Jesus, Jihad, and Peace

In the book of Genesis, when the young and old of Sodom surround Lot’s house, what does he do? He offers his two daughters to the mob. He says “I have two daughters who have known no man, I will give them to you to do with as you please, but do not harm the men who took shelter under my roof.” Then we have Judah, the future leader of a nation, who finds that his dead son’s widow is pregnant. He says “take her to be burned.” Now let’s look at these things clearly; Lot was going to throw two pubescent girls to a mob, and Judah was going to kill a pregnant women. What does this tell you about women’s rights in the Old Testament era?

As the bible progresses, the status of women changes. Women can inherit their father’s property, sue a man in court, and it’s all because the laws are codified. What does this tell you about Jewish habits over time? It tells you that they advanced and progressed, with regard to law and justice. Damages were fixed, slavery was set at seven years maximum, and there were rules regarding how the master could treat the slaves. If you ask a Talmudic scholar, he’ll tell you that Lot and Judah did nothing wrong, because they were “Bnei Noah,” meaning they came before the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. After that, laws had to be followed.

The author of this book tries to promote the idea that Islam, mainly in the Arab world, can’t have peace because it can’t have law and order. As for law and order, he thinks it can’t happen in the Middle East because it’s Judeo-Christian, and clashes with (what he believes is) a culture of revenge. He starts with Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit vendor who immolated himself over his treatment by the police. They were extorting him terribly, stealing every last penny he had. Going to the court was useless, because the citizen could not petition against the authorities. The author then describes the Arab dictators; Ghaddafi, Mubarak, and Assad; they were evil, but they made everyone get along and play nice. Then again, it had to be their way or you’d die. Under their rule, peace was achieved through force.

The chapter “The Prophet and the Koran” depicts Mohammed as an opinionated, self-righteous megalomaniac. Apparently the Jews had no problem with him at first, but his own tribesmen did. It was after the Jews refused to accept his “revelation” that he turned on them, conquering their cities and expelling them from Arabia. It kind of reminds me of Martin Luther, who became a raving anti-Semite after the Jews of Germany rejected his teachings. He thought it would be his crowning achievement; he’d thought he’d be the guy that finally got the Jews to say “hail Jesus.” But no, the Jews refused, so Marty goes haywire, writing that their Synagogues should be turned into pigsties, their books burned, their Rabbis forbidden to teach on pain of death. Now look at Mohammed and Martin Luther together; they had everything going for them, be it respect, followers, wealth, and fame. So why would they feel the need to trash the tiny minority that disagreed with them?

Two earlier books, titled “How Capitalism Failed the Arab World” and “How the West Won” tell us what the problem is. In the Middle East, the cultures are extremely combative, and that makes it hard to adapt to western ideas, even if they would strengthen Islam. In Tunisia, Mohammed Bouazizi’s trouble wasn’t just the police, but a female official who was allowed to spit on him publicly. The author believes that this insult to his manhood was too much for a Muslim man to take, and that Islam may have been the driving force behind the Arab Spring. Keep in mind, the Arab dictators were all followers of Ba’ath philosophy, which stressed Arab nationalism over Islam. Today, however, the Ba’ath party is finished.

Perhaps democracy and human rights can never come to the Middle East because they’re based on Judeo-Christian ideas? The idea of equality between the sexes is a European one, as are the right of all sexes to be educated. That doesn’t jive with Sharia, which is what a lot of Muslim worldwide want to see. At the same time, if only men can staff certain jobs, what does that say about the available talent pool?

I heard of an Iranian UN diplomat who said he didn’t like the UN Declaration of Human Rights, on the grounds that it was Judeo-Christian and at odds with Sharia. That’s fine with me, it’s his opinion, and I don’t live in Iran. But if Iran is a country where a woman can’t talk back to her husband, what does that say about how they’ll treat neighboring countries who disagree with them? The future looks pretty bleak.

On one last note, Judah probably was committing  a sin when he ordered his son’s widow executed. Under the “Noahide Laws,” all disputes have to be settled in courts of law, which Judah wasn’t doing. The biblical patriarchs weren’t as thoroughly decent as we’d like to believe. They had a long way to go.