By Flip Huggenvik
Big Spring, MN
I am compelled to respond to the commentaries written by Judy Ellestad Sayed and Aaron Schwartzentruber on interfaith dialog conversation…compromises between the Christian faith and the Muslim faith.
“Can’t we all just get along?” Ha!
Members of both faiths have strong convictions and some, like Judy, believe we can listen to the other side, respect their beliefs and get along. Aaron claims that entertaining the Muslim beliefs compromises core Christian beliefs, and should be rejected.
Let’s take for example three events in the Bible: We all know about Adam and Eve in the garden, Abraham and descendants, and Moses’ adventures in Egypt and the Exodus. Mohammad’s version of these three events in his early writings have a much different, more gentle and forgiving version of how his Muslim god “Allah” handled it all in comparison to the harsh and unforgiving Jewish God “Yahweh.” Mohammad paints a kinder and loving version of God (his Allah) that changes. It changes after his first version of his Qur’an was rejected by the Jews.
Mohammed wrote the first version of the Qur’an after he claimed to have been visited by the angel Gabriel in a cave. (Actually Mohammed didn’t write anything because he was illiterate so the Qur’an was transcribed) He was shown the “truth” (a correction) to the Jew’s beloved documentation of God’s inspired Word, and history of His people…the people of Israel. Mohammed’s gentle “correction” were written in the city of Mecca and were intended to win over the Jews and Christians to his new heavenly revelation. The Meccan Qur’an emphasized tolerance, tranquility, and acceptance through submission to Allah.
The Jews rejected this new self-proclaimed prophet and his version to their Holy Scriptures. This greatly upset Mohammed. He became more and more vocal in his preaching and was forcefully requested to leave Mecca.
He and his converts made their way to Medina. He waged war against the Jews in Medina, beheading 600 to 900. His new revelations in his writings in Medina became much more violent, and negated the peaceful intentions of the earlier Meccan “Surahs.” If one is quoting from the Mecca Qur’an and there is a contradiction in the Medina Qur’an, the quote is no longer valid. The Surahs in the Qur’an are not written in chronological order, making it less straightforward to non-Muslims.
The Medina Qur’an contains many violent commands from Allah to “kill the kafir,” (non-Muslims) but the most famous is Surah 2:191. “Slay them wherever you find them and drive them out of the place where they drove you, for persecution is worse than slaughter.”
For Jews and Christians, this is pretty hard to take. But Jesus did say “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Aminur says
Just because Islam is a peaceful religion, it does not meant that it is a pacifist religion and that
Islam was in war in order to defend itself. In Islam, war should be only used at the last resort and that a certain number of rules follow along with it for e.g not to destroy places of worship, to not even hurt a plant etc.
In the Qur’an it highlights that Muslims should treat the People of the Book (Jews, Christians) with love, compassion and care.
Islam is a perfect and beautiful religion that is often taken out of context and not delved into enough and it would be nice if people got a free Qur’an and read all of it throughout and not certain lines.