I make a point to be friendly when I meet foreigners who are visiting the United States. I ask where they are from, smile, tell them that I hope they enjoy their stay in our country. If I can, I try to make some gesture acknowledging their culture. I figure that providing a friendly face for America, even on this small scale, makes a little contribution to international relations.
One night last year—before September 11—I was out buying some DVDs in one of those big, cavernous electronics warehouse stores, the kind so massive that they have an employee assigned to do nothing but point customers toward the next open cashier among several dozen on duty.
That night the employee pointing customers to cashiers was a young woman with a headscarf. She was clearly Muslim and looked Indonesian to me. I thought, as a way of being friendly, I might tell her “Nice pasa malam you have here.” (The pasa malam or “night market” is an important part of Indonesian culture where people go shopping in the evening.) Since Muslims tend to assume that all Americans are Christians, being nice to her would send a double message: Not only can Americans be nice, Christians can be nice.
Before joking about the pasa malam, I asked where she was from, and she surprised me by saying, “Yemen.”
As I paid for my DVDs, I tried to think of what greeting would be used in Yemen, and as I passed her on my way out, I waved and said, ” Salaam.”
“Salaam,” she replied.
I smiled, then went home with my DVDs.
The next morning two jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center at the behest of another Yemeni—Osama bin Laden.
In the confusion, anger, and grief of that day, I thought of the woman I had greeted the night before. I knew that her experience of America was about to change, that there would be reprisals against Muslims, that she would be afraid to be seen in public with her headscarf, and that people probably would say cruel things to her based on her religion and national origin.
I was glad that I had the opportunity, on the eve of the unspeakable horror, to show her a different side of America. I hoped that she would remember that Americans and Christians can be friendly and that this might in some way serve in her heart as a preparation for the gospel.
The news in the coming days recorded the expected reprisals against Muslims in the U.S., but mercifully there were not nearly as many as there could have been. Most Americans understood that ordinary Muslims could not be held accountable for the actions of their terrorist co-religionists. Indeed, people did so well in this regard that some Muslims commented that the American public was handling the situation “a lot better than we would” if the situation were reversed.
The perception was shared by many that Muslims would have reacted violently against ordinary Americans in their midst if American terrorists struck one of their nations.
Despite this, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 there were a lot of words said to play down the idea of Islam as a religion of violence. President Bush went on TV and said a lot of nice things about Muslims being peaceful people. He had photo ops with Muslim leaders. Various Muslim apologists came out of the woodwork to tell us that “Islam is a religion of peace.”
Some hearing this drumbeat were indignant, sensing that considerations of political correctness were at work. I myself didn’t mind these blandishments, because nobody was really meant to believe them. Americans weren’t expected to believe that Muslims are actually a bunch of pacifists except for Osama bin Laden’s gang. Neither were Muslims expected to believe that Americans viewed them in such a ridiculously positive light.
All this was the language of diplomacy. It was meant to accomplish certain goals, not get people to believe what was said. The goals were (1) to keep Americans from conducting reprisals on innocent Muslims in greater numbers and (2) to keep the issue from being framed in terms of America versus Islam, causing the Muslim world to band together and World War III to start. These goals were achieved (at least for the moment), for which we can all be grateful.
Of course, that still leaves us to assess Islam’s actual potential for violence.
Characterizing almost any religion as being “of violence” or “of peace” is overly simplistic. As Solomon pointed out, “For everything there is a season; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time for war, and a time for peace” (Eccl. 3:1, 3, 8). That’s the way of a fallen world, and every religion capable of serving as the basis of a culture has recognized both the need for peace and the need for the use of violence in certain circumstances.
Sects that are pacifistic have to rely on the good graces of others who are willing to use violence to protect them. Sects that are devoted to violence don’t survive long since they either kill themselves off or are broken up by their neighbors as a matter of self-protection. For a religion to serve as the basis of a culture, it must both seek to preserve peace in substantial measure but also be willing to use force. All the major world religions tend toward this mean.
Still, some religions are more inclined to violence or peace than others. Of the three major western religions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-Islam has the greatest potential for violence. This can be seen by considering the natures and the founders of the three.
Though belief in the true God goes back to the dawn of mankind, Moses founded Judaism in its traditional form. Evaluated politically, Moses could be considered a warlord, leading the tribes of Israel toward the Promised Land and the conquest that would follow. The Old Testament contains numerous commands to use violence to protect and promote the nation of Israel. This potential for violence is limited by the fact that Judaism is a religion for just one ethnic group that, in the Bible, is confined to one territory.
Christianity is a pan-ethnic religion, meant for all peoples in all countries. It has much greater reach, but much lower intrinsic potential for violence. Its founder-Christ-was a martyr who refused to fight to save his life. Though the New Testament recognizes that the Old Testament revelation is from God and that violence is sometimes justified, it does not contain new commands to use violence, as Christianity was not to be allied from its birth to a state as Judaism was.
Islam’s founder, Muhammad, was a warlord who rose from nothing to be the virtually undisputed master of the Arabian Peninsula. The holy book he produced is filled with commands to use violence in the service of its religion and nation. This potential for violence is similar to that possessed by Judaism except it is immensely augmented by the fact that Islam, like Christianity, sees itself as a pan-ethnic religion meant for all peoples in all countries. It therefore has been willing to employ violence on a massive scale, as illustrated by the first century of its existence, when the Islamic Empire exploded outward and conquered much of the known world of the time.
Among the many passages exhorting violence in the Qur’an is the command to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them” (Q 9:5). This was a command to use conversion by the sword against the polytheists living in Arabia at the time.
The Qur’an does indicate a somewhat less harsh treatment of Jews and Christians. As “people of the Book” (i.e., followers of Scripture), Jews and Christians get to be treated as second-class citizens rather than be given a simple choice to convert or die. In being reduced to second-class citizenship, they would have to pay a special tax, acknowledge the political superiority of Muslims, and live in subservience. If they refuse to do these things, they too would be killed. The Qur’an states: “Fight those who do not . . . follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book [i.e., Jews and Christians], until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection” (Q 9:29).
Of course, there are people of peace and people of violence in all the major religions. There are violent Christians. There are peace-loving Muslims. Changing historical circumstances do much to bring out tendencies toward violence and peace among the followers of different religions.
After 9/11, when presenting Islam as a religion of peace, some Muslims apologists asserted that even its name means peace. They pointed out that the word islam is based on the same root (s-l-m) that is behind the Hebrew word for peace, shalom.
While Arabic and Hebrew are related languages, not everything based on the s-l-m root means peace. Indeed, the normal meaning of islam is submission. To the extent that it signifies peace, it indicates the peace that exists when one party is in submission to another, not the friendly peace that exists between equals.
Further, the islam that the religion is named after is not peace between man and man but between man and God-divine peace though submission to God, not peace among men. The portrayal of Islam as a religion of peace based upon its name thus falls into the category of “useful fiction” for Muslim apologists.
In actuality, the normal Arabic word for peace is an s-l-m derivative, but it is not islam. It’s the word I used the night before 9/11 as a gesture of Christian and American goodwill to the Yemeni clerk: salaam.