A God Who Hates (20 page)

Most non-Arab Muslims I have met in the United States do not know the meaning of this verse that they repeat dozens of times daily in their prayers. However, if you were to ask an Arab boy in the first year of primary school what it meant, he would tell you that the Christians are those who have gone astray while the Jews are those who have incurred God’s wrath. Terrorism was born in the Arab world and spread from Saudi Arabia to other Muslim countries with the ideological and financial support of the Arabs. Islamic terrorism is led by Arabs, and those non-Arabs who aspire to leadership are Arab trained.

The Afghans are famous for their saying, “We are at peace only when we are at war.” This tendency to strife has penetrated deep into Afghan culture, perhaps because of the tribal nature of Afghan society. But they did not become a source of world Islamic terrorist activity until they came into disastrous contact with the Arab mujahideen, who brought with them a terrorist philosophy and Arab money. When I discussed this issue with Irshad Manji, author of
The Trouble with Islam Today,
who is of Muslim Indian descent, she did not like the idea and asked me in irritation, “So am I to understand from what you say that non-Arab Muslims are less Islamic than Arab Muslims?”

I replied at once, “No, they are less damaged.”

Non-Arab Muslims are not less Islamic than Arab Muslims, if faith and devotion to their religion are the criteria. But if we measure their degree of adherence to Islam by the extent of the mental and psychological damage they have sustained from its teachings, then they are less Islamic. For non-Arab Muslims, generally speaking, do not sink as deeply into the morass of these violent teachings as Arab Muslims do. I am not attempting to deny that there are non-Arab Muslims who are better acquainted with the teachings of Islam and more zealous in their application of them than many Arab Muslims: I am simply trying to make it plain that in the vast majority of cases, Islamic teachings have penetrated the mind of Arab Muslims much more deeply than they have non-Arab Muslims. This fact has to be taken into consideration when formulating a strategy to combat Islamic terrorism. Although Arab Muslims make up no more than 20 percent of the world Muslim population, the reformation of Islam can take place only through them. The reformation of Arab Islam is much more difficult than the reformation of non-Arab Muslims, but it is more important, as they are the source population. This task has to be undertaken before Arab funding “Arab-izes” Islam everywhere in the world as it has in Afghanistan.

I return here to an earlier point: the necessity of studying terrorism as a phenomenon in the laboratories of behavioral psychology in order to discover the connection between violence and reading matter. Muslim culture, from its Arab beginnings, has canonized violence at all levels. Language is the means by which a culture imposes itself, and members of the community are a linguistic product, and therefore also a cultural one.

I am no expert on linguistics, but I believe that every language in the world contains expressions and terms sufficient for speakers of that language to understand one another and express themselves. Each language contains positive and negative expressions. Muslim culture uses language in a way which focuses on negative expressions, and so helps to create people with negative attitudes. This is immediately obvious to anyone who reads the Koran or the sayings of the Prophet with the eye of a linguistic researcher.

Let us take a chapter of the Koran, read it, and sift through its phrases. If we take “The Cow,” (2:1–286) the longest chapter, what do we find? “They were unbelievers … they do not believe … great torment … they deceive God … in their heart is sickness … they lie … they are the corrupters … it is they who are the fools … in their tyranny … they were not rightly guided … God has taken away their light … deaf, dumb and blind … snatches away their sight … bewares the fire … break God’s covenant … refuse to believe in God … will shed blood … Satan caused them to fall … destined for the fire … fear Me … a great trial from the Lord … we drowned Pharaoh’s men … you wrong … a thunderbolt struck you … God’s wrath … you would have been among the lost … your hearts became as hard as rock … woe unto those … humiliating punishment … you are wrongdoers … ,” etc. Moreover, the word
kill
and its derivatives appears at least twenty-five times in the course of this chapter, which is no more than fifty pages long.

If we disregard the Koran’s positive content and the ends to which negative concepts are used, there still remains the linguistic style that predominates in Islamic teachings and which has contributed to the creation of a negative violence-prone personality even in its most positive attitudes. Were an expert on behavioral science to study normal conversation as engaged in by Arab Muslims, he would be surprised by the negative terms in which such conversation is conducted. When an Arab Muslim wants to tell you it’s a fine day, he tends to say: “The weather yesterday was worse than it is today.” The Koran, to put it mildly, is sadly lacking in positive terms that fall gently upon the ear. For example, in the following Koranic verse from the chapter mentioned above we read: “There is sickness in their hearts which God has increased; they shall be sternly punished for their lying” (2:10)
.
A Muslim may object to my comments, saying: “But in this verse God is trying to demonstrate the importance of truthfulness as a virtue by emphasizing the punishment for lying.” My response is this: “Can God not use more positive language to demonstrate the importance of truthfulness?”

Islam forbids usury. If we examine Muhammad’s hadiths which confirm this prohibition, what do we find? “He who engages in usury is like one who copulates with his mother.” “He who engages in usury is like one who fornicates thirty-three times.” “He who engages in usury is like one who swallows a snake.” “He who engages in usury will be raised up as a madman on the day of judgment and will wander confounded like Satan.” I look at the language used here and ask myself how one can mold a psychologically, morally, and mentally healthy person with words and expressions like these. Are expressions such as “copulates with his mother,” “fornicates,” “swallows a snake,” and “a madman who wanders confounded like Satan” absolutely necessary in order to deliver the message that usury is forbidden? Muslims are the inalterable product of what they read. They are negative people, and their negativism is reflected in all their attitudes toward life.

On the plane from Amman to New York I passed the time by leafing through a book I had borrowed from the Arab lady sitting next to me. The book was entitled
Arab Lovers,
and it recounted tales of love and passion among the Arabs in the first centuries of the Muslim era. It was a medium-size book with big print and I expected it to contain exquisite stories in beautiful language which I would enjoy reading. But I found myself instead distracted by the frequency with which the phrase “Then he drew his sword and cut off his rival’s head” occurred: I was surprised to find it appeared twenty-five times in the first sixty pages. If this is true of a book in which Muslims talk of love and passion, one can only imagine what happens when they speak of jihad and of the need to defend God’s religion and uphold his authority! The language of violence and strife has extended into all areas of life in the Arab Muslim world. An arithmetic textbook in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq posed the following question to third-grade primary-school pupils: “Our brave soldiers killed 1,500 members of the enemy Iranian forces, wounded 1,800 others, and took 150 captive. What was the total extent of enemy losses, including dead, wounded, and captured?” Can arithmetic be taught to third-grade students without the inclusion of a body count?

During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war a Moroccan military unit fought alongside Syrian troops. After the war, rumor spread of the heroism displayed by the Moroccan soldiers; this, however, was merely a lie invented by the Syrians to show their appreciation for the Moroccans’ participation in the war. Teachers of classes of all ages were full of praise in their description of their heroism to us pupils. I remember how our religious education teacher elaborated on the heroic exploits of that military unit, and how he insisted that he had seen one of its members carrying a large number of fingers, ears, tongues, and eyes around in his pocket, which had been removed from the bodies of Israeli soldiers killed in the war. We would applaud our teachers happily as they described these “valiant deeds” to us.

Some people accuse Hollywood of bringing more and more violence into our culture. Well, I don’t believe that the American film industry centered in Hollywood has ever, in the course of its entire history, succeeded in reproducing so much as a fraction of the violence embodied in the Muslim Arab heritage. There is a difference between the child who sees a violent film on television and the child who hears about it from her teacher or sees that violence enacted all around her in everyday life. All aspects of life in Muslim societies reflect the culture of violence and the negative influence of immersion in a language full of negative words and violent expressions.

Islamic culture invites violence. In most cases it does so openly, in others subtly.

I spoke earlier at length of the background from which Islam emerged: an arid environment with meager resources, daily life shrouded in fears of the unknown, whose inhabitants depended on raiding as a means of survival. The prevailing philosophy in that environment was one of “kill or be killed.” Islam adopted the language of that environment, appropriated its negativity and violence then proceeded to legitimize and canonize them.

God, as described in the Koran, possesses the attributes of the men who were the product of that environment. He is highly strung, violent by temperament, lacking in foresight, capricious, fearful of being disobeyed or gainsaid. His fear is reflected in the nature of his commands, and he attacks without mercy. He avenges himself evilly upon those who rebel against him and calls upon people to defend him as if he were unable to defend himself. He promises those who obey him a paradise flowing with rivers and abundant in fruit, and threatens those who revolt against him with a hell where their skin will be flayed off by fire, only to be replaced to be flayed off again. The Koran says: “Those that deny Our revelations We will burn in Hell-fire. No sooner will their skins be consumed than We shall give them other skins” (4:56). I once heard a Muslim sheikh explaining the verse to a listener and continuing on: “When they ask you about the mountains. Say: ‘My Lord will crush them’ “ (20:105). I almost tore my hair with fury as I listened to him expatiating upon God’s ability to destroy and lay waste, so much so that he seemed to be speaking of Saddam Hussein’s devastation of the Kurds and Shias in Iraq.

The Koran does not distinguish between the concepts of “force” and “power.” It confuses the two in an odd manner, and God’s power manifests itself only as an ability to use force. What is the real difference between the two concepts? A person has power when he can do what needs to be done in a peaceable manner appropriate to the circumstances. He will resort to force only when he is powerless. In other words, power represents peace, while force represents violence.

Arabs who lived in the environment that gave birth to Islam were powerless in the face of the challenges presented by this environment, which threatened their lives and their welfare. Because they felt so helpless they felt a need for forcefulness, and created a god who would fulfill this need. When the Arab male lost his power he felt the need for a forceful god. And so he created a forceful god in the image of his need—but this god was not powerful. A powerful god, like a powerful person, rules his throne and his kingdom in love, peace, compassion, and mercy rather than by killing, inflexibility, and internal strife. A powerful god does not fear that his authority or his mission will be undermined by rebellion, nor does he resort to violence to defend that authority. That is the difference between the Muslim God and the real God, if there is any! The God of Islam uses force, but he has no power.

Let’s think about this for a minute: Who is the stronger, Mother Teresa or the ogre at the top of the mountain? Mother Teresa, of course, was the stronger of the two as she was able to accomplish her mission without resorting to force of any kind. But who possesses a greater degree of force, the ogre or Mother Teresa? The ogre, naturally, possesses a greater degree of force for it uses its talons and fangs to devour people. Let us examine the following verse from the Koran: “Prophet, rouse the faithful to arms. If there are twenty steadfast men among you, they shall vanquish two hundred; and if there are a hundred, they shall rout a thousand unbelievers, for they are devoid of understanding” (8:65). When does a God incite his followers to battle? He does that only when he is unable to spread his message by peaceful means. As people internalize their god, they incite others to strife when they lose their power and are unable to accomplish by peaceful methods what has to be done. So force is the only alternative to power! As long as a person has power, he has not need of force. Knowledge, whether religious, scientific, or philosophical, is supposed to arm us with power, not to enable us to use force. Concepts, whether religious or not, can defend themselves, and do not need to be defended by those who believe in them.