Is Islam Evil? - Part X

James Arlandson gives reason number seven for concluding that Islam is "not the religion of peace":

7. Muhammad in his Quran commands that the hands of male or female thieves should be cut off.

5:38 Cut off the hands of thieves, whether they are male or female, as punishment for what they have done—a deterrent from God: God is almighty and wise. 39 But if anyone repents after his wrongdoing and makes amends, God will accept his repentance: God is most forgiving and merciful. (Haleem)
[MAS Abdel Haleem, The Quran, New York: Oxford UP, 2004]

Based on this passage from the Quran and a few anecdotes about Muhammad, Arlandson reached a conclusion about Islam and the Quran:

Thus, harsh and excessive punitive violence sits at the heart of early Islam--in Muhammad's life and in the Quran.  Islam is therefore not the religion of peace.

In part IX of this series, I pointed out some important facts that provide some proper historical context for evaluation of Arlandson's conclusion.  I reminded Arlandson that the history of Christianity, particularly the history of Europe from the 12th through the 19th centuries, includes a great deal of violence, killing, and torture.  I reminded Arlandson of the torturers of the various Inquisitions, and the practice of burning people at the stake, and the use of hanging (which at that time was a cruel and inhumane punishement) to kill thousands of people, often for fairly minor crimes.  I reminded Arlandson of the fact that tens of thousands of women were executed for the crime of witchcraft.  

I concluded that Arlandson needs to acknowledge the vast quantity of violence, death, and cruelty that Christians in Europe produced for a number of centuries, and during a period in history that was about one thousand years after the time that Muhammad put forward the rule about cutting off a person's hand for the crime of stealing.

There is an obvious response that Arlandson and other Christians might make to my objection: 

Christians don't claim to be perfect.  We believe that all men are sinners, including Christians.  We all fall short of the perfect goodness of God.  Given that all are sinners, we also don't claim that Christian countries and societies are perfect or free from sin.  Governments and societies can be no better than the people who make them up.  Yes, Christians and Christian countries have been involved in violence, cruelty, torture, and unjust and excessive punishments.  But the laws and practices of Christian countries do not necessarily reflect the Christian faith and the teachings of the Bible.  Whereas, the cruel and violent practice of cutting off the hand of a thief comes straight from Muhammad and the Quran.  The cruelty, violence, and injustice that some Christians and Christian countries have been involved in is contrary to the teachings of the Bible, but the cruelty, violence, and injustice of Muslims (at least in this instance) stems from faithfully following the teachings of the Quran.

Such a response attempts to place a wedge between the cruelty, violence, and injustice of Christians in Europe (12th through 19th centuries) and the teachings of the Bible.  This response will not work as a defense of Christianity, for the Bible contains rules and teachings that are as bad as, and worse than, the rule in the passage that Arlandson quotes above.  

If Allah and the Quran are to be condemned as morally flawed on the basis of the above passage, then Jehovah and the Bible must also be condemned as morally flawed.  The cruelty, violence, and injustice of Christians in Europe does NOT contrast with the kindness, peacefulness, and justice of Jehovah, but rather is completely consistent with the cruelty, violence, and inustice of Jehovah in the Bible.  Arlandson is simply operating with a double standard.

Not only was the nation of Israel founded on massive genocidal slaughter, but this massive genocidal slaughter was, according to the Bible, the result of the nation of Israel obeying the command of Jehovah to engage in such slaughter of thousands of men, women, teenagers, children, and babies:

But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes in them remain alive.  You shall annihilate them--the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites--just as the LORD your God has commanded...
(Deuteronomy 20:16-18)

Joshua, the bloodthirsty general of the Israelites, made sure this horrific genocidal command was carried out (at least in some cases):

Joshua said to the people “Shout! For the LORD has given you the city [Jericho]. The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction. …”
[…]
So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the wall [around Jericho] fell down flat; so the people charged straight ahead into the city and captured it. Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.
[…]
They burned down the city, and everything in it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD. 
(Joshua 6: 16-17, 20-21, 24)

When Moses brought the tablets with the ten commandments down from mount Sinai he found some Israelites worshipping a golden calf, Moses became angry and demanded violence be used to punish the Israelites:

...then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, "Who is on the LORD's side" Come to me!" And all the sons of Levi gathered around him.  He said to them, "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.'"  The sons of Levi did as Moses commanded, and about three thousand of the people fell on that day.  Moses said, "Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the LORD, each one at the cost of a son or a brother, and so have brought a blessing on yourselves this day." 
(Exodus 32:26-29, NRSV)

These are just a couple of examples of the violence, cruelty, and excessively harsh punishments promoted by Jehovah and the Bible.

Let's consider a passage from the Bible that appears to be rather similar to the passage that Arlandson quoted from the Quran:

Whoever strikes father or mother shall have the hand that was used to strike the parent cut off.
(Exodus 21:15)

If a person steals something of significant value, then Muhammad tells us that Allah demands that one hand of the thief be cut off.  If a person stikes one of his or her parents, then Moses tells us that Jehovah demands that one hand of the offending child be cut off.  

Clearly Allah is cruel and harsh and unjust in demanding that a hand of the thief be cut off, and clearly Jehovah is kind, moderate, and just in demanding that a hand of the child who strikes a parent be cut off.  Or so Arlandson would have us believe.  But this is idiotic, a clearcut example of using a double standard.  If Jehovah demands that the hand of a person be cut off for striking one of his or her parents, then Jehovah is as cruel, violent, and harsh as Allah.  

Alternatively, we could cast the blame for these terrible ideas onto Muhammad and Moses, and say that they falsely represented God as commanding these cruel, violent, and harsh punishments.  In any case, the objection to Muhammad and the Quran is equally applicable to Moses and the Bible.

Oops! Actually...I lied.  The above quotation from Exodus is not accurate.  The actual words from this verse are as follows:

Whoever strikes father or mother shall be put to death. 
(Exodus 21:15, NRSV)

Jehovah has no desire to have the hand of a child cut off for striking a parent.  Rather, Jehovah wants such a child to be killed, to be executed, which in those days meant being stoned to death. That is much better, right?  If your child was going to be punished for a crime, you would much rather have your child stoned to death as opposed to having one hand cut off, right?  I don't think so.  

Most people, if given a choice between these two punishments, would not hesitate to chose to have one hand cut off, rather than to be stoned to death.  Thus, the punishment of being "put to death" is even more harsh, more excessive, more unjust than having one hand cut off.  If we are to use this passage from the Bible and the above passage from the Quran as the primary information for evaluating the degree of cruelty and harshness of Allah and Jehovah, then Jehovah takes the cake as the MOST cruel and MOST harsh of these two deities.

In short, if we are to conclude that Allah is cruel and harsh on the basis of Surah 5:38, then logical consistency and moral integrity demand that we also conclude that Jehovah is cruel and harsh on the basis of Exodus 21:15.

There is no verse in the Bible that calls for the hand of a thief to be cut off.  However, Arlandson fails to mention that there is in fact a Bible passage that does demand the punishment of cutting off a person's hand:

If men get into a fight with one another, and the wife of one intervenes to rescue her husband from the grip of his opponent by reaching out and squeezing his genitals, you shall cut off her hand; show no pity.
(Deuteronomy 25:11-12, NRSV)

The words "show no pity"  are a good indication of the harshness and cruelty of this punishment, and of the harshness and cruelty of Jehovah.  
Suppose that the wife believes that her husband was attacked for no good reason; that the attacker was being cruel, mean, or unfair.  Suppose that her husband was being strangled by his attacker, and that her husband was near death from strangulation.  She might grab the balls of the man who was choking the life out of her husband out of love for her husband, and out of anger for what she believed to be cruel and unjust violence against her husband.  She might do this to save her husband's life, even though this would anger the attacker and put her own life at risk, since the man who attacked her husband might well then turn on her, and begin to choke her to death.

Such love and bravery of a woman who "intervenes to rescue her husband" deserves nothing less than the cruelty and violence of having her hand chopped off.  Huh?  When you cut off the hand of a thief, at least you are punishing an actual crime with a legitimate victim.  For example, if the thief stole a shield from one of Mohammad's soldiers, that soldier might be seriously or even mortally wounded as a result of not having a shield available during battle.  

But if you "show no pity" and chop off the hand of any woman who dares put her hand on a man's privates, even if she is doing so out of love and bravery and to save the life of her own husband, then you are not punishing a real crime, you are punishing a good woman for a brave and noble action.  Jehovah is one sick bastard; he takes the prize for cruelty and injustice here, when we compare the quoted passage from the Quran with the above passage from the Bible.

Jehovah prescribed death as the punishment for striking a parent, but also as the punishment for cursing a parent:

Whoever curses father or mother shall be put to death. 
(Exodus 21:17, NRSV)

In the footnotes for this verse in my HarperCollins Study Bible, there is an interesting bit of historical information: "Various ancient Near Eastern laws punish rejection of parents with disinheritance or enslavement."  So, apparently Jehovah was not satisfied with the harshness and excessiveness of other Near Eastern laws, and so increased the punishment to death.

Jehovah was rather fond of the death penalty, as we saw in Part VIII of this series, and assigned this as the punishment not only for murder but also for various other (lesser) crimes and misbehaviors:

If a man commits adultery with another man's wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.
(Leviticus 20:10, New International Version)
If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel. 
(Deuteronomy 22:22, New International Version)

In reason number nine, Arlandson condemns the harshness of Allah for punishing adultery with whipping:

9. Muhammad commands in his Quran that adulterers and adulteresses should receive a hundred lashes.

Somehow Arlandson forgot to mention that Jehovah's punishment for adultery was DEATH.  Once again, Jehovah takes the prize for being the MOST cruel and the MOST harsh.

The Bible assigns the death penalty for a number of offenses, some that are fairly minor:

- kidnapping (Exodus 21:16) 
- working on a Saturday (Exodus 31:14-15 and Numbers 15:32-36)
- lying about being a virgin (Deuteronomy 22: 20-21)
- for blasphemy or cursing god (Leviticus 24:15-16) 
- worshipping "any other god" (Deuteronomy 13:6-16 and 17:2-5)
- false prophecy (Deuteronomy 18:20 and 13:1-5)
- having sex with an animal (Exodus 22:19)
- striking your father or mother (Exodus 21:15)
- cursing your father or mother (Exodus 21:17) 
- trying to communicate with the dead (Leviticus 20:17)
- a man having sex with another man (Leviticus 20:13) 
- being a stubborn and rebelious son (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)

Recall from the previous post (Part IX) that Christians in Europe killed tens of thousands of innocent women for the crime of witchcraft:

Over the entire duration of the phenomenon of some three centuries, an estimated total of 40,000 to 100,000 people were executed.[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Modern_witch-trials
viewed 9/12/13

Those Christians were simply faithfully following the teachings of the Bible, and the commands of Jehovah:

You shall not permit a female sorcerer to live.
(Exodus 22:18, NRSV)

So, we can lay part of the blame for tens of thousands of murders of innocent women at the feet of Jehovah (and Moses).  Many of the women who were condemned to die for the crime of witchcraft were killed in a horrific way.  They were burned to death at the stake.  

But as cruel and harsh as Jehovah may be, for demanding death as the punishment for many crimes and  misbehaviors, surely we cannot blame Jehovah for this horrific form of torture and execution?  Unfortunately, the moral depravity of Jehovah has no bounds, and we can also place at least part of the blame for this horrific form of punishment on Jehovah and the Bible:

When the daughter of a priest profanes herself through prostitution, she profanes her father; she shall be burned to death.
(Leviticus 21:9, NRSV)

Prostitution is not the same as witchcraft, but both were viewed as "crimes" that women sometimes commit.  Prostitution by the daughter of a priest was considered to be an especially bad thing to do, so Jehovah came up with this great idea for an especially harsh punishment.  So, not only did Jehovah demand that the crime of witchcraft be punished with death, he also came up with the idea of punishing an especially unacceptable female crime by burning the condemned female to death. 

There is another sexual taboo that Jehovah demanded be punished by burning to death the guilty persons:

If a man takes a wife and her mother also [in marriage], it is depravity; they shall be burned to death, both he and they, that there may be no depravity among you.
(Leviticus 20:14, NRSV)

Thus the fine Christian believers of Europe were simply following the commands and the example of Jehovah, when they killed tens of thousands of women for the crime of witchcraft, and executed many of these innocent women by burning them at the stake.

If Arlandson is correct to condemn Islam and the Quran on the basis of the fact that the Quran teaches that the punishment for stealing should be to cut off one hand of the thief, then we are also correct to condemn Christianity and the Bible on the basis of the many passages quoted and refenced in this post, passages that advocate genocide, that advocate the death penalty for striking a parent, the death penalty for cursing a parent, the death penalty for working on a Saturday, the death penalty for sleeping with another man's wife, the death penalty for two men having sex with each other, the death penalty for witchcraft, the death penalty for worshipping the wrong deity, that advocate cutting off the hand of a wife who tries to rescue her husband from an attacker by grabbing the attacker's genitals, and that advocate burning a woman to death for prostitution if she is the daughter of a priest.   

To be logically consistent and to maintain our moral integrity, we must follow Arlandson's reasoning to its logical conclusion:

Harsh and excessive punitive violence sits at the heart of the Bible and Christianity.

Is Islam Evil? - Part IX

James Arlandson gives reason number seven for concluding that Islam is "not the religion of peace":

7. Muhammad in his Quran commands that the hands of male or female thieves should be cut off.

5:38 Cut off the hands of thieves, whether they are male or female, as punishment for what they have done—a deterrent from God: God is almighty and wise. 39 But if anyone repents after his wrongdoing and makes amends, God will accept his repentance: God is most forgiving and merciful. (Haleem)

Arlandson also quotes an anecdote about Muhammad:

Ibn Umar said the Prophet had a thief’s hand cut off for a shield worth three dirhams. (Bukhari and note the three hadith below this one)

The shield was fairly expensive. The poor in Muhammad’s armies could not afford one. But is a shield equal to a hand?

This anecdote is a bit problematic because  a shield is part of a person's military gear, so a theft of a weapon or of other military gear (like a shield) could have serious and even deadly consequences for the person whose weapon or shield was stolen.  Treating such thefts lightly could also be problematic for maintaining military disicipline and a well-equipped army or band of soldiers.  The theft of a piece of military equipment should not be equated to the theft of ordinary goods (food, clothing, pottery, livestock) from an ordinary civilian.

This passage from the Quran plus some anecdotes about Muhammad led Arlandson to draw a negative conclusion about Islam:

Thus, harsh and excessive punitive violence sits at the heart of early Islam--in Muhammad's life and in the Quran.  Islam is therefore not the religion of peace.

Cutting off the hand of a theif is indeed "harsh and excessive punitive violence", as Arlandson claims.  God, by definition, is a morally perfectly good person.  But a morally perfectly good person would not encourage such harsh and excessive violence as the punishment for a crime, especially for a minor theft.  In the USA we have established a constitutional prohibition against the use of "cruel and unusual punishment", so local, state, and federal governments cannot impose such excessive and harsh punishments for any crime, even for rape or murder.  

It is rational to conclude that either Allah is NOT God, but is a morally flawed person, or else that Allah is God, but that Muhammad and the Quran falsely represent Allah as encouraging harsh and excessive punishment for the crime of theft.  Either Allah is not God, or else the Quran contains false teachings about the will of Allah.

But before we get too far up on our high horse, it is important to place this harsh punishment in proper historical perspective.  According to Arlandson, the historical context of the passage quoted from the Quran took place about 630 C.E.. Over a thousand years later, in Chirstian-dominated countries, such as Britain, Christians were employing an even more excessive penalty for theft: death by hanging. Britain was a Christian nation, not an Islamic nation, and yet we find that the death penalty was rather freely given out in Britain in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries:

At the beginning of the 19th century, there were no fewer than 222 capital crimes, including such terrible offences as impersonating a Chelsea pensioner and damaging London Bridge! One reason why the number of capital crimes was so high was due to the way that particular offences were broken down into specific crimes. For instance stealing in a shop, a dwelling house, a warehouse and a brothel was each a separate offence. Similarly with arson, burning down a house was distinguished from burning a hayrick. It should be noted that in practice, there were only about seventeen general offences for which a death sentence was generally carried out in the 18th and early 19th centuries. These included murder, attempted murder, arson, rape, sodomy, forgery, uttering (passing forged or counterfeit monies or bills) coining, robbery, highway robbery (in many cases, this was the offence of street robbery, that we would now call mugging), housebreaking, robbery in a dwelling house, returning from transportation, cutting and maiming (grievous bodily harm) and horse, cattle or sheep stealing. For all the other capital offences, transportation to America or Australia was generally substituted for execution.
(from "The history of judicial hanging in Britain 1735 - 1964") 
http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/hanging1.html

Between England, Wales, and Scotland, there were about 103 civilian executions per year in the 1700s, or over 10,000 executions from 1700-1799 (see "The history of judicial hanging in Britain 1735 - 1964"). Most of the executions were hangings, and given that humane methods of hanging had not yet been developed, most of those hangings were cruel and painful deaths; death by strangulation that took several minutes.

Hanging was not the only cruel punishment given out in the history of Britain. Other punishments imposed by the "merciful" Christians of Britain include: drawn, hanged, and quartered (a person would be hanged, but cut down while still alive, disemboweled, and then chopped into four pieces with an ax), burning at the stake (the preferred capital punishment for women), boiled to death, and such loving non-capital punishments as whipping, amputation, and branding.

Cutting off a person's hand for stealing something is a harsh and excessive punishment, but death by hanging is even more harsh and excessive.  Given the choice to lose one hand or to be strangled to death, most of us would prefer to have one hand cut off and to go on living.

Some other historical facts that are relevant here are the Inquisition and the witch-hunts in Europe. During the Inquisition Christians cruelly tortured fellow citizens who were suspected of holding religious or theological or philosophical beliefs that were contrary to the teachings of the Church at that time:

Historians use the term "Medieval Inquisition" to describe the various inquisitions that started around 1184, including the Episcopal Inquisition (1184–1230s) and later the Papal Inquisition (1230s). These inquisitions responded to large popular movements throughout Europe considered apostate or heretical to Christianity, in particular the Cathars in southern France and the Waldensians in both southern France and northern Italy. Other Inquisitions followed after these first inquisition movements. Legal basis for some inquisitorial activity came from Pope Innocent IV's papal bull Ad extirpanda of 1252, which explicitly authorized (and defined the appropriate circumstances for) the use of torture by the Inquisition for eliciting confessions from heretics.^[13] By 1256 inquisitors were given absolution if they used instruments of torture.^[14]

In the 13th century, Pope Gregory IX (reigned 1227–1241) assigned the duty of carrying out inquisitions to the Dominican Order. They used inquisitorial procedures, a legal practice common at that time. They judged heresy alone, using the local authorities to establish a tribunal and to prosecute heretics. After 1200, a Grand Inquisitor headed each Inquisition. Grand Inquisitions persisted until the mid 19th century.^{[15]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition}  
viewed 9/12/13

If the Christian torturers managed to force a confession out of a suspected heretic without actually killing the suspect, then the punishment that would be imposed was, in some cases, a horrific death by being burnt at the stake:

In practice, the Inquisition would not itself pronounce sentence, but handed over convicted heretics to secular authorities for the punishment deemed fitting by the Church.^[5] The laws were inclusive of proscriptions against certain religious crimes (heresy, etc.), and the punishments included death by burning, although imprisonment for life or banishment would usually be used. Thus the inquisitors generally knew what would be the fate of anyone so remanded, and cannot be considered to have divorced the means of determining guilt from its effects.^[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_burning
viewed 9/11/13

Witch-hunts occurred in Europe for a number of centuries:

The witch trials in the early modern period were a period of witch hunts between the 15th and 18th centuries,^[1] when across early modern Europe^[2] and to some extent in the European colonies in North America, there was a widespread hysteria that malevolent Satanic witches were operating as an organized threat to Christendom. Those accused of witchcraft were portrayed as being worshippers of the Devil, who engaged in such acts as malevolent sorcery at meetings known as Witches' Sabbaths. Many people were subsequently accused of being witches, and were put on trial for the crime, with varying punishments being applicable in different regions and at different times.

While early trials fall still within the Late Medieval period, the peak of the witch hunt was during the period of the European wars of religion, peaking between about 1580 and 1630. The witch hunts declined in the early 18th century. In Great Britain, their end is marked by the Witchcraft Act of 1735. But sporadic witch-trials continued to be held during the second half of the 18th century, the last known dating to 1782,^[3] though a prosecution was commenced in Tennessee as recently as 1833.^[4][5][6]

Over the entire duration of the phenomenon of some three centuries, an estimated total of 40,000 to 100,000 people were executed.^[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Modern_witch-trials
viewed 9/12/13

During the witch-hunts of Europe thousands of women were burned at the stake for the crime of witchcraft, which, of course, is a crime that none were in fact guilty of:

Burning was also used by Roman Catholics and Protestants during the witch-hunts of Europe. The penal code known as the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina(1532) decreed that sorcery throughout the Holy Roman Empire should be treated as a criminal offence, and if it purported to inflict injury upon any person the witch was to be burnt at the stake. In 1572, Augustus, Elector of Saxony imposed the penalty of burning for witchcraft of every kind, including simple fortunetelling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_burning

viewed 9/11/13

Various cruel forms of torture were used by Christians in France, Britain, Scotland, Germany, Italy, and Spain:

Tortures included the chevalet, in which an accused witch sat on a pointed metal horse with weights strung from her feet.^[28] Sexual humiliation torture included forced sitting on red-hot stools.^[29]Gresillons, also called pennywinkis in Scotland, crushed the tips of fingers and toes in a vice-like device.^[30] The Spanish Boot, or "leg-screw", used mostly in Germany and Scotland, was a steel boot that was placed over the leg of the accused and was tightened. The pressure from the squeezing of the boot would break the shin bone in pieces. An anonymous Scotsman called it "The most severe and cruel pain in the world".^[31] The echelle more commonly known as the "ladder" or "rack" was a long table that the accused would lie upon and be stretched violently. The torture was used so intensely that on many occasions the victim's limbs would be pulled out of the socket and, at times, the limbs would even be torn from the body entirely. On some special occasions a tortillon was used in conjunction with the ladder which would severely squeeze and mutilate the genitals at the same time as the stretching was occurring.^[30] Similar to the ladder was the "lift". It too stretched the limbs of the accused, this time however the victim's feet were strapped to the ground and their arms were tied behind their back before a rope was tied to their hands and lifted upwards. This caused the arms to break before the horrific portion of the stretching began.^[31]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture
viewed 9/12/13

Christians employed punishments that were more harsh, more excessive, and more violent than cutting off the hand of a thief. And Christians did so nearly a thousand years later than the time period when Muhammad put forward this rule. 

So, Arlandson needs to also acknowledge the dirty laundry on his own side of the fence: Christians have a long history of using harsh, excessive, and violent punishments, some of which make cutting off the hand of a thief pale by comparison.

Is Islam Evil? - Part VIII

I’m examining and evaluating an article called “Top Ten Reasons Why Islam is NOT the Religion of Peace” written by James Arlandson:

http://www.answering-islam.org/Authors/Arlandson/ten_reasons.htm

In this post, I will finish the examination of reason number 8:

8. Muhammad in his Quran permits husbands to beat their wives.

A passage from the Quran appears to encourage husbands to strike their wives under certain circumstances in order to get their wives to listen and obey.  Arlandson concludes that "domestic violence sits at the heart of early Islam...".

In part IV of this series I pointed out that in Christian America in the 21st century, we have a serious problem with domestic violence against women and children.  So, not only has Christianity FAILED to create a culture here that is free from domestic violence against women and children, but it has ALLOWED for a culture to develop in which such violence is very common.  

Furthermore, in parts V, VI, and VII, I have shown that sexism, which is an important contributing factor in the domestic violence that we see in the USA, is clearly promoted by the Bible, by the sacred scripture of the Christian religion.

Finally, the Bible also promotes violence as a preferred way for people to interact with each other.  In combination with the sexism that is clearly promoted by the Bible, the promotion of the use of violence in the Bible is probably a significant contributing factor which partly explains the prevelance of domestic violence in Christian America in the 21st century.

In the very earliest interaction between God and man, God threatens Adam and Eve with death as a punishment:

And the LORD God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." (Genesis 2:16-17, NRSV)

When God is displeased with the behavior of the humans that he created, his solution is to kill all human beings, men, women, and children, and every living creature on the face of the earth, except for the family of Noah, and selected pairs of various animals that are put on Noah's ark:

And God said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth..." (Genesis 6:13, NRSV)

God's solution to the problem of violence on earth is to kill off almost all life on earth, to make a fresh start.

When God is displeased with the behavior of the people of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, his response is to destory the cities, to kill every man, woman, and child in these cities, with the exception of Lot and Lot's family:

Then the men [two angels] said to Lot, "Have you anyone else here?  Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city--bring them out of the place.  For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it." (Genesis 19:12-13, NRSV)

Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.  (Genesis 19:24-25, NRSV)

So, in the early chapters of the first book of the Bible, we are confronted with a deity that turns to the use of violence against humans as a preferred way of resolving issues with humans.

The Old Testament is largely the story of the origin, development, and decline of the nation of Israel, God's "chosen people".  But the origins of the nation of Israel are drenched in violence and bloodshed.  Not only was the nation of Israel founded on the massive genocidal slaughter of thousands of men, women, and children, but this massive genocidal slaughter was, according to the OT, the result of the nation of Israel obeying the command of God to engage in such slaughter of men, women, and children:

But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes in them remain alive.  You shall annihilate them--the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites--just as the LORD your God has commanded...(Deuteronomy 20:16-18)

Joshua was a military leader of Israel who led the nation into wars of aggression to steal land from other peoples.  Joshua faithfully carried out the slaughter that Jehovah had commanded:

Joshua said to the people “Shout! For the LORD has given you the city [Jericho]. The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction. …”
[…]
So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the wall [around Jericho] fell down flat; so the people charged straight ahead into the city and captured it. Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.
[…]
They burned down the city, and everything in it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD. (Joshua 6: 16-17, 20-21, 24)

So, the origins of the nation of Israel include genocidal killing of men, women and children which occurs as part of wars of aggression in which the people of Israel steal land from the native people who were already living in Palestine, and the genocidal killing of men, women, and children was at the command of Jehovah, the god of the Old Testament, the to whom Jesus prayed and to whom the followers of Jesus prayed.

According to Moses, the Levites (considered descendants of the tribe of Levi, one of the twelve sons of Israel) were given a special blessing and chosen to be priests of ancient Israel because they were ready, willing and able to slaughter their fellow Israelites in order to enforce religious orthodoxy and punish the worship of gods other than the god of Moses.  When Moses brought the tablets with the ten commandments down from mount Sinai he found some Israelites worshipping a golden calf, Moses became angry and demanded violence be used to punish the Israelites:

...then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, "Who is on the LORD's side" Come to me!" And all the sons of Levi gathered around him.  He said to them, "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.'"  The sons of Levi did as Moses commanded, and about three thousand of the people fell on that day.  Moses said, "Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the LORD, each one at the cost of a son or a brother, and so have brought a blessing on yourselves this day." (Exodus 32:26-29, NRSV)

The Bible also teaches that death is the proper punishment for adultery:

Leviticus 20:10 (New International Version)
10 " 'If a man commits adultery with another man's wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.

Deuteronomy 22:22 (New International Version)
22 If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel. 

The Bible also assigns the death penalty for a number of minor offenses:

- kidnapping (Exodus 21:16) 
- working on a Saturday (Exodus 31:14-15 and Numbers 15:32-36)
- for blasphemy or cursing god (Leviticus 24:15-16) 
- worshipping "any other god" (Deuteronomy 13:6-16 and Deuteronomy 17:2-5)
- cursing your father or mother (Exodus 21:17) 
- a man having sex with another man (Leviticus 20:13)

- disobeying the ruling of a judge or priest (Deuteronomy 17:8-13)

The Bible also teaches that it is OK to beat slaves, so long as a slave was not beaten to death.  Actually, it was OK to beat a slave to death, so long as it took more than one day for the slave to die:

When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished.  But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner's property. (Exodus 21:20-21, NRSV)

So, the Bible teaches that (1) God often resorts to violence and killing to solve issues with human beings, (2) God commanded Israel to enter wars of agression to steal land from the native peoples living in Palestine, (3) God commanded the nation of Israel to engage in genocidal slaughter of men, women, and children, (4) the Levite tribe is given special blessings because their forefathers were ready, willing, and able to kill their fellow Israelites who worshipped a different god than the god of Moses, and (5) God commanded the use of the death penalty not only for murderers, but also for a number of more minor misbehaviours: adultery, working on the Sabbath, worshipping some other god, cursing one's father or mother, etc.

Clearly, the Bible teaches that violence and killing are an acceptable and even a preferable way of interacting with other human beings, a way to solve problems with other human beings, a way to manage and influence the behavior of human beings.  The positve view of the use of violence combined with the promotion of sexism in the Bible is part of the reason why domestic violence against women and children is still a serious problem in the USA, where the Christian religion has dominated our culture for nearly three centuries.

So, if the Quran is to be judged as promoting domestic violence, based on a passage that appears to encourage husbands to strike their wives in certain circumstances to get their wives to listen and obey, then the Bible is also to be judged as promoting domestic violence based on numerous passages where the Bible promotes sexism and where the Bible promotes the use of violence for resolving issues with human beings and for managing the behavior of human beings.  The objection that Arlandson raises against the Islam clearly applies to Christianity, and given that killing people and the use of the death penalty are often promoted in the Bible, one could argue that this objection applies with even greater force to the Bible and Christianity.

Is Islam Evil? - Part VII

In previous posts I have shown that the opening sentence of the Bible and the first two chapters of the Old Testament book Genesis are sexist, and that on the assumption that Jehovah inspired and guided the writing of the books of the OT, we should conclude that Jehovah is a sexist and that Jehovah is a false god.

Chapter 3 of Genesis confirms the previous interpretation of the first two chapters of that book. After Adam and Eve disobey Jehovah's command to not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Jehovah punishes each of them with a curse.  Here is the curse proclaimed against Eve:

To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;

    with painful labor you will give birth to children.

Your desire will be for your husband,

    and he will rule over you.”  (Genesis 3:16, NIV, emphasis added)

In the second chapter of Genesis it was already implied that Adam should "rule over" Eve, because (a) the first woman was created for the purpose of helping Adam, esp. helping Adam to be happy, and (b) Jehovah brought the first woman to Adam in order for Adam to name and evaluate her (naming being a common symbol of a king's authority over another person), as with the previous animals Jehovah had made.  So, this explicit declaration that husbands were supposed to "rule over" their wives was already implied in the previous chapter.

In any case, both Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, so neither one was shown to be morally or intellectually inferior to the other (as far as we can tell from the story).  So, Eve no more deserved to be placed under the authority of Adam than Adam deserved to be placed under the authority of Eve.  Furthermore, even if Eve was in some way significantly inferior (intellectually or morally) to Adam, this has no relevance for whether or not women are in general inferior (intellectually or morally) to men, nor to whether or not husbands in general should "rule over" their wives.

Once again, Jehovah is either omniscient or not.  If omniscient, then Jehovah knew that any intellectual or moral inferiority of Eve to Adam was irrelevant to the question of whether husbands should in general "rule over" their wives.  Thus Jehovah was being unfair and mean to billions of women in proclaiming that husbands should "rule over" their wives.  Jehovah was knowingly promoting sexist beliefs and practices by making this proclamation, and so was a sexist for promoting sexism, even though Jehovah knew that women were not in general inferior  (intellectually or morally) to men. If Jehovah was unfair to women by promoting sexist beliefs and practices, then Jehovah was NOT a perfectly good person, and thus Jehovah would be a false god.

On the other hand, if Jehovah truly believed that women were inferior to men, then Jehovah would have been just as ignorant on this subject as the men of ancient Israel, and thus Jehovah would not have been omniscient.  If Jehovah was ignorant in this matter, then Jehovah was a just an ordinary ignorant sexist, like the men of ancient Israel.  If Jehovah was an ignorant sexist, then Jehovah was a false god.

So, it does not matter whether Jehovah was omniscient or not.  If Jehovah was omniscient, then Jehovah was a false god, and if Jehovah was not omniscient, then Jehovah was a false god.  Thus, Jehovah is a false god.  And if Jehovah was a false god, then Jesus was a false prophet, because he taught his disciples to pray to Jehovah.  So, Jesus was a false prophet, and Christianity is a false religion.

There are many passages in the Old Testament that imply that Jehovah is a sexist, on the assumption that Jehovah exists and that Jehovah inspired and guided the writing of the Old Testament.  If you are not convinced by the evidence of the first three chapters of Genesis, then I urge you to buy or borrow a copy of the book God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says by Michael Coogan (editor of The New Oxford Annotated Bible, and co-editor of The Oxford Companion to the Bible).  I'm going to briefly summarize here some of the evidence that Coogan covers in more detail in his book.

In ancient Israel and in the OT, women were considered to be property, first of their fathers, and then of their husbands.

1. Fathers could sell their daughters into slavery (Exodus 21:7-11).
2. Fathers could sell their daughters into marriage for a 'bride-price' (Exodus 22:16-17).
3. Jephthah sacrificed his daughter to Jehovah (Judges 11:30-39) , yet he is considered to be one of the great heroes of Israel (I Samuel 12:8-11)
4.  Fathers could nullify vows of their daughters, and husbands could nullify vows of their wives (Numbers 30:3-15).
5. Although the OT prohibits several different types of incestuous sexual relationships, there is no prohibition of a father having sex with his own daughter (Leviticus 18:6-16), presumably because she was his property, and having sex with her would mean that she could not be sold for the higher bride-price that could be obtained for virgin girls.
6. The Ten Commandments given by Jehovah, speak of wives as property of their husbands:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. (Exodus 20:17, NIV, emphasis added)

7. Virginity was required of young women (Deuteronomy 22:13-21) , and sexual fidelity was required of engaged and married women (Deuteronomy 22:23-24 and Leviticus 20:10 & Deuteronomy 22:22) on pain of death, but neither virginity nor fidelity were required of men.  Men were only required to leave alone the wives (or engaged women) who were property of another man.
8.  In cases of the rape of a girl, it was the Father who was given payment, because his daughter was now damaged goods and would not bring the higher bride-price for a virgin. So the Father rather than the girl was viewed as the victim of rape, and the girl who was raped could be required to become the wife of her rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29).
9. The laws Jehovah gave to ancient Israel made it easy for a man to divorce his wife, but made no provision for a wife to divorce her husband.  So, even if a man was abusive to his wife or sexually unfaithful to his wife, she had no legal option of divorce. (Deuteronomy 24:1-4).
10.  According to Jehovah's commands, only men were allowed to be priests (Exodus 28:1-5 and 40:12-16).
11. The Laws of Israel, including the Ten Commandments, were (supposedly) given by Jehovah, a deity represented as a male,  to Moses, a male prophet, who then brought them to an all-male audience:

So Moses went down from the mountain to the people.  He consecrated the people, and they washed their clothes.  And he said to the people, "Prepare for the third day, do not go near a woman." (Exodus 19:9-15, NRSV, emphasis added. See also: 20:1-21, 21:1, 24:1-7)


12. The very wording of the Ten Commandments shows that the intended audience was men, and not women: "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey..." (Exodus 20:17).  Men are commanded not to covet the wives of other men.  There is no similar command for women to not covet the husbands of other women.  Men owned houses and wives and slaves and donkeys.  Women did not own their husbands, so women could not, on this assumption, covet another woman's husband. 
13. It was acceptable for men to have multiple wives (polygyny) "as did Abraham, Jacob, David, and other biblical heroes, with no sign of divine disapproval." (God and Sex, p.79). There is no indication that a woman ever had, or could have, more than one husband  This is another indication that women were viewed as property of men.  Men could own one wife or many wives.  Women could not own even one husband, because a woman was the property of her father until marriage, when she became the property of her husband.  The laws of Jehovah recognized the legitimacy of polygyny:

If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father’s strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him. (Deuteronomy 21:15-17, NIV, emphasis added)


14.  The above passage from the Laws of Jehovah not only recognizes the legitimacy of polygyny, it also approves of  traditional favoritism of sons in terms of inheritance.  Note there is no mention here of inheritance for the daughters of the loved vs. hated wives.  The law is concerned with inheritance being passed on to the sons, with the bulk of inheritance going to the firstborn son.  Women were discriminated against in terms of inheritance of property, and Jehovah's laws reinforce this discrimination.
15. Of the "approximately thirty-eight books of the Hebrew Bible, only two, Ruth and Esther, have women's names as titles, and not one is traditionally ascribed to a woman author." (God and Sex, p.55-56, emphasis added). If we assume that the writing and composition of the Old Testament was inspired and guided by Jehovah, then the fact that all of the authors of the OT were (apparently) men, implies that Jehovah had a policy of preferring men over women to reveal himself and his will to Israel.  In conjunction with the fact that the Ten Commandments were delivered by a male prophet to an all-male audience, and the fact that Jehovah demanded that all the priests of Israel be men, it is very clear that Jehovah approved of discrimination against women in terms of positions of religious authority.
16. "Descent was traced through the father; men were usually identified as the "son of" their father, as in Joshua son of Nun and Isaiah son of Amoz.  Women were similarly identified, at least until marriage, as in Rizpah the daughter of Ai and Esther the daughter of Abihail." (God and Sex, p. 22).  See Chapters 5 and 11 of the book of Genesis for an example of descent being traced from father to son.
17. "Within this patriarchal framework, women--daughters, wives, mothers, sisters--were subordinates and, like younger sons, are often not mentioned.  Even when they have narrative significance, they are frequently unnamed: we are never told the names of Noah's wife, Lot's wife, Jephthah's daughter, Samson's mother, Job's wife, and many other notable women." (God and Sex, p. 23). Jehovah's failure to mention women and to name women involved in OT events, suggests that Jehovah had a sexist bias against women.  See the story of Noah in Chapters 6-9 of the book of Genesis.
18. Lot offers his two virgin daughters up to be gang raped by a group of violent men in order to show hospitality to angels who visited his house and to protect his visitors from being raped (Genesis 19:1-8).  This is an example of how men treated women as property.  There is no indication in the story that Lot was wrong to offer up his daughters to be gang raped, so this story reinforces and promotes the sexism that was present in the culture of ancient Israel.
19. Jehovah assigned a monetary value to various categories of persons, so that instead of sacrificing a son or daughter to Jehovah, someone could give the monetary equivalent to Jehovah.  Females and children are consistently valued less than males and adults by Jehovah. For example, a male between age 5 and 20 was valued at 20 shekels of silver, while a female of the same age range was valued at 10 shekels of silver. (Leviticus 27:3-7).
20.  Sarah refers to her husband Abraham as her 'lord' and her 'master' (Genesis 18:12 and 20:3). "Both of these terms are indicative of the status of the wife: she was under her husband's rule, she was his property...the word 'master' is frequently used for ownership in the laws concerning property." (God and Sex, p.24)
21. "The primary function of marriage was to produce offspring--especially, as in most patriarchal societies, male offspring." (God and Sex, p.64).  In ancient Israel sons were much preferred over daughters.  This sexist attitude is reinforced in some Psalms of the Old Testament (Psalm 127:3-5 and Psalm 128:3-6.  Note: The New Revised Standard Version translates 'sons' as 'children' in Psalm 128, in order to avoid sexist language and ideas, but that is not an accurate translation of the Hebrew).

The Old Testament touches on the following topics: the origin of human beings, marriage relationships, arranged marriages, slavery, rape, virginity, sexual fidelity, divorce, incest, polygamy, coveting a neighbor's possessions, the Ten Commandments, qualifications for the priesthood, and the inheritance of property.  In each of these areas of the Old Testament women are treated as inferior to men, as property of men, as second-class citizens of ancient Israel, and as being under the authority of men.  

Assuming that the writing of the books of the Old Testament was inspired and guided by Jehovah, one must conclude that Jehovah was a sexist, thus that Jehovah was a false god.