves from the texts of other religions by encouraging violence and aggression against people with other religious beliefs to a larger degree.”
“What is striking is not in itself that one can find murderous passages in the Islamic texts, as such passages can also be found in other religions. But it is striking how much space these passages take up in the Islamic texts, and how much they focus on an us-and-them logic in which infidels and apostates are characterized as dirty, rotten, criminal, hypocritical and dangerous. It is also striking how much these texts demand that the reader fight the infidels, both with words and with the sword. In many passages, Muhammad plays a central role as one who encourages the use of violence, whether it comes to stonings, beheadings, acts of war or execution of critics and poets.”
Richard says
Allah is more merciful than the God of the Bible. It is pretty clear where the God of the Bible stands on rapists and child molesters, without whom it almost seems Islam would go out of business. ‘Want some verses from the Qu’ran, little girl?’
Walter Sieruk says
That’s an outstanding claim of Jack Miles that “Allah is more Merciful and Moral than the God of the Bible.”
All the more so since the information is found in the Qur ‘an that “Allah create man for toil and trouble.” 90:4.
That’s a very odd way of being merciful and moral. In other words, that’s an extremely strange way of being “kind.”
mortimer says
In fact, Allah isn’t ‘moral’ in any normal sense of the word. Allah whimsically gives commands that contradict his previous commands. Allah abrogates what he wrote last week. The whole Koran can be considered as a collection of memoranda from Allah in which he frequently says, Disregard the last memorandum.
What is ‘moral’ about removing the human rights and civil liberties of women and ‘others’? Nothing.
Mirren10 says
”The whole Koran can be considered as a collection of memoranda from Allah in which he frequently says, Disregard the last memorandum.” Nice one, mortimer. Made me laugh ! 🙂
Raja says
Mortimer, That’s a good reminder that the devil is whoopee. Thanks..
Raja
Tokenn says
1] The Prophet of Islam was a bloody-handed warlord who engaged in brutal war, mass murder, rapine and assassination of his critics.
2] The religion of Islam was spread by the sword in well over a millennia of invasion and war against its neighbours on every side.
3] Every Islamic nation is a nasty dictatorship that practices systematic oppression of its own people and denies the very concept of human rights.
4] Islam is being spread in the present day by lies, bribery and intrigue with the aim of domination the world…see Point 3.
Muslims [and knuckleheaded religious ‘scholars’] can call Allah ‘merciful’ and ‘compassionate’ all they want, but that won’t make it so.
gravenimage says
+1
Spiro says
Maybe this “scholar” should read the bible
It’s obvious he never has
gravenimage says
Robert Spencer in FrontPage: “Scholar of Religions” Says Allah is “More Merciful” Than the God of the Bible
………………..
Utter insanity. Just cynical whitewash for Islam.
Ole Pederson says
The professor appears to ignore there was a period of enlightenment that brought the end of major violence and tyranny caused or inspired by the Biblical texts – and no, it was not the reformation.
Such a period of enlightenment never happened in Islam, and probably never will as any voices who for example recommend to read the violent passages in the Q’ran as historical texts immediately endanger their own life.
Personally, I could not care less which god appears to be more merciful. In my opinion there is no reason to believe in any god, except for people who endured religious indoctrination in their childhood and never got rid of it.
mortimer says
A good point here: ‘reformation’ in the sense of MODERATING the unacceptable violence of Islam is NOT POSSIBLE, because the PRIMARY SOURCE TEXTS of Islam are NOT ‘moderate’ or ‘peaceful’, but SUPREMACIST and MILITANT.
A ‘reformation’ of Islam DID actually take place in Saudi Arabia in the late 18th century led by Sheikh Muhammad Bin Wahhab. WAHHABISM is the rediscovery of the authentic VIOLENT TEACHINGS of Islam.
WAHHABISM is the AUTHENTIC Sunnite Islam taught at Islam’s most important theological seminaries at AL AZHAR UNIVERSITY in Cairo.
WAHHABISM is REAL, AUTHENTIC Islam, rather than an aberration. Wahhabism IS ‘reformed’ Islam.
gravenimage says
+1
Mirren10 says
”Personally, I could not care less which god appears to be more merciful. In my opinion there is no reason to believe in any god, except for people who endured religious indoctrination in their childhood and never got rid of it.”
I’m an agnostic myself, but there is a fundamental difference in the character of the baleful ‘allah’ and the Christian God. ‘allah’ is malignant, obfuscatory, and frequently changes his mind. I would say Jehovah/Christ is benificent in the main.
gravenimage says
+1
Mirren10 says
Oops. Posted too soon. The above illustrates why the followers of ‘allah/mohammed’ are so vicious, violent, and screwed in the head.
Geoffrey de Brito says
I may be wrong but I suspect this man knows that he’s promoting a falsehood. Which if so, makes him a liar. Is there anything more loathsome than a collaborator with evil? And Islam IS evil.
Rarely says
Jack Miles is a retired professor of religion at U Cal (Irvine) and a Pulitzer Prize winning author so it is safe to assume that he knows his subject. It is difficult to imagine how he arrives at his conclusion especially in light of Robert Spencer’s analysis — Miles’ errors seem to be too elementary for his credentials. It’s too Dick and Jane.
I’m not agreeing with Miles in any sense but before condemning him for intellectual dishonesty I’m going to have to read the book.
gravenimage says
Uh…right. Let us know how that goes…
Rarely says
I may be naïve (I’ve been called worse things) but it’s hard to believe Miles could be such a simplistic idiot. People with his credentials should, at least, be complicated idiots. How could he possibly misunderstand such basic stuff? There must be more to it.
gravenimage says
Rarely, I know a lot of otherwise intelligent people who are in deep denial over the threat of Islam.
Rarely says
I do too. But I think this is somewhat different because he is an “expert” in the area. He “must” know differently and yet seems not to — very strange.
Kay says
I think you’ll find that there are other expert, possibly in all fields, but most assuredly in Christianity, who are led astray. There are probably many explanations for such an occurrence.
gravenimage says
Rarely, I have known many “experts” who are in denial, as well.
Geoffrey de Brito says
I predict great disappointment…
Singh The Sikh says
A manifestation of allah’s mercy?
The day before the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, pharmacy student Ihsas Khan stabbed his neighbour with a hunting knife yelling “Allah Akhbar” and that his victim’s blood was “a beautiful sight”:
https://www.news.com.au/national/courts-law/attempted-murder-trial-for-isis-terrorist-accused-in-minto-salon-stabbing/news-story/9ea013208c4352cce820460a8ed4e817
Aussie Infidel says
I know one academic – who teaches comparative religion – who argued that Allah was indeed merciful, and there was no more violence in the Quran than the Bible. I asked if she meant the OT or the NT? And the answer was “both”! But she couldn’t quote any particular verses to substantiate her claim. After some discussion to put her straight on that, I then asked how she would interpret Quran 2:216, 2:190-193, 4:89, 8:39, 9:5, 9:29, etc? Was Allah preaching mercy or violence? And I simply got a blank stare. She obviously had not read the Quran, or remembered any of it, and was embarrassed by her own ignorance – and worse, being upstaged by a mere layman.
Her parting shot was, “In Islam, women occupy a more honoured place than in Christianity. so I asked, “Is that why there are so many honour killings in Islamic societies? And why there are so many rapes committed by Muslim immigrants in the West? But she had no answers and took her leave. If her replies are any indication of what she teaches her students, her future graduates will be even more ignorant of Islam than at present.
eduardo odraude says
Is that why the Global Gender Gap Report’s ranking of every nation in the world shows that 17 of the bottom 20 nations, in terms of women’s rights, are Muslim nations?
Is that why the Qur’an says the testimony of a man is worth half that of a woman in a court of law?
Is that why the Qur’an says men should beat disobedient women?
Is that why the Qur’an says a woman receives half the inheritance of a man?
Is that why the Qur’an assumes consummation of marriage to prepubescent girls?
Is that why Muhammad, in canonical hadiths, says women are inferior in intelligence and women are the majority in hell?
Is that why over 90% of honor killings worldwide are done by Muslims?
Is that why the Qur’an lets men divorce wives simply by saying “I divorce you” three times? But a woman cannot do the same to a man?
People miss the main point about mercy. If a religious paradigm leads to authoritarian and totalitarian outcomes (like Islam), isn’t that paradigm less merciful than religious paradigms that lead to open societies (like the Christian paradigm)? One can see that distinction even if one thinks all religions are pure tissues of fantasy.
The academic response to Islam really demonstrates how bottomless the ignorance and superficial the knowledge of many academics can be. We see how immature and morally idiotic many academics are. It is astonishing to anyone with naive respect erudition and graduate degrees. It turns out that a Ph.D. in a non-STEM field can often make a person brilliant at using scholarship to defend a provincial mindset and the psychological immaturity, wishful thinking, and insecurity that produced it.
eduardo odraude says
“naive respect erudition”
should read
“naive respect for erudition”
Aussie Infidel says
Too true Eduardo. Why are academics seemingly unaware of the issues that trouble ‘ordinary’ people like you and me? Academics are intelligent people, otherwise they wouldn’t have their jobs. Is it that they have been indoctrinated already by some silver tongue dawa salesman, with the Five Pillars and the rituals, they cannot see the forest for the trees? Or are they so dedicated to reading only ‘scholarly works’ on Islam, that they never encounter the violent aspects? Are they so concerned they might be branded ‘Islamophobes’ and lose their academic credibility in the eyes of their peers? Whatever the reason, their naiviety astounds me.
One of the mandatory qualifications for anyone teaching Islam, should be to spend a year on Jihad Watch. By then they will have encountered most of the unsavory aspects of Islam you mention, from the many examples posted by Robert and his very capable assistants.
Singh The Singh says
Yet another manifestation of allah’s enduring mercifulness. Read and rejoice. There is no shortage of such examples.
Bangladeshi student’s lone wolf terror attack in Melbourne left daughter with flashbacks, victim says:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-29/islamic-state-inspired-mill-park-stabbing-momena-shoma/10758498
duh swami says
‘If God (Allah), created all this suffering, he can’t be good, And if he is powerless to stop it, he can’t be God’…Buddha…
How ,merciful is Quran 5:33?
roberta says
The guy has spent his life in academia. His type love being praised by their fellows, and despised by the working common folk.
My guess is that he is never more please with himself as when he is being a complete anus. No more complicated than that.