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[Hopeful]

How do you guys respond to this discussion that I had with a historian about Islam vs. Christianity in terms of harmful impact on the world?

(My comments will be in normal text. The historian's responses will be in quotes to separate them from my comment.)

1: How do you respond to the point that while the Old Testament is extremely brutal, Jesus in the New Testament abrogates/cancels the OT's horrors, thus making the NT quite tame? Thus when you compare the brutality of the monotheisms you have to evaluate Christianity based on the (quite tame) NT, Islam based on the (extremely brutal) Quran, and Judaism based on the (genocidal) OT.

2: What do you think about the extraordinarily backward/brutal/barbaric treatment of women in the Middle East? On social media there are many videos in which Muslim women speak out against the way that the Middle East is so horrific in the way the culture treats women. It's like a time machine back to the 1400s regarding treatment of women.

Quotes from another source:
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

But that’s beside the point. To review what I’ve written about, early Christianity did indeed have a radical pacifist element, which is why Christians were bitterly persecuted. In the 4th century, the Emperor Constantine took Christianity as the religion of the Roman empire, and it changed from the religion of the persecuted to the religion of the persecutors (to quote Hans Kung). From then until today the crimes committed in the name of Christianity have been utterly horrendous, dwarfing any others. Among them are the Christian conquest of Muslim Spain, destroying the most advanced and most tolerant society in the world, with hideous consequences for Muslims, Jews, and heretical Christians. Not to speak of the victims of Christian savagery elsewhere.

There was an attempt to reverse this horrifying record in 1962. That set off a major US war against the Church which lasted until its victory in 1989.

Back to my post:

The passage about the "sword" exists in the Bible but there is also an abrogation of the horrors of the OT, isn't there?

Another's answers:

The passage about the "sword" appears in the Gospels.

There are abrogations in the OT too, notably among the Prophets.

But all beside the point for the reasons I mentioned.

Isn't it quite obvious that women in the Middle East are under severe oppression?

Just some examples:
--the notion that a woman's virginity relates to the family's "honor"
--the way that men dominate women through the dress code that degrades/humiliates/oppresses women
--the misogynistic attitudes that manifest in the various "honor killings"

You're absolutely right that people like Sam Harris should focus on US state crimes and that US state power exploits Ayaan Hirsi-Ali's testimony to propagandize and to distract from US state crimes.

But Ali's testimony should be taken seriously and many other Muslim women have spoken up.

Look at this, for one manifestation of the general misogyny:

Why are rape victims often punished by Islamic courts as adulterers?

Under Islamic law, rape can only be proven if the rapist confesses or if there are four male witnesses. Women who allege rape without the benefit of the act having been witnessed by four men who subsequently develop a conscience are actually confessing to having sex. If they or the accused happens to be married, then it is considered to be adultery.

Qur'an (2:282) - Establishes that a woman's testimony is worth only half that of a man's in court (there is no "he said/she said" gridlock in Islam).

Qur'an (24:4) - "And those who accuse free women then do not bring four witnesses (to adultery), flog them..." Strictly speaking, this verse addresses adultery (revealed at the very time that Muhammad's favorite wife was being accused of adultery on the basis of only three witnesses coincidentally enough). However it is a part of the theological underpinning of the Sharia rule on rape, since if there are not four male witnesses, the rape "did not occur".

Qur'an (24:13) - "Why did they not bring four witnesses of it? But as they have not brought witnesses they are liars before Allah."

Qur'an (2:223) - "Your wives are as a tilth unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will..." There is no such thing as rape in marriage, as a man is permitted unrestricted sexual access to his wives.

From another source:

I’m impressed by how much you’ve absorbed of the Islamophobic hysteria that is now rampant.

To take your first sentence, it’s quite obvious that in many parts of the Middle East Muslim women are not at all under severe repression. It’s also quite obvious that in huge parts of India women are treated as they are under the Taliban, but that does not lead you to write pieces about the evils of Hinduism.

The flavor of the day for North American propaganda is Islam.

My writing again:

Misogyny is extremely prominent in various cultures.

The Hindu texts form a huge/complex/massive constellation.

Hinduism does have extremely misogynistic doctrines, for example in the Manu smrti, which is a peripheral book in Hinduism.

You have to look at every religious doctrine and ask: (1) how brutally/harshly/severely misogynistic is this doctrine and (2) how prominent is this doctrine within the given religion?

Islam has one major book, the Qur'an, and it's not a very long book. Therefore logically any misogyny in the Qur'an is logically more likely to be prominent than most religions. Also, the Qur'an is to a huge extent based on one person's (Mohammed's) life and therefore anything misogynistic that Mohammed did is logically very likely to be prominent.

Whether the Qur'an's mysognistic doctrines are on par with the Manu smrti's, for example, I don't know, but anything in the Qur'an is definitely way more influential in the real world for Muslims than anything in the peripheral Manu smrti is in the real world for Hindus.

Therefore even if India is like the Taliban in certain regions it doesn't necessarily mean that it's traceable to doctrines in Hinduism.

Many have made the case that relative to Hinduism and Christianity the Qur'an's doctrines are (1) much more brutal/harsh/severe and (2) by Islam's nature (as a religion with such a major religious text and such a major core biography) much more prominent. Is there no validity to that?

From another source:

Most impressed by your profound scholarly studies of Islam. But you should not waste them on me. You should enlighten the leading scholars, like Esposito, Cole, etc., and the world.

The “certain regions” in which India is like the Taliban, as you could learn by reading what I’ve written about it and the sources cited, include Uttar Pradesh, with its huge population of hundreds of thousands. It traces directly back to Hinduism, and is not the worse Hindu tradition. That’s the tradition that lies behind the ruling BJP party.

From me:

1: What about the basic point that Islam's central figure was a conqueror? Conquest is inherently violent. You're right about Jesus and the "sword" comment but Jesus wasn't a conqueror.

2: What about the basic point that Islam's central figure had between 11 and 13 wives? Is that inherently misogynistic to some extent? Some were allegedly children, too, though we can put that aside. Christianity's central figure seems inherently less misogynistic.

From another source:

What about the basic point that from the fourth century until Vatican II Christianity reached levels of violence without comparison and destroyed the most advanced and tolerant civilization in the world, Muslim Spain, also expelling the Jews. And as soon as Vatican II tried to restore the Gospels, the leader of the “Free World” and its most fanatically Christian nation moved at once to destroy the heresy with violence, and succeeded, as noted with pride by the School of the Americas.

From me:

Even if we lack the expertise to properly assess whether the misogynistic things in the Qur'an are more brutal/harsh/severe than those in e.g. the Hindu texts, can we at least agree that Islam is quite distinct in that (1) it has such a dominant core text (the Qur'an) and (2) the dominant core text is quite short relative to other religious texts and that therefore (3) any misogynistic doctrines that appear in the Qur'an will logically be very prominent/influential/powerful in the religion in a way that wouldn't be as likely to be the case in other religions?

From another source:

We certainly can follow this advice if our highest goal in life is to be loyal servants of the current demands of the propaganda system of the Holy State.

Alternatively, we might try to learn something about these topics.

From me:

What are you referring to when you say "levels of violence without comparison?"

From another source:

That’s the main theme of modern history. Among the high points are the Crusades, when rampaging Christian Frankish knights terrorized much of the world and when they got to Jerusalem, it was soon running in blood with huge massacres; the destruction of Muslim Spain, the most tolerant and advanced society in the world; the religious wars of the 17th century in which, e.g., about 1/3 of the population of Germany were killed; the Christian invasion of the western hemisphere, setting off the worst demographic catastrophe in human history, initially by fanatic Catholics then followed by fanatic Scotch-Irish and others waving the Holy Book as they proceeded to exterminate Amalek; and on, and on. All well known, particularly to the major military historians, who pointed out that Christian Europe’s conquest of the world was based more on an ideology of righteous savagery than on military advantage.

Christianity’s central figure was created by the literary imagination of disciples and their followers, no doubt based on a real historical figure. But as I keep pointing out to you over and over, Christianity retained his radical pacifist message for about 300 years, and Christians were very harshly persecuted. Under Emperor Constantine, Christianity was radically changed from the religion of the persecuted to the religion of the persecutors, setting off its horrifying murderous history, and the effort to restore the Gospels in Vatican II set off the violent and murderous wars of Christian US to destroy the heresy – successfully, as the School of the Americas proudly announced.

Regarding Uttar Pradesh, see Jean Drèze and Haris Gazdar, "Uttar Pradesh: The Burden of Inertia," in Drèze and Amartya Sen, eds., Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives (Delhi: Oxford, 1996).

From me:

This has nothing to do with propaganda, rather with logic. Islam's nature is that (1) it has to an unusual extent one dominant book and that (2) this dominant book is unusually short in length. Therefore you would logically expect that Islam would amplify its misogynistic doctrines more so than other faiths amplify their misogynistic doctrines. Is that invalid?

From another source:

Quite obviously, it has everything to do with propaganda. The Holy State has recently decreed that Islam is the enemy. Therefore, its loyal servants search the internet for blogs containing real or alleged evidence of its awful nature. India happens to be an ally. Therefore, the loyal servants of State power do not search for the ample evidence that Hinduism is incomparably worse than Islam, not only misogyny, but even worse the grotesque caste system, of which misogyny is only one element. The Holy State also demands that we ignore the hideous nature of Christianity. So its loyal servants do not care at all that Christianity without power lasted for three centuries, and for 17 centuries has been the scourge of the earth. I left out many cases. Thus Islam did have slavery, just as other societies have, but none of them compared with the grotesque slave labor camps of the Bible-fearing Christians of the US, which would have impressed the Nazis, and also happen to be the basis for white wealth and privilege. No loyal servants of the State search the internet for that evidence, or even care when the horrors of Christianity are pointed out to them. Just as they don’t care that the Israeli soldiers carrying out hideous atrocities in Gaza, far worse than beheading, loyal servants of the State do not search to learn that they are following the orders of the religious leaders, citing the Holy Book.

And there is of course an alternative: not to humbly submit to State power and to learn something about these topics.

From me:

The question isn't so much "Christians did X" versus "Muslims did X." Human beings (Christian/Muslim/whatever) can have psychopathic/violent/brutal tendencies and can also just have their own material interests in mind (e.g. crusades in which the knights pillage the treasure, or US slave plantations). The question is whether you can trace atrocity X to the given religion. Does somebody just do X for whatever psychopathic/material reason and then just invoke religion (as any logical psychopath/plunderer would do within a religious culture or maybe for psychological reasons)? Or is there some actual doctrine/content within the religion that you can point to that actually serves to support atrocity X? That should always be the question. Beliefs matter. Beliefs inform actions. We should analyze each religion's beliefs/doctrines/content and ask what actions they logically lead to in the real world.

Can we agree that to tally up whether "Christians" or "Muslims" committed more atrocities is therefore not the correct approach?

From another source:

The right approach is to look at what Christians and Muslims have done in the name of their professed faiths. That’s why every example I gave of the Christian atrocities that have been the scourge of the world for 17 centuries was done in the name of their professed faith.

Though I didn’t bother saying it, when Muslims had the power and created the most tolerant and civilized society in the world, that was in the name of their professed faith. And when the violent and murderous Christians destroyed it and created a vicious and ugly society in its place, which went on to carry out horrendous atrocities elsewhere (including their monstrous acts in the western hemisphere), that was in the name of their professed faith.

I know that you cannot hear these words, so it is pointless to repeat them once again, but Christianity in the sense of the Gospels to which you refer lasted for 300 years, during which Christians were brutally persecuted. As soon as Christianity gained power it became a global horror story.

From me:

You're right that "Christianity" as powerful interests employ/use/invoke it is extremely bad. Are the doctrines bad? We have to separate these two things: surely we don't agree that ISIS accurately implements Islam's values except insofar as a given value ISIS holds is indeed actually prominent at the doctrinal level.

From another source:

To repeat what you don’t want to hear, the doctrines were practiced for three centuries, and when an effort to reinstitute them was made in Vatican II, the US immediately launched a murderous war to destroy the heresy, and succeeded, as the military proudly proclaims.

It’s well-known that the funding and ideology for radical jihadism emanate mostly from Saudi Arabia, the most extreme radical Islamist state and with a missionary commitment to Wahhabist extremism, of which ISIS is an extremist offshoot. It’s also well-known that like England before it, the US has tended systematically to support radical Islam in opposition to secular nationalism, with Saudi Arabia being the favorite. The combines in a lethal manner with the fact that the US and UK continue to be the most vicious and brutal force in the region, in North Africa along with France.

[jimwalton]

Wow, this is WAY too long to deal with in one post. WAY too many questions, misunderstandings, distortions, etc. WAY. I'll try to address some of it, but there's only room for some.

> How do you respond to the point that while the Old Testament is extremely brutal...

It's a misunderstanding of the OT. The only time God commanded conquering warfare (offensive battle) was in the conquest, and even those were mostly defensive battles. Other than that we read a lot of God warning that judgment is coming if they don't straighten up and fly right, but the NT teaches the same thing.

> Judaism based on the (genocidal) OT.

The Israelites were never genocidal. It's a misunderstanding of the text. There have been many discussions on this forum about that subject.

> What do you think about the extraordinarily backward/brutal/barbaric treatment of women in the Middle East?

The Bible doesn't participate in that. The Bible treats women with dignity. It offers legal and economic protections for them. It is a very different milieu than the surrounding cultures. This requires a much longer answer for which there isn't room.

> early Christianity did indeed have a radical pacifist element

True, but early Christianity also had a "just war theory" element. We could discuss that under a separate heading.

> There was an attempt to reverse this horrifying record in 1962. That set off a major US war against the Church which lasted until its victory in 1989.

I have no idea to what this is referring.

> the notion that a woman's virginity relates to the family's "honor"

In the Bible it relates to paternity and therefore inheritance laws.

> the way that men dominate women through the dress code that degrades/humiliates/oppresses women ... the misogynistic attitudes that manifest in the various "honor killings"

This is in Islam but not in Christianity.

> Among the high points are the Crusades,

As far as the Crusades, yes, they were bloody slaughters, but so were the Islamic conquerors of the Middle East and Europe to which the Crusades were a military rebuttal. The brutality of the Islamic armies spreading out during Muhammad's life and after were just as rampaging bloody massacres as the Crusades. This is not to excuse the Crusades, but only to also implicate the Islamic expansion.

> Christianity’s central figure was created by the literary imagination of disciples and their followers

This is a total fabrication.


The entire post is just too long to deal with in a single response. What do you really want to talk about? Let's break it into pieces.

[Hopeful]

I asked him for a source on the “war” between 1962 and 1989 and he cited a couple scholars, but he says the best starting-point is the political theorist Chomsky.

See this explanation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SNDG7ErY-k4.

[jimwalton]

Thanks for that source. I agree with only a few things Chomsky claims, disagree with several, and know very little about political and religious events in South America in the 70s and 80s.

It's true that Christianity had a radical pacifist element. It was a belief system of turning the other cheek, of expecting persecution and submitting to it. But I disagree with Chomsky and Kung that the under Constantine the persecuted Christians became persecutor Christians. It's true they were released from prisons and their property was returned to some of them. The result was that they could live and worship freely and openly. As a result, they gave greater attention to evangelism, church building, and making disciples. Christianity grew rapidly in the Empire.

On the negative side, that tremendous growth brought a serious dilution to the level of spirituality and commitment in the church. Converts flooded to Christianity as a religion of hope and life, but many had political and social motives that had little to do with Christ. As a result, the church then started to decline.

Another effect of imperial favor was imperial interference. Constantine took it upon himself to step in whenever he deemed it beneficial to try to solve doctrinal problems that arose. This injected an element of politics into the doctrinal deliberations that were detrimental to the Church. It wouldn't be my evaluation that the Christians became the persecutors until centuries later with the political and power abuses of the Roman Catholic Church. During the Islamic invasion of the 600-700s that the Church took on an even greater political role, one that continued in its abuse until the 20th century. But this by no means characterized the whole Church, or even the True Church. There were many groups of Christians who were not part of the Roman system but instead followed the Bible. There were many branches of Christianity functional throughout history that were never part of Roman Catholicism.

So it turns out this "US war against the church" was not in North America at all. That's where I was confused. I'll admit to not knowing enough about the political and religious events of South America in the 70s & 80s to comment. The post made it sound like it was going on in North America (though now that I reread it it's easy to read it the way Chomsky was talking about it. Without that context, it was easy to misunderstand.).

I also don't agree that Christianity early on was a religion of the poor and suffering. It was a religion for all men and women, slave and free, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile. Though it appealed more greatly to the poor, there were many rich folks that came to Christ as well.

I also disagree with him that Christianity has ever since then been the religion of the rich and powerful. The strongest growth in Christianity in the past century has been in South America, Africa and China—anything but the rich, privileged and powerful. It has declined in wealthy Europe and also in America. Throughout history Christianity has always had great appeal to the poor.

So I'm still trying to understand. Is your other source trying to claim that Christianity was becoming too powerful in Central and South America, so the U.S. military stepped in to shut it down?

[Hopeful]

> So I'm still trying to understand. Is your other source trying to claim that Christianity was becoming too powerful in Central and South America, so the U.S. military stepped in to shut it down?

It was radical. It was called "left-wing" and "Marxist."

There's an excellent documentary on this called "The Houses Are Full of Smoke" that you can search on Youtube.

There's also a song about US-backed atrocities in Guatemala called "Rocket Launcher" by Bruce Cockburn. (But I'm not sure how related that stuff is to Liberation Theology.)

See this comment from Noam Chomsky:

"Well the major problems of the world are those that appear in the most powerful states almost by definition, because whatever affects them affects everyone. And the most powerful state in the world by orders of magnitude is the U.S., and it also happens to be one of the most extreme fundamentalist countries in the world. Extremist fundamentalist religion may well have a greater hold in the U.S. on the public than say in Iran, though I’ve never seen a poll in Iran. But I doubt 50 percent of the population thinks the world was created 6,000 years ago exactly the way it is now. This is actually strange because way back in American history to the time of the colonists, there have been eras of religious revivalism. Most recently we see this in the 1950s, which was a big period of religious revivalism. That’s how we get phrases like “In God We Trust” and “One Nation Under God.” Religious revivalism picked up again in recent years. Until recent years, it was not a major force in political affairs. That has happened in the last 25 years and it is now an enormous force – fundamentalist religion, not all religion by any means. So, for example, the U.S. has often been bitterly opposed to Christianity. That painting (points to a picture) is an illustration of the hatred of U.S. leaders for the Catholic Church. It was given to me 15 years ago by a Jesuit priest. It is a painting of the Angel of Death on one side with Archbishop Romero, who was assassinated, and right below are six leading intellectuals who were murdered by an elite U.S.-run battalion. That framed the decade of the 1980s: Romero was assassinated by U.S.-backed forces in 1980, Jesuit priests in 1989 and, in between, the U.S. carried out a major war against the Catholic Church. Many of the victims of (President) Reagan’s efforts in Central America were nuns, lay workers, and for clear and explicit reasons, which you can see officially stated, like the famous School of America, which trains Latin American officers. One of its advertising points is that the U.S. Army helped defeat liberation theology, which was a dominant force, and it was an enemy for the same reason that secular nationalism in the Arab world was an enemy – it was working for the poor. This is the same reason why Hamas and Hezbollah are enemies: they are working for the poor. It doesn’t matter if they are Catholic or Muslim or anything else; that is intolerable. The Church of Latin America had undertaken “the preferential option for the poor.” They committed the crime of going back to the Gospels. The contents of the Gospels are mostly suppressed (in the U.S.); they are a radical pacifist collection of documents. It was turned into the religion of the rich by the Emperor Constantine, who eviscerated its content. If anyone dares to go back to the Gospels, they become the enemy, which is what liberation theology was doing. So it’s a mixed story. However in the U.S., the more extremist, by comparative standards, religious movements did become mobilized into a political force for the first time in history really and that’s pretty much less than 25 years. It’s striking that this is one of the worst periods of economic history for the majority of the population, for whom real wages and incomes have stagnated while work hours increased and benefits declined, and inequality grew to staggering proportions, a dramatic difference from the previous 25 years of very high and egalitarian economic growth and improvement in other measures of human development. There is a correlation, common in other parts of the world as well. When life is not offering expected benefits, people commonly turn to some means of support from religion. Furthermore, there is a lot of cynicism. It was recognized by party managers of both parties (Republicans and Democrats) that if they can throw some red meat to religious fundamentalist constituencies, like say we are against gay rights, they can pick up votes. In fact, maybe a third of the electorate – if you cater to elements of the religious right in ways that the business world, the real constituency, doesn’t care that much about."

[jimwalton]

The Chomsky quote covers much of the same ground that we discussed in the last round. Is your point that Christianity is the most dangerous worldview on the planet and that it is ultimately detrimental to the wellbeing of humanity? And if so, what makes it so?

[Hopeful]

It's important to distinguish past from present.

Chomsky's claim is that since Constantine (important delineation!) Christianity has been a "global horror-story."

That doesn't necessarily mean that it's a horrible thing today, though.

The invasion of Iraq is arguably the worst crime of the 21st century (it was "aggression" by the textbook-definition, and therefore includes as part of the crime all of the consequences that followed, which would mean 100s of 1000s of deaths as well as the rise of ISIS and all of the horrors that ISIS has committed).

But it seems a stretch to say that the Iraq-invasion was a "Christian" crime. People who profess to be "Christians" did it. A predominantly "Christian" nation did it. But that's a tough argument to make, in my view.

There are accounts that Bush was rambling about the demons "Gog and Magog" being afoot in the East to the French President. I'm not sure if that's true or whether it would make the crime a "Christian" one in any meaningful sense...

[jimwalton]

> Chomsky's claim is that since Constantine (important delineation!) Christianity has been a "global horror-story."

With this I would not agree. Though the Christian Church has been the mastermind and instigator of far too many abuses, it is also responsible for many schools, hospitals, stable governments, just wars, relief to the poor, prison reform, the abolition of slavery, a formidable force for justice in the world, and working against human trafficking.

> The invasion of Iraq is arguably the worst crime of the 21st century

Again, I would disagree. Hitler's Holocaust, the war atrocities of Japan in WWII, Stalin's genocide of his own people, and the Rwandan genocide all eclipse the invasion of Iraq, in my opinion, in horror.

> But it seems a stretch to say that the Iraq-invasion was a "Christian" crime.

I would agree.

> People who profess to be "Christians" did it.

Some. George Bush professes to be a Christian, but I can't speak for the members of his cabinet, the officers in the military, and the political governing bodies that approved of the invasion. Certainly "American" ≠ "Christian".

> A predominantly "Christian" nation did it.

Again, I wouldn't necessarily agree with this. America is a nominal "Christian" nation (people claim they are), but a wiser examination of the population shows that only about 20% really are. Any of this is difficult, if not impossible, to prove with statistics, however. Statistics in this case may or may not be reliable.

> There are accounts that Bush was rambling about the demons "Gog and Magog" being afoot in the East to the French President.

This sounds pretty far-fetched. I would need some evidence to believe it.

[Hopeful]

> it is also responsible for many schools, hospitals, stable governments, just wars, relief to the poor, prison reform, the abolition of slavery, a formidable force for justice in the world, and working against human trafficking.

There's a problem with this logic, though. See this video: https://youtu.be/vdsoy-zw9J8?t=68. The basic point is that if religion has the power/wealth/privilege (tax-exemption, etc.)...then of course charities and so on will be religious.

Religious charities with established power/wealth/privilege "crowd out" non-religious charities that might be equally/more effective in doing good things in the world.

It's just a historical residue of religion's domination in our society.

[jimwalton]

Again I disagree. Religious charities are only part of Christianity. Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Jainism, Confucianism, and Buddhism have no such practices. Only Christianity is a religion of such help, infrastructure development, human concern, and social justice (Judaism does this part). Only Christianity uses its wealth, power, and influence to serve. It's not a matter of domination but rather of love for one's neighbor with no expectation of gain from it. (Sure there have been plenty of abuses through the eras of pseudo-Christians abusing their power and position. Though they are under the general heading of "Christian," there was nothing Christian about them except in name only.)