Feature
Can Jesus
Save Islam?
The Promising Effects of Christ on Other Cultures by David Marshall
Since the attack on the World Trade Center, two questions have troubled public consciousness. First, what ails Islam? And second, what can set it right?
We have come to recognize, in retrospect, that the problem is not a matter of one or a dozen isolated incidents. Much of the Muslim world has been revealed as a mosaic of “failed societies” that suffer from poverty, dictatorial governments, and feudal power structures that oppress women and religious minorities. Furthermore, as Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington infamously pointed out, “The borders of Islam are bloody”: These problems are not retained within Islam but have sparked a series of clashes from Nigeria to Indonesia, Mindanao to Xinjiang.
Observers have offered a variety of explanations and suggestions. Oddly, though, the simplest and most obvious answers to these two questions have seldom been mentioned: the names of the two great Muslim prophets, Mohammed and Jesus.
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, a consensus quickly became evident that Mohammed would not be implicated in the problems of modern Islam. At heart, Islam is “good and peaceful,” said George Bush, “incredibly tolerant,” claimed Tony Blair, and “a religion of peace and moderation,” according to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad. Following the lead of scholars like John Esposito and Edward Said, journalists agreed. Terrorists “warp the words of Islam’s founding texts to channel noble thoughts into ghastly deeds.”1 Mohammed “reiterated the need for tolerance to people of all denominations.”2 In fact, “Nothing in the Koran, Islamic theology or Islamic law in any way, shape or form justifies ramming two airliners into civilian buildings.”3 Even conservative scholars like Bernard Lewis and Bat Ye’or shied away from blaming Mohammed himself, preferring publicly to ascribe the militant interpretation of the doctrine of jihad to later Islamic jurists. Huntington saw high birth and unemployment rates as the problem, contemptuously denying that “seventh-century religious doctrines” could affect how folk behave today.4
Others claimed that the West was the real culprit, for the Crusades, colonialism, support of Israel, or indifference to democracy in the Middle East. Anak Agung Banyu Perwita argued in the Jakarta Post that conflicts in the Muslim world were the fault of the United States for its support of “friendly tyrants.”5 Dr. Yuzo Itagaki, who heads the Islamic study group in the Japanese Foreign Ministry, claimed that the Muslim world had only been held back from democracy by “adroit regional control maintained by Western powers” for the past hundred years.6 Some Westerners have also spoken quietly, or not so quietly, of how the continued vitality of Israel is proving inconvenient for international relations.
“He who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall,” is always good advice. If the cat scratches, it may be that someone has stepped on her tail. No one denies that America has big boots and often walks clumsily. Wrong actions by Western or Israeli governments may indeed contribute to Middle Eastern trouble, as Western actions have hurt other parts of the world. Looking further back, one could also argue that, with Mohammed’s jihad, Constantine’s twisted theory of the cross, “Conquer by this!” came home to Christian lands to roost.
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But the tone of much of the discussion so far strikes me as unbalanced. Surely the claim that Islam has no effect on how Muslims act is neither realistic nor fair even to terrorists. It is absurd to think that middle-class Middle Easterners fly airliners into skyscrapers because of a slump in the GNP, or that the West is so monolithic, powerful, and sly that it can manipulate dozens of sovereign and hostile states behind the scenes, so as (for example) to place the Ayatollah Khomeini in power to ruin Iran, or control the Arab uprising in the West Bank from behind the scenes, as has been alleged in some quarters in the Middle East. And what should we make of the desire to blame Jews for the troubles of the Arab world?
The name of Mohammed, by contrast, has been remarkable by its absence.
Mohammed’s Legacy
David Marshall is the author of several books, including most recently, How Jesus Passes the Outsider Test: The Inside Story (Kuai Mu Press, 2015). He blogs at christthetao.blogspot.com.
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