Sabbath Work - Islam

I recently had the great misfortune of picking up a copy of "Sword of the Prophet" by Serge Trifkovic - I couldn't put it down. Serge is from Serbia, an Orthodox (i.e. related to Eastern Orthodox) Christian. Serge doesn't like Islam.

Page after page, chapter after chapter, Serge recites one ugly fact after another about Islam. I suspect seventy percent is "true", i.e. supported by the Koran, the Hadith and history. The rest is not "false", but it is an anti-Islamist agenda.

I am one of those "Christians" who reads the Bible for inspiration and not authority and the verse that inspires me here is Matthew 7:5 "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." I am given to a tad of self-righteousness, sometimes even pounding on the table like a drum. Turning the table, an anti-Christian reading of the Old Testament will find no shortage of genocide, infanticide, slavery, polygamy and mysogyny.

The Counail on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) sent me a lovely copy of the Koran. I was intent on finding the message of "peace, love and compassion" that had been advertised. I did find a clever twist on the story of Joseph and the Pharoahs wife. But soon I tired of the chaff and gave it to my brother, a Presybyterian minister.

One approach is to separate the extremists from the less so (i.e. moderates). Certainly strapping a bomb to ones chest and riding a motorcycle into a crowd and killing Benazir and a score of other humans qualifies as extremism. And so George says, "Those who committed this crime must be brought to justice."

Unfortunately, the "War on Terrorism" may have one more casualty, the military dictatorship of Musharraf (Pakistan) whom we like to classify as a moderate Islamist. Expansionist Islam has no better ally than the United States. From the Talebanization of Afghanistan in the 1990's to the rise of Shia in Iran and Iraq (both by democratic means) and the unending struggle for Kashmir. So much for moderate Islam.

The parallels between expansionist Islam and Christian Dominionism are equally unsettling. We may not be sending young men with bombs strapped to their chest but there is no doubt the Dominionist agenda was part of the push to invade Iraq (and planning to bomb Iran) as personified by Karl Rove. I am not sure moderate Christianity as in the likes of "Focus on the Family" and the "Moral Majority" are on the side of "Peace, Love and Compassion" either. In fact, John 14:6 on the lips of Billy Graham is sure to evoke a holy war.

The path to "Peace, Love and Compassion", a sort of dogmatic disarmament, may be like peeling an onion. The outside layer is inedible and only suited as a natural dye. The next layer few layers, rot with age. If we are lucky, the core is healthy and nutritious.

Scriptural inerrancy is the peel, suitable only as cultural and literary color. The next few layers have historic merit but as James Russell Lowell said "time makes ancient truths uncouth". If we cut around the rotten parts even those layers may have merit (e.g. slavery and the Jubilee). We should seek our own pearl and encourage our Muslim friends to do the same.

"There are some people in this world who do not love their fellow man and I hate people like that" - Tom Lehrer.