Why Can’t We Be As Religiously Tolerant as Islam?

For some reason I had always been led to believe that Islam was a fairly intolerant religion. (I blame FOX News.) Turns out I had it completely backwards. Muslims are a Bible-loving people that like to invite Catholics over to the Mosque to pray in the name of Jesus.

At least that is the story two religion scholars, one from a (nominally) Baptist school, one from a (nominally) Catholic school try to pass off to a (nominally) well-informed religion writer at CNN :

The Quran teaches Muslims to respect the sacred books of Christians and Jews as well, says Chris van Gorder, a religion professor at Baylor University in Texas.

“To burn a holy Quran for a Muslim is to throw down a gauntlet,” he says. “Those who deface any holy book, including the Bible, in many Muslim countries today, will be executed.

“How many Bibles have been burned in the Muslim world in the last nine years? None.”

How many Bibles have been burned in Saudi Arabia? Zero. How many Bibles will you find in Saudi Arabia? Zero. It is illegal to posses that sacred book that Muslims revere in Islam’s most sacred country.

Muslims, along with Jews and Christians are known by some as “people of the book.” Each religion descends from the same branch. The prophet Abraham is their patriarch.

The Quran considers both Jesus and Moses great prophets. It also praises Mary, the mother of Jesus, says Shahin, the Notre Dame professor.

“Moses and Jesus are mentioned more than the Prophet Muhammad in the Quran,” Shahin says.

The Quran doesn’t just preach religious tolerance; the Prophet Muhammad demonstrated it in his life, Shahin says.

The prophet would meet Christian delegations in his mosque. “He would allow them to perform Christian prayers in the mosque,” Shahin says.

Whey would Christians need to pray in a mosque? Why don’t they just go to First Baptist of Mecca or St. Paul’s in Medina. Oh yeah, that’s right. Because there are no official churches in Saudi Arabia of any Christian denomination.

But it gets even better:

The Florida pastor who has threatened to burn the Quran has unwittingly evoked some of the worst moments in Western history, Strenski says.

When a group of people conquered another, they often sought to destroy their victims’ sacred books. The Spanish conquistadors and Christian missionaries, for example, destroyed the sacred books of the Mayans; American slaveholders tried to destroy the African religion of slaves.

Desecrating a people’s sacred book is like “destroying their soul; you destroy their sense of who they are,” Strenski says.

“It’s about controlling memory,” Strenski says. “You can oppress people. You can beat them down, but if they can retain some kind of memory of who they were before you beat them down, they can pass that on and when the time is right rise up again.

Isn’t this exactly what Muslims do to Christians and Jews and members of other faiths in Islamic countries across the globe? Isn’t forbidding the possession of a sacred text—a text Muslims supposedly revere—a way of controlling memory and beating them down?

It’s one thing for liberal academics to pass off such nonsense as if we should believe it. But shouldn’t a religious reporter working for CNN have been a bit more skeptical? Do they really believe we are all that stupid?

Update: In the comments section, Professor van Gorder has provided a clarification:

“Pewsitter” is correct about the 2007 Gaza Incident and I misspoke. Mea Culpa: I am reminded of the advice that my mother once gave me: “Never say never.” I was asked to provide a statement on my thoughts on the desecration of the Bible in the Muslim world.” I do not in the least deny that Bibles are forbidden. I wrote a paragraph which provided this nuance but, alas, such distinctions were lost. In any event, lesson learned: It would’ve been more accurate for me to state: “How many incidents have their been of publicly-staged Bible burnings in the past nine-years? None.” I should have then cited the Gaza event. The horrific event in Gaza was in the middle of a riot – there was nothing organized about it. Others have pointed out a host of other allegations about such events in varying contexts. Although it is possible that Bibles have been burned in other settings I personally only know of the Gaza event (the reported burning in Pakistan is not confirmed). No one is denying that Christians have and will not continue to face persecution in many Muslim contexts. It is also the case that some Muslims have been killed by Christians (e.g. Nigeria) and what is needed in such discussions is not a essentialist tit-for-tat which sounds more like the stuff of the playground (“We burn less than you burn . . . ”) but faith responses rooted in the heart of an interrelational, interfaith, and -yes, missiological priority. Whatever we say about those of other faiths it should be said in their hearing and in such a way that God is glorified.