Is Islam Evil?

Editorial

      President Bush acts with kindness and wisdom when he speaks to Muslims about the virtue of their religion. I was particularly impressed when he spoke to Muslim children and reminded them that their religion is one of peace and goodwill. The kindness was that he said so when the United States and all non-Muslim countries are attacked by the Muslim faith and are declared to be evil. The wisdom of President Bush's remarks is that this might give impetus to the Islamic faith to mend its ways.
      There is also truth in President Bush's remarks. Islam does teach peace and does help those in need. Native decency is present in all people, whether or not that is clear in the basic literature. You and I know people of Islamic faith who are the salt of the earth. The problem is that Islam also teaches what is contrary to decency and peace and has structural practices that lead to stupidity and evil.
      During the Cold War we worried if the world would be destroyed by atomic bombs. We survived because both Russia and the United States had enough common sense to reject mutual destruction. With Islamic terrorism hatred of the United States and the modern civilized world is so extreme that the goal is to reduce the world to ashes. Hitler wanted to dominate the world, but he did not want to destroy it. Communism wanted to dominate the world because Communists believed socialism was superior to capitalism, but they did not want to reduce the world to ashes. No one, save bin Ladin, has advocated a primitivism that preceded the modern world that has been built with freedom, individual responsibility, and sacrifice. Become mad by a perverse ideology, bin Ladin will fail, of course.
      When we ask if Islam is evil, we realize that much of the present Muslim world does not condemn terrorism but makes excuses and blames the United States or Judaism for their dreadful behavior. I have yet to hear on television Islamic leaders who condemn bin Laden. In private, we are told, many Muslims are proud of the terrorists. The House of Saud condemns bin Laden, but this is an act of self-defense because bin Laden wants to destroy Arabia for permitting non-Muslims to walk on holy soil. What nonsense is this? We defame holy soil by walking on it? Is not sacredness because of accomplishment, and is dirt defamed by the feet of those of a different background from the founders? Is the Washington monument defamed because a fool looked at it and walked around the monument?
      One structural difficulty is that Islam elevates clergy, or the equivalent to clergy, to the highest level in the land. It is as though European lands were governed by biblical critics. A tradition of common law is absent. There is no growth of judicial dicta as we have known it, only diverse comment on the Koran. A thousand years ago, Islamic countries had great learning, more so than Christian countries, and a greater kindness to others, and better manners, but the imposition of the clergy has plunged them into ignorance. The result, rather than piety, has been incompetence, sectarianism, corruption, and anarchy that changed teeming, cultivated, learned, wealthy societies into ones of poverty and stagnation. The climate and land is as it was a thousand years ago. The people have changed.
      Some Islamic countries try to be independent of clergy, or try to operate their countries with common sense directed to problems, but the bulk of the people are without sophistication and terrorists in their midst makes decency difficult. Indonesia and Pakistan are in these categories. Iran is in the control of clerics although the people are not in favor of them. Iraq is ruled by a terrorist, and it is not clear Hussein is a faithful Muslim. The majority of Islamic countries in the Middle East are in trouble with each other and their citizens and it must be because of their religion. They are directed by nothing else. If this be the case, can we believe that Islam is a blessing?
      Muslims pray five times a day, called to prayer by civil authorities. We do not have time to define the meaning of prayer, but we may ask if Islamic prayer is genuine prayer. Five times a day the faithful prostrate themselves and repeat little statements such as Allah is Great. Allah is Great. Allah is Merciful. Allah is Merciful. Pledging themselves to obedience. I am filled with horror when I see grown men by the hundreds prostrate, thinking they are praying. The better thing is to stand straight, look someone in the eye, and ask what he means; to meet your opponent or your friend and ask him how he is or why he behaves this way or that. The Islamic habit is to pray and to act, and to kill if need be. Any religion that counsels killing can be called a religion only by torturing language. There is a worthy tradition in Christendom that rejected the old habit of kneeling because it prevented honest thought and manliness. Kneeling, some thought, was a technique to stifle doubt, a help to obedience-which it is in Islam.
      Mohammed was a brilliant soldier who began the traditional prayer habit for political purposes. It was the greatest stroke of genius ever invented by a soldier and gave Islam the military strength that conquered the world-until they ran into Mongol fanatics who were more bloodthirsty. As a soldier, Mohammed did not hesitate to kill his enemies. If they submitted to his dominance and gave him money and property, he was merciful. This is the teaching of a saint? Of course, he never claimed to be a saint. Why should we? He was a ruthless soldier who clothed himself in piety.
      The goal of Islam is to go to paradise where men will have unlimited sex with seventy-two virgins (!) and will never grow old, neither they nor the virgins. Not even the little children who will be a delight to the eyes of the saved will grow old. This is religion? The truly religious do not behave so they will be rewarded. They act decently because it is the proper thing to do. Virtue is its own reward. We raise our children to be good because goodness is ultimate. We get along in life by being nice to each other because we should be nice to each other. This axiom of decency is present in all civilized people but not, it would seem, in fundamentalist Islam.
      Was Mohammed an honest man; did he really believe what he said? If he wanted an extra wife, God could be relied on to give permission-and so with any controversial problem where he desired a particular decision. No civilized court of law would certify self-serving justification. His elevation of himself as the prophet of Allah was not because he thought he was divine, but a requirement of leadership. He believed that people would not accept what he said unless they thought it came from Allah, or God; so he said it did. There has never been a founder of a religion who was self-serving save Mohammed, and there never was a founder of a religion who was a complete soldier.
      That Islam is evil at the present time is beyond question-not the individual Muslims, but the religion they accept, or a dominating part of it. In Pakistan today there are 8,000 registered religious schools and 25,000 unregistered schools that teach hatred of the United States in the name of their religion. What kind of religion is that?
      The warrior tradition is old. Moslem historians rank Mahmus of the late tenth century as one of the greatest monarchs of any age. Before every engagement he knelt in prayer, asking God's blessings on his arms, and swept from Afghanistan to India, an advanced civilization of great wealth, slaughtering, pillaging, destroying temples and stealing the accumulated treasures of centuries. Each winter, for thirty years, he swept into India, giving his soldiers full freedom to pillage and kill. The holy war of the tenth century was dominated by a lust for wealth; the holy wars of today have little purpose except hatred. Which of the two holy wars is the most wicked?
      Christians have not always behaved in Christian fashion, as the modern world understands what it means to be Christian. In 1095 Pope Urban II launched a crusade to capture Jerusalem from what he called that accursed race of Islam, claiming Muslims defiled the holy ground on which Christ walked. For three hundred years they fought until they admitted defeat by a foe superior in morals, education, and culture. The Inquisition by the Catholic Church is one of the greatest stains on the Christian tradition, but the Protestants were also evil, though their sins were not quite as dreadful. They did not resort to torture. Luther stamped out Anabaptists and Swinglians in the sixteenth century, finding in the Bible counsel to put heretics to death, and the otherwise gentle Melanchthon did the same. Servetus said the doctrine of the Trinity was unintelligible and not in the Bible so the Catholics burned him in effigy and the Protestants burned him in the flesh.
      Christianity and Islam have mixed evil with good. How has the Christian tradition cleansed itself from the evil of former times-if we neglect Ireland for the moment? Christians have done so by an acquaintance of learning outside of their traditions; the conscience of the people challenged actions of the church that were improper. The Middle Ages and Renaissance brought knowledge of Plato, Aristotle, Aurelius, Cicero, Tacitus and a host of others who spoke of nobility and simple goodness. The eighteenth century brought rationalism, where the Christian faith and all of its doctrines were challenged as well as defended. The church was compelled to look at itself. The nineteenth century saw the rise of biblical criticism that showed the Bible to be a human compilation over the centuries, rather than the literal dicta of God. Stung to the core at first, the church became human, gentler, and far superior to what it had been with dogmatic intolerance. The weakness of the Christian tradition has always been a supreme belief in theory, the heritage of classic intellectualism, well meaning, but a substitute for simple behavior that was good in itself. There is a place for theory, but it is not an end in itself. Religion is concerned with behavior. Judaism has no philosophy of religion, thankfully, though it is bound by traditions.
      Islamic fundamentalism could learn from Jewish fundamentalism. In the eighteenth century the Jewish community was dominated by the rabbis' Talmudic dogmatism. Some Jews resolved to enter the stream of modern thought. They learned French and German, reading in the German literature Kant, Wieland, Herder, Schiller, and Goethe and in the French literature Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius, and d'Holbach. Entering secular education, they studied science and philosophy as well as the Bible and the Talmud. From that time to our day they have contributed to science, literature, music, and law far beyond their proportion in the population. So great have been their contributions that others have become jealous and looked on them as a superior people. If they are superior it is not because of greater gifts but by dedication, reaction to two thousand years of persecution.
      The United States has a peculiar and wonderful tradition that we believe, rightly, could be helpful to others. Other peoples can and should do what they want, but they might learn a thing or two from us. We established a constitution that was a framework for behavior in the political arena. The basic idea was not to state laws but give a framework of freedom so that laws could be made and changed under the guidance of the Constitution. We also had many founders who outlined principles of behavior that were not uniform but all decent, beginning with Washington, the Adamses, Monroe, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin. They gave us a corpus of literature around which we could evolve. Religion was a dominant part of this corpus but only an influence, not a legal demand. Other European countries had heroes; the distinction of the United States was its Constitution and peculiar heroes thrown up in the effort to write this Constitution. From the first day we believed in education, free and unfettered, so that colleges were founded as soon as the people settled. Free discussion of anything and everything was the norm. In the twentieth century we founded public libraries, which I suppose are in every hamlet of the land, available to all without charge. Unlimited learning and freedom are our heritage. This heritage made the United States of America what it is and has been, a shining light to any and all people.
      Islam must do what the United States has done and, in its religion, do what was forced on Christianity. A change may be coming due to the acknowledged wicked behavior of bin Laden, but fundamentalist Islamic clerics are largely in control and forbid learning outside their tradition. When Muslims achieve intellectual freedom they will achieve political freedom, and they will clean Islam of its present evil, restoring civilized behavior. Muslims must admit they could be wrong and others could be correct. By renouncing improper behavior and admitting some error in their traditions, they may become proud of themselves and win a future of peace with their neighbors. They will also increase their standard of living as they learn how to create wealth, which might modify jealousy of the United States.