It is hard to discuss Islam sensibly in the current context, as whenever I try to express myself clearly I end up sounding too extreme in one direction or the other. I come out sounding either too much like George Bush and his conciliatory "religion of peace" position, or too far in the other direction and sound like blind culture warriors who grab out of context Koranic verses to show that Satan was Mohammad's co-author. Since I don't want anyone to misinterpret, let me start all over again and try to make this as clear as possible.

Let my start by saying that whatever I say is not intended to comment on the truth or falsehood of any faith. As I plan to use Christian, Jewish and Islamic examples, I am sure to offend just about everyone, but that should not be the case. I am not talking about the faiths, or their validity (in most cases), but instead man's interpretation of them. Man, being fallible, could take the most perfect divine revelation and turn it into something hideous, so to say that this or that way of looking at things is dangerous or inconsistent is not to fault the faith itself, only those who view it that way. Of course, as I do take a dim view of certain practices, such as many Wahabbi readings of the Koran, or the use of torture by the Holy Office, I suppose those who endorse such practices will still be offended, but that can't be helped. My point being that I do not dispute any faith's claims of divine revelation, but I reserve the right to dispute any man's reading of the same.

Several other issues before I begin.

First, I am a jew. I am very happy with my faith and have no intention of converting to anything else. That being said, I also believe in treating religion fairly. I have argued against those who unfairly malign Christians, and I will do the same for Islam. We must not set up two standards in these arguments. We cannot say, for instance, that the New Testament needs to be understood in context, then turn around and extract quotes from the Koran and read them literally. What we apply to one faith we must apply to all. And I am afraid the way some have been criticizing Islam would show Christianity and Judaism to also be barbarous if applied to them. If we are to be fair in our examination of things religious, we need to be consistent in how we assess these faiths.

Second, we need to clarify the difference between a prophet and the messiah in a Judeo-Christian-Islamic context. A prophet is merely a means through which G-d sends word to mankind, while a messiah is either G-d's agent or G-d incarnate, depending on one's specific faith. Whatever one believes the messiah to be, the morality of the messiah is a valid question, the morality of a prophet is not. G-d is free to pick any vessel to carry his message. Just as I can write true words with a broken pen, G-d can pick a damaged man (eg. Moses) to deliver a true message. My point being that, despite the excessive veneration current Islamic practice demands people show toward Mohammad, there is no need for Mohammad to be perfect or even good, just as there was no requirement of Moses to be good or Isaiah or Jeremiah being a good man. I am not arguing for the truth of the Koran, simply saying that pointing out failings of Mohammad himself logically does nothing to invalidate the Koran. Even if the criticism is simply that as the leader of the faithful he was flawed, it still is meaningless, for the same reason that pointing out the moral shortcomings of a specific pope does not invalidate the Catholic faith, or the shortcomings of Joseph Smith or Brigham Young does not invalidate Mormonism. Again, leaders and prophets are merely human, so I expect imperfections, even occasional outright rogues, that is in the nature of humanity.

Third, all religious laws are sensible only in context. Many have criticized Islam by pulling isolated verses from the Koran and said "see how barbaric this is". Yet this is the same method applied by atheist who mock Christianity, pulling verses from Leviticus and asking "so, do you keep slaves" or "have you stoned your daughter". Of course, Christians can argue that Christ's advent means that much of the Mosaic law does not apply, but  there is still the problem that, read literally, there exist contradictions in the New Testament. For example, the simple fact that the Gospels provide differing last words. I know the many readings which account for this, but my point is that we accept that Jewish and Christian holy books must be read in context, that we must allow for interpretation, but we are not allowing the same for Islam.

An even worse example are those who try to abide by this rule but do it badly. They look at the hadith and other secondary material, but they pick and choose to paint the picture they desire. It would be akin to me taking the Donation of Constantine and arguing that Catholicism is a megalomaniacal faith bent on world domination. Again, interpretations change with time, and, unless we are examining that specific historical period, older interpretations are meaningless unless current believers continue to view them as valid. To do otherwise is foolish. For example, by looking at documents before the Council of Trent only, one would think the Catholic church allows, but discourages, marriage among priests. Or one could look at older documents of the Mormon church and believe that the mainstream faith still practices polygamy. Even when looking at secondary materials, there is still more context of which one must be aware.

Fourth, those historical interpretations I mentioned are not necessarily meaningful. They can show the many possible ways the faith can be interpreted, I suppose, but they say nothing about the inherent nature of the faith. Or very little. One can see some general trends in the faith by looking at historical events, but it does not say anything about the nature of the faith. Just as looking at the Crusades, Torquemada, or the Ku Klux Klan says nothing about the inherent nature of Christianity, looking at the practices of the Ottomans or Abbasids says little about the inherent nature of Islam.

Now, perhaps I need to clarify that a bit. I have said before that Islam has a willingness to engage in holy war, and based that on historical events. I could also say Christian postmillenialism has a tendency to use government to enforce morality, as historically that has been true. Or post-Diaspora Judaism has a tendency toward political apathy, especially in the face of persecution. Those are all valid statements, but they are not the entire story. While they argue for a historical trend, and they may help point the future path, in general, the say nothing about any historical necessity. If we looked at Christianity at the time of the Crusades and immediately afterward, we would ahve seen violent conversions in eastern Europe, conquest in the Middle East, the birth of the Inquistion, the Albigensian Crusade, and soon the violent conversion of much of the New World and later the religious wars between Protestants and Catholics. From that example, we would have imagined that Christianity would continue in a history of violent conversion. However, the reality is that shortly after the discovery of the New World the period of violent conversion ended quite suddenly. My point being that those historical trends can end unexpectedly. So while Islam has in the past been prone to violence in the name of religion, it is in no way necessary that the trend will continue.

And that last example brings me to my fifth point. Many have argued that Islam is different as it was born in conquest. Now, it is arguably true that the nature of Islam was shaped by the fact that when it was founded it was founded with a state attached, rather than Christianity which began as a religion unwelcome in most states. But Judaism was born largely as a state religion, yet it lacks the characteristics many say came from Islam's birth, so I am not sure how valid that argument is.

But that was not my point. My point is that saying Islam was spread by conquest is to point out a truth, but hardly a distinguishing one. Almost all faiths, excluding those of very modern provenance such as Mormonism and Bahai, at one time or another spread through conquest. How did Christianity come to the Saxons? Charlemagne forced mass conversions. Or the Wends? Or Siberia? Conquest brought the religion. Even when religious conversion is not the purpose of the conquest, the conquest of a region almost always brings some conversion to the religion of the conquerer. But even if we limit ourselves to war conducted specifically for purposes of conversion, Islam is hardly unique. As I mentioned, Christianity fought wars of conversion as well. Even Israel was founded on the bodies of Canaanites.(Admittedly exterminated rather than converted, but the idea is similar.) To argue that a religion spread by the sword is to point out nothing unique.

Finally, we really need to make a distinction between a faith and the culture that faith engenders at a specific time and place. Many of the things we blame on Islam are not so much Islamic as the result of other cultural forces. For example, a lot of the opposition to the state of Israel was not so much religious as nationalist. Note that the opponents were the "Arab League" not the "Moslem League". The struggle against Israel might have used Islam as one argument, but by and large it was nationalist not religious in nature. And nationalism is a European, Christian and secular (and in the case of Reconstructionists, Jewish) stupidity, not an Islamic one. So, when we criticize the actions of various groups we have to be careful to distinguish between those things they believe because of their faith and those things they happen to believe that have nothing to do with their faith.

Now, with that lengthy preamble out of the way, let me explain my views on Islam.

Islam itself has produced both peaceful, civilized cultures and violent expansionist cultures. There is nothing inherently violent about Islam. Nor is there any greater tendency toward religious intolerance than in any other faith. The Ottoman Empire was the only truly polyglot empire for many centuries following the fall of Byzantium, far in advance of Europe in terms of religious tolerance. And for those who point to special taxes on non-Moslems, I would argue that it is hardly worse than Europe's gradual shift to the ghetto and later the shtetl for Jews. The period between Rome and the modern era was not a tolerant one for any faith.

However,m while historically Islam has had a variety of sects, allowing for multiple interpretations and a range of opinions, in recent times it has become (outside of the areas dominated by Shiites) quite uniform. With the control of Mecca by the Wahabbi version of the faith, Islam has become uniform and much less tolerant. At present to speak of Sunni Islam is almost universally of  Wahabbi beliefs. And unfortunately, the Wahabbi beliefs are strongly fundamentalist, intolerant and are mostly what the critics claim.

This is what I was trying to get across in my previous essay, that I have no complaint with Islam itself, but the present Wahabbi domination means that the dominant school of thought is problematic. It is also why George Bush's "religion of peace" arguments and attempts to minimize the role of Islam in the conflict are so wrong. Were there more variety in Islam, perhaps we would be able to appeal to moderates and we should couch our arguments in nicer terms. But it is not so. There is currently only one faith, and it is rather intolerant and extreme. The beliefs of the Wahabbi sect do not differ significantly from those of the militants. The militants' beliefs are nothing more than the logical outcome of Wahabbi intolerance and fundamentalism. Which means that at the present there is no silent moderate majority, there really are only extremists, those whose beliefs agree with the extremists, and varying degrees of secularism.

This does not have to be so. The differing schools of thought still exist, they simply have no voice. Wahabbi belief  silences all opposition through both their control of Mecca and access to Saudi oil money. However, were competing schools of Islam to arise again, it is quite possible that we could count on moderates existing, and Bush would be right to treat Islam gingerly so as not to drive off the moderates. But given today's circumstances that  is not the case. The only opposition to the Wahabbis at the moment is found in the Shiites, and thanks to the history of the Iranian revolution and the influence of the Iranian clergy among Shiites in other nations, the most prominent Shiite clerics are largely opposed to our interests as well.

Well, hopefully that helped clarify things a bit. I am sure everyone can find something with which to take issue, so feel free to comment.