What is your opinion of Islam? Of Mohammed?
Well, I interviewed several Islamic guys, about 15 years ago, for some TV reports about a local university (in a state in the South) that had a lot of students from Arabia (from various countries). I found them to all be peculiar. I’ve interviewed other foreigners (Christians and Jews), including Christian Arabs, but I haven’t found them to be peculiar. I’ve met many Christian Arabs in my life, mostly Catholics, and they seem like “normal” people. So, I guess I’m a Judeo-Christian type of guy, since I grew up in our type of American culture, and Islamic people seem to me to have odd ideas about the world.
Ok, so one of these Islamic guys at the university invited me to his apartment one night to give me the lowdown on Islam and the Koran. What he wound up doing was preaching to me out of the Koran, and he tried to convert me. He actually “thumped” his Koran like a Pentecostal revivalist preacher thumps his Bible. What he said was not violent at all, and, frankly, it didn’t seem too much out of the ordinary, so I guess he was quoting some of the stuff that is similar to some of the “Old” and “New” Testament material of my Bible. In fact, the Koran seems to be modeled quite a lot like the Judeo-Christian Bible.
To the guy who preached to me, the Koran is the “Third” Testament. The “Old” Testament is “ancient Jewish history”, the “New” Testament represents Christian/Gentile history, and the “Third” Testament (the Koran) is for the “enlightened Arabs” to give to the rest of the world to set the world “straight” about all the “errors” that Islamics claim are in the “Old” and “New” testaments of the Judeo-Christian Bible.
At the end of the evening, I politely explained to him why I could not “convert”, and just before I left, he gave me his copy of the Koran, and I still have it. During the next several months after our encounter, I read through it and I didn’t find it any more “violent” than the “Old Testament” of my Bible. In fact, if a good peaceful Protestant preacher quoted from it, he could select plenty of nice peaceful verses to quote. However, I noticed that in the copy the Arab gave me, about half or more of it was filled with “interpretation” essays about the various verses. So, the ancient text itself wasn’t so bad, but the “interpretation” essays were rather hostile and harsh, and tended to be very anti-Christian and anti-Jewish.
I had asked that Arab guy why the Shiites were so “violent”, and he told me it had something to do with the way they “interpreted” the Koran. They used the same book, but they had a different way of interpreting it.
I generally consider myself to be fully capable of “interpreting” simple texts myself, so as I read the Koran, from a Christian perspective, I disagreed with a lot of the “interpretation” essays that that particular version contained.
Now, after thinking about it for the past fifteen years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the biggest problem with Islam might have to do with the various “leaders” of the religion, who tend to promote war as part of their personal beliefs, i.e. their own “interpretation” of the parts of the Koran that do mention war.
We could compare those warlike and violent leaders with some of the more militant Jews and Christians who are very willing to go to war and wipe out all their perceived “enemies”. Like, for example, a KKK “chaplain”. I met a few of those back in the South in the old days, when I was doing news stories about the Klan. A Klan chaplain thumps the same Bible my preacher thumps, but he tends to quote a lot of the “blood and guts” stuff from the “war” verses of the Old Testament, whereas my preacher tends to quote from all the “love thy neighbor” parts of the New Testament. You know, the Judeo-Christian Bible has both “war” and “peace” in it, and depending on how it is quoted, it can be interpreted as being either “peaceful” or “violent”.
So, there might be “peaceful” Islamic people somewhere – such as the millions of Afghan refugees – for example. “Peaceful” Islamics might be shy and quiet, while the violent hateful leaders, such as the Taliban, might keep the more “peaceful” Islamic people subjugated.
Seems to me that these people are primitive. The followers are illiterate, which permits the so-called "educated" fanatics to mislead the masses, whip them into a frenzy, to murder, murder, murder, with the illegitimate promise of "allah's paradise."
You are right. When I see the smiles on the “nice” Afghan refugees, and the women who have taken their burkas off, I think that a few good revivalist preachers could convert these people with just a few sermons, because they’ve already got the “peaceful gene”. The Taliban men have the “violence gene”, and I doubt if they could be converted. They are just downright mean and savage.
Most American Jews I’ve met seem to have the “peaceful gene”, and they could convert a lot of people around the world too, just like the Protestants, if they wanted to, but they don’t seem to want to.
Too many of the Mohammedanites "thrive" on hatred. That's taught, not bred, don't you agree?
Well, I think it’s a little of both. Take the German people, for example. Back in the ‘20s, vast numbers of them were peaceful. Then in the ‘30s and ‘40s, a few violent Nazis whipped them up into a frenzy of hatred, and after years of propaganda, many of the young men were ready to murder innocent people, and the German women were willing to overlook it. The same with the Japs in the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s.
I think that if left alone, many of the world’s people would tend to be peaceful farmer/worker types, but when whipped up into a frenzy by a few guys who have the “violence gene” and a bunch of guns, I think just about any large group of people can be trained to become violent.
The thought strikes me that perhaps because Islam is iconoclastic, as well as fundamental, that the avenues of sublimation of aggression through art and music are closed to them. Western culture, despite its shortcomings, has produced many an artist or musician who might otherwise have taken up the sword.