I’m replying to several posts of the last few days.
First, Surah 4:34 about beating your wives. There is a long convoluted explanation (“proof” they call it) in
www.answering-christianity.com on the subject, and perhaps that’s where Matthew Light is getting his information. There are several problems, but one is certainly that earlier commentators had no hesitation in saying the word “daraba” meant “beat.” I checked Lane’s Lexicon, and can’t find the meaning “leave” for “daraba.” And of course there are numerous hadith about beating your wives–with Muhammad condoning the practice. There are all the “rules” about beating them lightly, with a branch no thicker than x, etc. etc. which indicates that all these commentators took the meaning as “beat.” There are no hadiths I am aware of that talk about “leave.” And “leave” doesn’t make much sense in context, because step 2 of dealing with a disobedient wife was, in fact, “leaving” them in the sense of not sleeping with them. So for step 3 to be “leave them more” doesn’t have logic behind it. To make the case for “leave” I think you would have to go back to the early commentators and show that’s how some of them interpreted it, and then you would have to find some hadith to contradict the hadith that clearly talk about “beating.”
A parenthetical note: when I was in college, one of my Arabic professor was Mukhtar Ani, a Syrian, and an anthropologist. He repeated over and over how you heard a lot of yelling, but you never saw any actual violence in Egypt. Well. Mukhtar needed to take his blinders off–I saw traffic accidents where the drivers beat each other to bloody pulps. Our apartment overlooked an elementary school, where every morning at PE class the teachers would smack 7-8 year olds with thick canes. They would also kick them until they fell over, then kick them some more as they were on the ground (7-8 year olds, remember). Once some guy jumped on my back during a festival and started screaming stuff about Viet-Nam. A mounted policeman dragged him off me and trampled him. In al-Azhar Square, some guy waiting with us for the light to change glanced at my wife (glanced, not touched). A policeman standing there smacked him a few times with his baton. I saw a lot more… So what I’m saying is that this is a culture of violence (sorry, M. Light, but it is). So we shouldn’t be surprised if the Qur’an suggests beating your disobedient wife.
Matthew 10:34: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Yes. But read the story–what he is saying is that people will disagree whether to follow him or not: “father against son, mother against daughter…” etc. It’s not about killing people, it’s about disagreements, and Jesus is simply saying that by announcing his mission, he will causes disagreements.
As for the story about the king telling his servants to go out and bring people from the streets into a feast, first, it’s a story! If I tell the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, I’m not advocating cannibalism, I’m telling you what the giant did. In the story, Jesus is telling you what the king did. And second, there’s nothing violent even in the story–he simply getting them to come to a feast. A lot of criticisms of the Gospels are phrased the same way–they criticize a story Jesus is telling. But the details of the stories don’t matter anyway–it’s the message.
As for Robert the Monk and his strory about Urban II preaching the Crusade, yes, Urban is urging his audience to take up arms and recover the Holy Land. But there’s no Gospel quotations justifying killing etc. He simply uses the Gospels to talk about loving God more than your mother and father, etc.–in other words, very general quotations; nothing about violence.
Abrogation: This, for me, it one of the most telling arguments against Islam. Some Muslims argue that the Qur’an does NOT have any abrogated verses, and certainly you can quote the Qur’an where it talks about it being complete, it should have nothing added to it, etc. etc. On the other hand, a number of Muslim scholars say there are abrogated verses. There are three problems here: 1) the number of abrogated verses increases over time (al-Zuhri mentions 42;, al-Nahhas 138, and Ibn Salama, 238, at which point an upper limit seems to have been reached. Ibn ‘Ata’iqi identifies 231 abrogated verses, and al-Farsi, 248). So that’s pretty suspicious. 2) Next, there is obviously no agreement among scholars about which verses are abrogated. Some later scholars reduce the number (al-Suyuti, d. 1505 only found 20). 3) logically, the whole idea of God contradicting or correcting himself–despite the verse that say “God can do anything” is pretty iffy. I wouldn’t buy it. Maybe God can do anything, but why would he fool those who believe in him? Why would he tell them something that years later he would contradict? Doesn’t make any sense.
As for the famous 9:29 and violence, keep in mind that Bin Ladin himself quoted it in an early al-Qaeda video. I’m not saying Bin Ladin is the world’s authority on the Qur’an, but what I have said in various places over and over and over is that Islam CAN BE USED to justify terrorism. And it is.
As for the
armyofgod.com/ link about abortion, there’s nothing in there that quotes the Gospel as justifying violence. Nothing.
Someone else talked about Catholics and Protestants criticizing each others “beliefs and practices.” Of course–but again, that’s not my point. My point is that neither side thought the other was somehow “outside” of Christianity. Catholics always recognized the Protestants as Christians, and vice versa. Maybe they didn’t have nice things to say about the Pope, but that’s a different matter.
