Thanks for your kind reply and for pointing out that the OT does not “only report violent happenings” – as I wrote – but that in fact in the OT Yahweh actually commanded to do violence. I agree that my imprecision can be misleading and it is important to be precise and I am thankful for the correction. Also happy to assert that also God’s commands re violence in the OT are – according to my knowledge – limited in time and space and thus can not be used to justify violence in the present or future. And unfortunately the Koran contains commands which are not limited in time and space – open-ended. And I think that is the main and an important difference. A good read in that context is: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/696408/posts

You make an excellent point here. While I think your statement that “the OT does not command violence but only reports violent happenings in the past” can be misleading (since it doesn’t just report the happenings, it also reports Yahweh’s commands to do violence toward certain enemies), your overall point is very perceptive. It is not by coincidence that no Christians are using the violence in the OT to justify violence while many Muslims are using the Koran to justify their bloodshed. This seems to be because the Koran leaves the violence against the infidel open-ended while the OT does not.

Thanks for making this point.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to reconsider whether everything you were taught in school is correct. I don’t know what school you went to, but my guess is that the importance of accurately teaching the theology of both Christianity and Islam was not the foremost concern. At times I must confess that when I see the turmoil that exists and has existed between Christians and Muslims, I wish I could say that the Muslim god is the same as the Christian God. But I cannot. According to Christianity, God is necessarily a Trinity. He is three persons and one God. Islam strictly rejects belief in the Trinity and considers it absolutely false. The Koran is quite clearly antagonistic toward Trinitarian belief (Surah 5:116-117). This then is no slight difference between Christianity and Islam.

Christianity says that Christ is divine. He is the Lord of all creation and deserves our highest worship. Islam says that Jesus is just a prophet and not even the greatest prophet at that. These are irreconcilable differences between the two religions.

Imagine two people discussing a fellow named Bob. The first person asks the other if he knows Bob. The second person says, “Oh, yes. Bob is a tall black man who likes to ride roller costers.” The first person replies, “No, the Bob I’m talking about is a short chubby white fellow who hates roller costers.” At this point it is clear that they are talking about different fellows named Bob.

The fact that Christians worship Christ and not Allah relates to the reason that Muslims and Christians can’t agree on what constitutes the word of God. Christians cannot accept a book that claims to be the word of God but teaches contrary to the Christian Scripture in many ways.

Yes, now I remember. I guess it didn’t occur to me before because I was thinking of conquerors eating their enemies.

KWR

Thanks for commenting. I almost used Deut 20 to demonstrate my point but felt that the Numbers text more clearly showed the
brutality of haram. While Deut 20 gives a standard for attacking foreign cities that is less severe than the standard for attacking neighboring cities, (as KWR points out) I’m not sure this fact does much to morally distinguish the practice of haram from radical jihad. Perhaps we are missing the import of this distinction. If so please show us where.

Kevin,

2 Kings 6:28-29 contains the disturbing example of the the Aramite siege on Samaria which produced severe famine. In their struggle to survive, two women made a pact to cook and eat one lady’s
son one day and the other ladies son the next. After they ate one son the woman asked the other woman to give up her son so that they could eat him too, but the woman had hidden her son. The woman whose son was eaten asked the King of Israel to judge between them.

Now THAT’S a story.

I don’t think anyone is forgetting about the distinctions you describe. The question to be answered is how can we condone the Canaanite genocide carried out by Israel but condemn the genocide advocated by certain modern radical Muslims? The motivation behind both is the desire to be obedient to divine command.

John,

I forgot to ask in my last comment; what is the incident of cannibalism to which you refer? I don’t remember any.

KWR

Good points.

It is very difficult for people in our culture to see the answer because the notion of pluralism that dominates us rigidly forbids us to make any moral judgments about a religion (though it often seems quite willing to exempt Christianity from such protection against criticism). Once Craig brought himself (whether consciously or not) to disregard that (the highest of pluralist principles), the answer was exceedingly simple.

Actually, doesn’t nearly every ethical judgment requires us to defy–to some degree–that principle?

KWR