April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
OUR NEIGHBORS' FAITH
Is there an 'evil religion'?
Two events that I read about last year were particularly disturbing. The first involved an insurgent group that had camped in an area where food was plentiful; however, they had trouble finding adequate provisions for themselves, because the local farmers preferred to sell their harvest to the government rather than accept the paper money that the insurgents had printed.
To make the farmers more cooperative, one leader of the insurgents issued an order that any farmer caught taking his food to government locations would be shot and left by the side of the road as a warning to others.
Not long after that, I happened to read some disturbing passages from the sacred scriptures that were read by the insurgents. One passage in particular required exterminating every person in a city that had been conquered.
What made the incident particularly troubling was that it occurred at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War; the insurgents were soldiers of the Continental Army. The story is recounted in "American Creation" by Joseph Ellis. Of course, the sacred Scripture of this group was the Bible.
More recently, there was a news report from the Central African Republic which began, "Tens of thousands of Muslims are fleeing to neighboring countries by plane and truck as Christian militias stage brutal attacks, shattering the social fabric of this war-ravaged nation."
I think of these accounts whenever anyone tells me that Islam is an evil religion. This is not to downplay the evil done by ISIS and others who say they act on the principles of Islam; but, as Philip Jenkins of Baylor University's program on historical studies of religion writes, "The Bible contains far more verses praising or urging bloodshed than does the Quran, and biblical violence is often far more extreme, and marked by more indiscriminate savagery.
"The Quran often urges believers to fight, yet it also commands that enemies be shown mercy when they surrender," he notes. "Some frightful portions of the Bible, by contrast, go much further in ordering the total extermination of enemies, of whole families and races -- of men, women and children, and even their livestock, with no quarter granted."
In the end, the most important aspect about a religion is not whether its sacred scriptures contain verses of violence, but how those verses are interpreted.
For example, it seems that almost every doomsday cult has a scriptural basis for its beliefs. White supremacist groups also claim that Scripture supports their racist views. Neither fact should take away from the importance of the particular religion.
To be specific, theology trumps random texts. Here is just one example: Both supporters and opponents of the death penalty cite Scripture to support their position. In the Catholic tradition, the Pope, as head of the Church, helps determine the official Church position on this specific issue. Other Christian denominations may not always agree.
In faiths like Islam, where there is no central governing institution, individual clergy may decide where they stand on particular issues. Thus it is that the leader of one church, mosque or synagogue may take a stand on an issue that directly contradicts the position by another leader on the same faith in the same town.
Public perception is important, as well. Several years ago, a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 83 percent of Americans say self-proclaimed Christians who commit acts of violence in the name of Christianity are not really Christians. In contrast, only 48 percent of us say that self-proclaimed Muslims who commit acts of violence in the name of Islam are not really Muslims.
Familiarity, it turns out, can breed understanding instead of contempt.
How many Christians know that the Quran respects Jesus as a great prophet, or that an entire chapter of the Quran is named for Mary, who is held in high esteem?
The issue is not whether the scriptures of one faith have more references to evil than the scriptures of another faith. Rather than condemning an entire tradition for what some of its followers claim, we should be recognizing those whose theology promotes love and truth.
The real issue is whether we listen to the reasonable voices of a religion's leaders or to the claims of those who use random texts to justify their evil deeds.
(Deacon Ayres is director of the Albany Diocese's Commission on Peace and Justice.)[[In-content Ad]]
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