More on Islamic Aggression
April 15, 2011
VAN WIJK writes:
Peter S. wrote: “The God of Deuteronomy is, of course, none other than God the Father, the first Person of the Triune Godhead. Although this same God is – on the basis of repeated Koranic insistence – the God Muslims understand themselves to worship, nothing of this severity appears in the Koran, which, on the contrary, bears injunctions against aggression in war and towards the cessation of conflict.”
I’m sure Peter will be surprised to learn that the annihilation of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe is mentioned in the Koran. After the tribe’s surrender, between 400 and 900 men and boys were summarily beheaded and the corpses thrown into a trench that the Muslims had dug earlier. One Jewish woman apparently went insane after seeing her son and husband decapitated, and since she would not stop screaming, the Muslims beheaded her as well. The wealth of the tribe was distributed among the Muslims, as were the women and girls. All of this was ordered and supervised by Mohammed.
The rest of Peter’s comment is simply a rehashing of the same tiresome apologies that are currently fashionable, and which can no doubt be found in most of the books Peter referenced. One can make a good faith argument, however misguided, that Islam has been judged too harshly, but Peter gives the game away when he mentions the “bloodless” conquest of Mecca (while ignoring the many campaigns that Mohammed led or ordered and implying that conquest isn’t so bad so long as it’s bloodless and brings about a greater good) and the supposed mandate under Mohammed that all religions should live together peacefully (according to the hadiths, Mohammed ordered his commanders to fight infidels until they converted or paid the jizya tax). All the churning of academia, which Peter seems to have embraced with enthusiasm, cannot erase the fact that modern mujaheddin are using the same quotes and arguments that their predecessors used during the latter’s endless conquests of sovereign territory. Islam would not have survived if it wasn’t extremely aggressive.
