A MOST astonishing and unnoticed development has come to the apologia for Islam. By apologia, I mean public comments by people who seem constitutionally unable to acknowledge the possibility that Islam can be read by its adherents to encourage or condone violence.
We first heard this from George Bush, who assured us that Islam was a religion of peace and that the 9/11 perpetrators did not reflect Islam.
We have heard the same since from a host of commentators, who all share one thing in common: they are not Muslims.
If I were a Muslim, I would be offended when non-Muslims told the world what Islam is.
There is one more point responsibility that needs to be cleared away before I can come to my main point: an astonishing liberal embrace of religious fundamentalism (which, of course, we will need to define).
The point on responsibility is this: I am responsible for what is done in the name of my religion. If my religion does not condone violence, but if some adherents of my religion engage in violence, I am responsible. I cannot say: That violent person was not practicing my religion.
A. J. Heschel said about the carnage during the Vietnam War: Some are guilty, all are responsible. As an American adult during the Vietnam era, I was responsible, even if I did not drop the napalm.
It was precisely this sense of collective responsibility that fueled the fierce anti-war protests of that era. If only the military or the political leadership were responsible, there would have been little rage.
A Christian cannot say about the Crusades in which Jewish communities were slaughtered: The Crusaders did not represent Christianity. If Christians killed Jews in the name of Christianity, Christianity was responsible.
If Baruch Goldstein killed Arabs in the name of Judaism, Judaism was responsible.
After that admission, it becomes the responsibility of religious people of good will to root out their violent, religiously motivated adherents.
OK, thats the necessary background. Back to Islam and a liberal take on it.
I READ in the New York Times (Aug. 22) about an Islamic couple in Afghanistan who was stoned to death for eloping, and about an Iranian woman convicted of adultery and condemned to stoning by an Islamic court.
I am already used to apologia that, somehow, can find a way to condone or diminish any outrage in Islam. The Times piece, for example, informed us that stoning is a legal punishment in only a handful of Muslim countries then proceeded to list six very big Islamic countries.
What I am not used to is the following apologia for Islam: Stoning is not prescribed by the Koran.
Think about that. Heres what it implies, or even says: If something is not written, it does not have validity. If you want to prove to me that Islam (or any other religion) believes something, show me where its written in their sacred scripture.
This is where we come to the definition of fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism is not adherence to, or belief in, an immutable holy scripture per se. That is not fundamentalism. Fundamentalism, rather, is adherence to an immutable religious text, absent any, equally authoritative, parallel interpretation of that text.
In Jewish history, the Karaites were fundamentalists. Because the Jewish scripture, the Hebrew Bible, says not to kindle a light on the Sabbath, the Karaites sat in the dark. They denied the validity of the Oral Torah, under which the idea of sitting in the dark on the Sabbath is ludicrous.
Orthodox Jews are not fundamentalists. They adhere to an immutable and authoritative religious text, together with an equally authoritative oral interpretation, the Oral Torah.
I am not prepared to say whether Islam is, or is not, fundamentalist. I dont know enough about the religion to say. I make a different point: In order to excuse, apologize for, overlook and diminish the fact that people commit violence in the name of Islam such as stoning a liberal writer in the New York Times finds it useful to write: Stoning is not prescribed by the Koran.
In other words: If its not written, it is not Islam.
To be sure, the writer goes on to acknowledge the existence of the hadiths, the Islamic legal traditions, but explains them away with the idea that their prescription of stoning for adultery merely reflect[s] the values of Arabian society at the time of Muhammad, Islams founding prophet.
There you have it: Stoning is not in the Islamic scripture, and, as for its presence in an oral tradition, thats just old, outdated, antiquated, i.e., inessential, teaching.
The implication is perfectly clear: Fundamentalism taking the written Koran to be the entire reflector of Islam tells us that stoning is not Islamic, and Muslims who stone do so outside the teachings of Islam.
One liberal writer will grasp at anything even fundamentalism to let Islam off the hook.
Again, just to be perfectly clear, I am not saying that Islam is fundamentalist; I dont know enough to know. I am not accusing Islam per se of condoning stoning: I dont know enough to know. I do know that a liberal who presumably is also uneducated in Arabic and in Islam will grasp at any straw such as the very fundamentalism condemned in other contexts and other religions to apologize for Muslims who commit stonings in the name of Islam.
For which Islam, distorted or not, is responsible.
Some are guilty, all are responsible.
Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News
