52 Sermon Illustrations on Hate

Charles Cerling is an American Baptist pastor in Michigan. A few years back he returned to his office after a vacation and began sorting through the mail. As he leafed through the minutes of the last deacons' meeting, one phrase stood out: “We discussed our leadership situation.” He knew what that meant; and sure enough, a few days later he was fired.

Cerling says his anger began to build in intensity. The church tried to be kind, and let him use all the stationary and phone calls he needed during the 90 days they gave him to find a new church. He used their postage and telephone lines as if money were water. Maybe Guam needed a new pastor. He called them. Spending their money was an expression of rage.

The entire time he entertained himself with fantasies of revenge, until he realized it was destroying him. He checked into a motel for 24 hours and did nothing but pray and study the Bible. God delivered him from the pit of anger.

Henry Lee Lucas killed for the first time when he was 23.

He stabbed and strangled his 74-year-old mother.

After 6 years in an institution for the criminally insane and

8 more yars in pjrison, Lucas was released.

He began drifting around the country.

Over the next 11 years he murdered at least 188 people in 24 states.

He claims to have killed at least 360.

At his trial for the murder of a hitchhiker, Lucas boasted that he

had crucified some victims and fileted others like fish.

He said, "I had nothing but pure hatred. Killing someone is just

like walking outdoors. If I wanted a victim, I'd just go get one."

[Police officials now doubt many of Lucas' confessions and think he was motivated by a desire to humiliate law enforcement, and get special treatment while being interrogated. However, they are certain he committed at least three murders, including his mother. For more detail see http://crimemagazine.com/lucas.htm]

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Ray Stedman, in one of his books, writes about seeing a famous picture that appeared in a news magazine during the Vietnamese war. Perhaps you remember it. It showed a South Vietnamese officer executing a Viet Cong. Someone wrote in to the magazine and said: "What a terrible thing! There stands that turtle-headed little man pointing a pistol at this man's head and shooting him in cold blood. How could a man do a thing like that!" In the next issue this perceptive reply appeared : "The reader asks, `What causes a man to act like that?' The answer is: the same thing that causes someone to call another person `a turtle-headed little man.'" (Ray Stedman, THE BEGINNINGS, Waco, TX: Word Books, 1978, p. 22)

One of the worst cases of hatred I have ever come across is found in a will written in 1935 by a Mr. Donohoe to his two daughters. It says, "Unto my two daughters, Frances Marie and Denise Victoria, by reason of their unfilial attitude toward a doting father, ... I leave the sum of $ 1.00 to each and a father's curse. May their lives be fraught with misery, unhappiness, and poignant sorrow. May their deaths be soon and of a lingering malignant and torturous nature..The last line of the will is so vicious I shudder to quote it. It reads, "May their souls rest in hell and suffer the torments of the condemned for etemity." Such utter contempt didn't develop in a day. It had to grow over a long period of time. We should never allow our minds to become fertile soil for the seeds of hatred. We would do ourselves a world of good by heeding the words of Paul, "Do not let the sun go down on your wrath" (Eph. 4:26).

Volume 24, No. 24 June 20, 1999

Cross Fire

~~~~~~~~~~~~

In June 1866, six veterans of the defeated Confederate

army met at a law office in Pulaski, Tennessee and the Ku

Klux Klan was born out of ruin and resentment.

What began as nothing more than a social club soon took

on ominous overtones when the members attracted a growing

following and began riding the countryside at night,

covering themselves in sheets and shame. To frighten

newly-freed slaves, hooded Klansmen pretended to be the

ghosts of Confederate dead. There was little violence at

first, but that soon changed.

Wrapping hatred in a perverted sense of piety,

patriotism and racial superiority, the KKK began its

infamous cross burning ritual in 1915, always accompanied by

the playing of Amazing Grace. In a typical cermony held not

long ago, a Klan leader intoned, "Out of darkness came the

light. But the whole world does not understand the plan.

We are for the white race, the white race only... One light

became many lights, the eternal light. The eternal light is

the KKK."

As the cross burned, he led a zealous cheer: "For God,

for the white race, for our children -- white power!"

All of this calls to mind the spiritual battle that

rages around and within us. We are the freshly-freed

slaves, loosed from the shackles of sin and the bondage of

self by the emancipation act played out on the coarse cross

of Calvary. The Liar who resents our liberty seeks to put

us back in our place by sending his servants garbed in the

guise of ghosts from our past. They haunt us with fears that

our former lives will never stay buried. Anxious about what

was, and what might be, we find ourselves caught in the

spiritual crossfire. Sometimes just the threat of harm is

enough to scare us off. Other times, the attacks upon us

are real.

If Satan can't re-enslave us with insecurity, he'll use

the opposite tactic and appeal to our pride. We must be

especially vigilant that we're not deluded into twisting the

message of the Cross by claiming exclusive rights to its

power and glory, relying on the amazing grace of Christ but

denying it to anyone who isn't just like us. When our rites

and righteousness replace His giving and forgiveness, we

don't illuminate the Cross with our lives, we light it, in a

blaze of pride and prejudice that dishonours God and

deceives our children. The arrogance of "right" supremacy

is the spiritual equivalent of white supremacy and just as

evil. But there's hope.

Yes, racism and resentment are alive today across the

continent. But KKK membership -- officially, at least --

has shrunk from the 3 million of 1922 to less than 5,000

today. On the Pulaski building where the Klan was founded,

a plaque marks the occasion. But the owner has turned the

plate over so its inscription cannot be read. So, too, the

ranks of the rancorous are dwindling. One day the Owner of

the church will overturn the shameful legacy of spiritual

pride and lovelessness and its message will be reversed

forever.

-- by Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, Brantford,

Ontario, Canada. Publish at will.

"I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man."

- Booker T. Washington

- _Instant Quotation Dictionary_, p. 154.

In 1960 the Israeli Mossad masterminded one of the most incredible feats of its history when it tracked down Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was one of the principal architects of the Holocaust and had been hiding away in Argentina. The point man implementing the whole plan was Peter Malkin. Several of Malkin’s family members were killed by the Third Reich and in particular, he still grieved over the loss of his sister and his six-year-old nephew, Peter.

As Malkin covertly monitored Eichmann and noticed how every day when Eichmann came home from work he was greeted by a young boy who threw his arms around him, Malkin would think of his own nephew when he saw this display of affection, but he was baffled by Eichmann’s tender response; he had thought of him only as a cold-hearted killer.

Finally one day, after the plans were meticulously laid, Eichmann was seized and dragged into a waiting car to the satisfaction of millions. The capture led to the trial and execution of the man who had sent tens of thousands to the gas chambers.

Malkin recently broke a thirty-year silence to tell of a private moment that left him devastated. It was of supreme importance to Malkin that Eichmann voice two things. First, he wanted desperately to know how it was possible that an ordinary human being could commit such untold evil and still feel no guilt. But there was a second thing - a very personal and nagging question. Malkin discovered that the little boy who so enthralled Eichmann was his own son. At the most opportune moment when Eichmann spoke passionately of how he missed his son, Malkin posed the question. "My sister’s boy ... was just your son’s age ... also blond and blue-eyed, just like your son. And you killed him." He waited for an explanation, confident that Eichmann could make the extension. With complete indifference he muttered, "But your nephew was Jewish, wasn’t he."

Hate wears a face of such indifference that it is terrifying. This story tells us something about the nature of guilt: that one’s feeling of guilt is inextricably bound to one’s view of life itself. For Eichmann, certain lives held no value and he, therefore, felt no guilt in destroying them. But our hearts cry out against such hatred because we know that every life is sacred and valuable. That sacredness is intrinsic for all humanity, because of our creator. May that cry point you to God himself, who sent his own Son to die that you may truly know how precious you are in His sight.

_________________________

Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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WHEN CHILDREN LEARN

===================

When children learn that happiness is not found in what a person has but in who that person is,

When they learn that giving and forgiving are more rewarding than taking and avenging,

When they learn that suffering is not eased by self-pity, but overcome by inner resolve and spiritual strength,

When they learn that they can't control the world around them, but they are the masters of their own souls,

When they learn that relationships will prosper if they value friendship over ego, compromise over pride, and listening over advising,

When they learn not to hate a person whose difference they fear, but to fear that kind of hate,

When they learn that there is pleasure in the power of lifting others up, not in the pseudo-power of pushing them down,

When the learn that praise from others is flattering but meaningless if it is not matched by self-respect,

When they learn that the value of a life is best measured not by the years spent accumulating possessions, but by the moments spent giving of one's self - sharing wisdom, inspiring hope, wiping tears and touching hearts,

When they learn that a person's beauty is seen not with the eyes but with the heart; and that even though time and hardships may ravage one's outer shell, they can enhance one's character and perspective,

When they learn to withhold judgment of people, knowing everyone is blessed with good and bad qualities, and that the emergence of either often depends on the help given or hurt inflicted by others,

When they learn that every person has been given the gift of a unique self, and the purpose of life is to share the very best of that gift with the world,

When children learn these ideals and how to practice them in the art of good living, they will no longer be children - they will be blessings to those who know them, and worthy models for all the world.

_____________________

by David L. Weatherford (c) 1996, from A 5th Portion of Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen.

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In the recent dustup over New York Knick Charley Ward's comments on Jews, I was reminded of how diabolical the "hate speech" charge has become. And I mean that literally. It truly is the devil's plaything -- not the speech itself, but the charge of hatred.

Eric Konigsberg of The New York Times, a Jew, reported on Ward's and Allan Houston's perhaps clumsy efforts to lead him to Christ. "E" as they called him, was a guest in one of their Bible studies, and Ward was trying to take him beyond the common notion that, in spiritual matters, we're all basically OK with God, whatever our convictions.

Melissa Isaacson of the Chicago Tribune was beside herself, speaking of those who "babble words of hate and nonsense," identifying Ward as "racist" and of an "insidious brand of bigot." To its credit, the Tribune ran a subsequent column by Skip Bayless, who said Ward's words had been pulled out of context. But Isaacson's take represented the media norm, so much so that the Tribune's ombudsman, Don Wycliff, called Bayless's piece "one of the most courageous newspaper columns I've seen in years," and indeed it was.

Why is the charge of "hate speech" so infernal?

1) It's usually false. In early America, the Old Deluder Laws provided for public education. The legislators reasoned that kids needed to learn to read so that they could read the Bible, a critical skill in their struggle with the Father of Lies, the Old Deluder. Well, the Old Deluder is still at work big time. Charlie Ward doesn't hate Jews. In fact, he loves Eric Konigsberg so much that he would risk public humiliation in trying to win him to Jesus.

2) It's irrefutable, not because it's true, but because it concerns things outside the realm of clear observation. By attacking one's motivations and frames of mind, you deny him the ability to conclusively disprove the charge. Who can know such things?

3) It elevates emotion over truth. In our therapeutic society, fixated on feelings, self-esteem and such, the value of truth's stock has been falling for years. The devil couldn't be happier.

4) It encourages assault on the Bible. Talk about a "rude" book. The Bible uses such words as "abomination" and "stench" to describe sin. It's not at all hard to imagine a suit against a church which put the text of "hateful" Romans 1:26-27 on its sign.

5) You can always find a few examples to fill the bill. Yes, there are haters, people who don't want to see homosexuals saved or racists regenerated. Satan only needs to wave an occasional bloody shirt to stir the unthinking to false generalization.

6) It allows the devil to disguise himself as an angel of light. If you're against hate speech, you must be on the side of the angels. Indeed, you must be the champion of love speech. Never mind that the indulgent "love" you defend is inimical to the best God has for us, both in this world and beyond.

7) It permits [in-?]sincerity. Yes, some people tell big lies knowing them to be lies. But it's so much easier to pass along a falsehood when you can be stirred to believe it. The charge of hate speech is so vague and invincible for the zealous that they can utter it with full, confident voice.

8) It snaps the lifeline. The only hope of the deluded is God's revelation and transforming work. The devil not only hates the people of God; he hates those who hate the people of God, not because they hate the people of God, but because they are themselves part of God's creation. By prompting them to defame their true helpers, he attacks their hope of rescue.

9) It serves the phenomenon of projection. A pastor once told me of a lady in the church who charged him with lusting over her. He'd scarcely noticed her until then. In fact, if there was any lusting going on, it was hers, but she couldn't bear to face it, so she projected the problem onto him. We do well to ask where the hate truly resides. Of course, it's not nice to judge motives (see # 2 above), but those who stipulate dark motives need to know that two can play this game. We can at least raise the question. And if there is such a psychological phenomenon as projection, the devil plays it like an accordion.

10) It cheapens an important word. By "crying 'Wolf!'" when there is no wolf, the "hate speech" crusaders devalue a word of great importance to Christians. The Bible forbids our hating people, for hatred is poison both to the soul and to human society. But if the word is attached to relatively minor or bogus offenses, we lose our respect for it, our fear of it and our ability to distinguish it when the real thing comes along.

_________________

Coppenger is pastor of Evanston (Illinois) Baptist Church. Other commentaries by Coppenger are posted at www.listten.com and www.comeletusreason.com.

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”And not only [this], but when Rebecca also had conceived by one man, [even] by our father Isaac (for [the children] not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls), it was said to her, ‘The older shall serve the younger.’ As it is written, ‘Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.’” (Romans 9:10-13 NKJV)

Line of Jacob

• not…this — Gen 25:21 — which if taken alone might suggest to some that Ishmael was rejected on the ground of character

• children…evil — before character was formed

• purpose — concerning the root of the visible Church

• election…calleth — Rom 11:5-7, Eph 1:4–11, Tit 3:5 — might be decided by will of God, and not human merit; just as Isaac, and not Ishmael, had been chosen

• it…her — Gen 25:23 — only a part of what was said is here recorded: but enough to show the point — the Divine choice

• elder…younger — referring to nations in the words spoken to Rebecca

• Jacob…loved — chosen to be channel of visible Church

• Esau…hated — this is explained by the prophet quoted, in the words, “And laid his mountain, etc., waste.” — Mal 1:2

Esau have I hated — W. Burkitt

This hatred may be understood —

I. In a qualified sense, for a less degree of love; God, preferring Jacob before Esau

II. In its strict sense, as real hatred of Esau, that is, the Edomites, after their wicked and unnatural conduct towards the Israelites

Force of the word “hate” — In the Scriptures a less degree of love is often spoken of as hatred. Thus in Gen 29:30–31, it is said Jacob “loved also Rachel more than Leah; … and when the Lord saw that Leah was hated.” See also Deut. xxi. 15. Jesus Christ used the word in the sense of loving less, when turning to the multitude He said, “If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” And Solomon has as a proverb, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son.”

“The election of wh. the Apostle speaks, is not an election of Jacob to eternal life, but of his posterity to be the visible Church and people of God on earth, and heirs of the promises; in their first and literal meaning, agreeably to what Moses declared (Deut 7:6–8), and Paul preached (Acts 13:17).” — Macknight

Lew Smedes tells about Marcie Rosen. She was deserted by her husband and left without money, skills, or self-esteem. She felt unloved, and unlovable. Asked what helped her most to get out of the sinking sand of her despair, into school to train for a job, and into the marketplace where her skills are valued, Marcie will tell you. “I wanted to show the louse that he couldn’t hurt me. Hate gave me strength.”*

Just weeks before his death, Reverend Ernest Gordon sat in a darkened theater watching a private screening of the long-anticipated movie about his life. His story illumines the power of forgiveness.

Gordon was serving as a captain in the British army during the Second World War when he was captured by the Japanese and marched with other prisoners into the Southeast Asian jungles. The prison camp, which was constructing a railroad bridge over the River Kwai, would eventually claim the lives of 80,000 men.

The prisoners were forced to work for hours in scorching temperatures, chopping their way through tangled jungles. Those who paused out of exhaustion were beaten to death by the guards. Treated like animals, the men themselves became like beasts trying to survive. Theft was as rampant as hunger and disease among them. Life was met with indifference, deceit, and hatred — by captive and captor alike.

Yet, Gordon lived to tell of hope and transformation in the valley of the River Kwai. In his widely acclaimed book, he gives a firsthand account of the story behind the “death railroad” and the spiritual resurrection of the camp. “Death was still with us,” writes Gordon. “But we were slowly being freed from its destructive grip. We were seeing for ourselves the sharp contrast between the forces that made for life and those that made for death. Selfishness, hatred, envy, jealousy, greed, self-indulgence, laziness and pride were all anti-life. Love, heroism, self-sacrifice, sympathy, mercy, integrity and creative faith, on the other hand, were the essence of life, turning mere existence into living in its truest sense. These were the gifts of God to men. True, there was hatred. But there was also love. There was death. But there was also life. God had not left us. He was with us, calling us to live the divine life in fellowship.”(1) In the valley of the shadow of death, Christ had risen.

God had reconciled their lifeless estates to Himself, such that they found themselves unable to respond to others without a similar inexplicable grace. So complete was the transformation of the men, so real the presence of Christ among them that they were able to reach out even to their captors with the love that had taken hold of them.

While still in the hands of their enemies, a train carrying Gordon and several others came alongside another boxcar at a stop in Burma. The entire car was filled with gravely wounded Japanese soldiers. They were left alone, without medical attention or company, as if abandoned refuse of war. “They were in a shocking state,” Gordon recalls. “The wounded looked at us forlornly as they sat with their heads resting against the carriages waiting fatalistically for death.... These were our enemy.”(2)

Without a word, many of the officers unbuckled their packs, took out part of their rations and a few rags, and with their canteens went over to the Japanese train. The guards tried to prevent them, but they pressed through, kneeling by the side of the injured men with food and water, cleaning their wounds. Eighteen months earlier the same men of the River Kwai prison camp would have celebrated the humiliation and destruction of any on the side of their violent captors. Yet Gordon explains, “We had experienced a moment of grace, there in the bloodstained railway cars. God had broken through the barriers of our prejudice and had given us the will to obey his command, 'Thou shalt love.'“(3)

Ernest Gordon left his three years of brutal imprisonment with an unexpected turn in his own story. Among suffering and enemies, God had spoken. Now Gordon could not remain silent. He returned to Scotland to attend seminary, eventually becoming the dean of the chapel of Princeton University where he remained until his death in 2002. Among a valley of dry bones, God had breathed men to life. In the trenches of despair and hatred, the inexplicable love of Christ called enemies — and men — to hope and forgiveness.

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1. As quoted by Philip Yancey in RUMORS OF ANOTHER WORLD (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 175.

2. Ernest Gordon, MIRACLE ON THE RIVER KWAI (London: Wm. Collins Sons & Co., Ltd., 1963), 162, 163.

3. Ibid., 164.

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Copyright © 2005 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

J.B. Stoner died at age 81. The obituary was titled, “Bombed Church and Hated With A Passion.” The first line said he was “an unrepentant white supremacist and anti-Semite convicted in the civil rights-era bombing of a black church.”

It took 19 years for him to be indicted for the bombing. At the trial he was shown an old newspaper clipping which quoted a particularly hateful statement by him. Did you say such a thing, he was asked. He replied, “I don't think I said that, but I wish I had.”

One civil rights worker noted that governor George Wallace had been a racist, but he apologized in the end. Stoner never apologized. He hated to the end.

At least 9 million of them live in the United States, mostly trying to avoid the wrath of neighbors, colleagues and relatives. But they do not pray for help, for they are America’s atheists – the most hated people in the country.

In a new study by University of Minnesota sociologists, more than 2,000 people were asked which of their fellow citizens lacked the proper “vision of American society.”

More than blacks or gays or immigrants or lesbians or even Muslims, atheists are viewed as the least American, according to the survey. And those without a god are the last people most folks would want their children to marry.

“Atheists, who account for about 3% of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, the study's lead researcher.

Most studies combine atheists and agnostics for a total of 12%, meaning some 36 million Americans – more than one in 10 – either don't believe in a god or couldn’t care less about the whole subject. A survey of 50,000 adults in 2001 showed that 14% of Americans “identify with no religion,” nearly doubling from just 8% in 1990. At this rate, by the year 2030 Christians and other religious people will be a minority and the last American god-worshippers will be buried by 2050 ... just 44 years from today!

But for the time being, atheists are weak in number and openly despised.

Atheists don't demand anything, they don't preach or riot, they have no real organization and they are completely unelectable. Nonetheless, Americans don't trust them.

“It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy – and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell.

Not surprisingly, people who haven’t had much of a life – the majority of Americans – were the most likely to fear atheists. But those who live on the coasts, have a decent education and know a wide variety of people were the ones who didn’t stay up nights worrying about the godless.

Differing religious beliefs should not prevent people from loving and serving one another for the “betterment of our world,” President Obama said at the 2009 National Prayer Breakfast.

The new president said the “very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same. But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. “There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being.”

He said the Golden Rule -- “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12) -- unites all major religions.

“It is an ancient rule, a simple rule, but also one of the most challenging,” he said after citing various religions, as well as texts from some of those religions that are similar to the Golden Rule. “For it asks each of us to take some measure of responsibility for the well-being of people we may not know or worship with or agree with on every issue.

“Instead of driving us apart, our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted; to make peace where there is strife and rebuild what has broken; to lift up those who have fallen on hard times,” the president told the audience of legislators, administration officials, foreign diplomats, religious leaders and others gathered in a Washington hotel ballroom.

Obama acknowledged he was not reared in a “particularly religious household.” His father was a Muslim who became an atheist; his grandparents a Baptist and Methodist who did not practice their faiths, and his mother a skeptic regarding organized religion, the president said. His mother, however, was the “kindest, most spiritual person I’ve ever known,” he said.

“I didn’t become a Christian until many years later, when I moved to the south side of Chicago after college,” Obama said. “It happened not because of indoctrination or a sudden revelation, but because I spent month after month working with church folks who simply wanted to help neighbors who were down on their luck -- no matter what they looked like or where they came from or who they prayed to.”

Afterward, a pro-life leader said she desires the new president would fully apply his declaration there is “no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, said in a written statement, “My deepest prayer is that President Obama will move forward in the spirit of the Golden Rule and embrace policies that affirm the dignity of every human being, especially the most vulnerable of all, the unborn.”

Obama was an advocate of unlimited abortion rights during his careers in the Illinois and U.S. Senates. Since becoming president, he has issued an executive order reversing a pro-life policy that prevented federal family planning funds from going to international organizations that perform or promote abortion.

________

Compiled by Tom Strode, Washington bureau chief for Baptist Press.

At the end of the Bob Harrington/Madalyn O'Hair debates, the Wittenburg Door interviewed them both. After summing up what she had to say about Harrington, O'Hair summed up what she believed about Christianity: "Christianity is intolerant, anti-democratic, anti-sexual, and anti-life. It is anti-woman, and I cannot stand

that. It is anti-everything that is good and human and decent and kind and love-filled and understanding. I used to have an intellectual hatred for Christianity. I think that is broadening now. I am 'enjoying' hating the whole thing."

Andrew* limped up the stairs to the pulpit of the church. As he turned to face the congregation, I noticed that one of his eyes sagged. The scarring was evidence of the torture he had endured.

He greeted the members of the Bulgarian Baptist church in broken English. It was the late 1990s and it had been less than a decade since the Soviet Union had dissolved. Many of the believers sitting shoulder to shoulder in the pews of the church had known the trauma of persecution under the communist regime. Some had been imprisoned. They were acquainted with suffering, so they could relate to Andrew’s story in a way that I couldn’t.

Standing in front of a congregation of Bulgarian believers, Andrew described how fighters had come to his village and executed his father in front of his eyes. He held his dad as he died in his arms.

Then the men dragged Andrew to prison where they tortured him. They beat him so badly that they destroyed the vision in one of his eyes. Searing jolts from electric shock permanently damaged the nerves in one of his legs.

A priest who visited the prison on occasion helped him escape. Then his long walk over the North African desert began. He traveled on foot to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It’s a miracle he survived the brutal journey.

From Egypt he crossed into Israel, where he registered as a refugee and applied for asylum in Europe. Bulgaria offered to take him. An African who had never seen snow, he was totally unprepared for winter in the Balkans. He shivered almost constantly, never really managing to feel warm. But his heart was burning with anger. He was consumed with the desire to take revenge on the men who destroyed his life.

From hate to love

Andrew and some refugee friends began attending services at an international Baptist church, attracted by a promise of free meals. James, the pastor and a former car mechanic from Texas, and his wife Audrey served a meal in their apartment after the service every Sunday. They invited anyone who wanted to come.

No one could resist Audrey’s buttery casseroles -- not me and not the African refugees. I met Andrew when I sat across from him at the kitchen table. He asked me about my family. Did I have brothers, sisters and aunties? He wondered how my father felt about me being so far from home. Was he worried that I lived alone? I sensed the cultural distance. This man from a closely knit tribal society hardly knew what to make of a young woman traveling voluntarily across an ocean to make a life of her own, far from those who were her protectors.

One Sunday, Pastor James happened to be preaching on the Sermon on the Mount. He emphasized Jesus’ command to love your enemies. Jesus’ teaching struck Andrew as ridiculous and offensive. So he confronted James after the service, planning to argue. He felt only hatred for his enemies. He wanted retribution, not love.

But over months of conversations, James patiently explained the power of the Gospel. The Sermon on the Mount convicted Andrew. Jesus’ teaching, death and resurrection broke through his bitterness. He decided to follow Jesus, knowing that this new commitment meant he had to forgive the men who killed his father.

Standing in the pulpit of the Bulgarian church, he said he wanted to return to North Africa, the place of his greatest sorrow. Before, he wanted to go back to kill his enemies, but now he would forgive them. God’s love, he believed, could save them, just as it had transformed him.

Listening to Andrew, I wondered if I would do the same. Would God’s love flow through me if I watched my father die in my arms? Would I be able to love people if they tortured me the way they tortured Andrew?

Andrew’s testimony taught me three things about God’s love:

• Jesus isn’t asking us to do something He hasn’t already done Himself.

He forgave those who crucified Him. He loved us while we were still enemies of God (Romans 5:10). Jesus calls Christians to love our enemies and bless those who curse us, because He did the same. He established a pattern for those who would follow after Him (1 Peter 2:20–25).

• Loving our enemies isn’t something we do for God. It’s something God does through us.

This sort of love isn’t natural; it’s supernatural. It isn’t a love any person can muster in his own strength. This love is the fruit of the Spirit, at work in those who believe. It can’t be manufactured; it can only be gifted. If we suffer in Jesus’s name without retaliating, the “Spirit of glory and of God” rests on us (1 Peter 4:12–19).

• Jesus’s command to love our enemies applies to all Christians, everywhere, all the time.

Andrew understood that he couldn’t be a follower of Jesus and not submit to this hard teaching. The call to love even our enemies subversively breaks the natural cycle of violence that has corrupted God’s good world. It is this love that most closely reflects the merciful character of God Himself (Luke 6:27–36).

Commenting on Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, Charles Spurgeon realized that loving enemies is one of the most distinctive aspects of the Christian discipleship:

“We do not merely cease to hate and then abide in a cold neutrality, but we love where hatred seems inevitable. We bless where our old nature bids us to curse, and we are active in doing good to those who deserve to receive evil from us.... He who can bless the unthankful and the evil is a child of God, for the Lord is doing this on a great scale in daily providence, and none but his children will imitate him.”

Will I love like Christ? Will I imitate Him in blessing even my enemies? A North African refugee taught me that if I’m a follower of Jesus, I don’t have a choice. Andrew showed me the radical love of God that embraces even our enemies. Recently, I spoke with James and Audrey. They told me that Andrew returned to North Africa to put this love into practice.

________

*Name changed.

“There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur’an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam.”[1] So announces former nun and self-professed “freelance monotheist,” Karen Armstrong. This quote sums up the single most influential argument currently serving to deflect the accusation that Islam is inherently violent and intolerant: All monotheistic religions, proponents of such an argument say, and not just Islam, have their fair share of violent and intolerant scriptures, as well as bloody histories. Thus, whenever Islam’s sacred scriptures — the Qur’an first, followed by the reports on the words and deeds of Muhammad (the Hadith) — are highlighted as demonstrative of the religion’s innate bellicosity, the immediate rejoinder is that other scriptures, specifically those of Judeo-Christianity, are as riddled with violent passages.

More often than not, this argument puts an end to any discussion regarding whether violence and intolerance are unique to Islam. Instead, the default answer becomes that it is not Islam per se but rather Muslim grievance and frustration — ever exacerbated by economic, political, and social factors — that lead to violence. That this view comports perfectly with the secular West’s “materialistic” epistemology makes it all the more unquestioned.

Therefore, before condemning the Qur’an and the historical words and deeds of Islam’s prophet Muhammad for inciting violence and intolerance, Jews are counseled to consider the historical atrocities committed by their Hebrew forefathers as recorded in their own scriptures; Christians are advised to consider the brutal cycle of violence their forbears have committed in the name of their faith against both non-Christians and fellow Christians. In other words, Jews and Christians are reminded that those who live in glass houses should not be hurling stones.

But is that really the case? Is the analogy with other scriptures legitimate? Does Hebrew violence in the ancient era, and Christian violence in the medieval era, compare to or explain away the tenacity of Muslim violence in the modern era?

Violence in Jewish and Christian History

Along with Armstrong, any number of prominent writers, historians, and theologians have championed this “relativist” view. For instance, John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, wonders,

How come we keep on asking the same question, [about violence in Islam,] and don’t ask the same question about Christianity and Judaism? Jews and Christians have engaged in acts of violence. All of us have the transcendent and the dark side. ... We have our own theology of hate. In mainstream Christianity and Judaism, we tend to be intolerant; we adhere to an exclusivist theology, of us versus them.[2]

An article by Pennsylvania State University humanities professor Philip Jenkins, “Dark Passages,” delineates this position most fully. It aspires to show that the Bible is more violent than the Qur’an:

[I]n terms of ordering violence and bloodshed, any simplistic claim about the superiority of the Bible to the Koran would be wildly wrong. In fact, the Bible overflows with “texts of terror,” to borrow a phrase coined by the American theologian Phyllis Trible. The Bible contains far more verses praising or urging bloodshed than does the Koran, and biblical violence is often far more extreme, and marked by more indiscriminate savagery. ... If the founding text shapes the whole religion, then Judaism and Christianity deserve the utmost condemnation as religions of savagery.[3]

Several anecdotes from the Bible as well as from Judeo-Christian history illustrate Jenkins’ point, but two in particular — one supposedly representative of Judaism, the other of Christianity — are regularly mentioned and therefore deserve closer examination.

The military conquest of the land of Canaan by the Hebrews in about 1200 B.C.E. is often characterized as “genocide” and has all but become emblematic of biblical violence and intolerance. God told Moses:

But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them — the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite — just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.[4]

So Joshua [Moses’ successor] conquered all the land: the mountain country and the South and the lowland and the wilderness slopes, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord, God of Israel had commanded.[5]

As for Christianity, since it is impossible to find New Testament verses inciting violence, those who espouse the view that Christianity is as violent as Islam rely on historical events such as the Crusader wars waged by European Christians between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The Crusades were in fact violent and led to atrocities by the modern world’s standards under the banner of the cross and in the name of Christianity. After breaching the walls of Jerusalem in 1099, for example, the Crusaders reportedly slaughtered almost every inhabitant of the Holy City. According to the medieval chronicle, the Gesta Danorum, “the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles.”[6]

In light of the above, as Armstrong, Esposito, Jenkins, and others argue, why should Jews and Christians point to the Qur’an as evidence of Islam’s violence while ignoring their own scriptures and history?

Bible versus Qur’an

The answer lies in the fact that such observations confuse history and theology by conflating the temporal actions of men with what are understood to be the immutable words of God. The fundamental error is that Judeo-Christian history — which is violent — is being conflated with Islamic theology — which commands violence. Of course, the three major monotheistic religions have all had their share of violence and intolerance towards the “other.” Whether this violence is ordained by God or whether warlike men merely wished it thus is the key question.

Old Testament violence is an interesting case in point. God clearly ordered the Hebrews to annihilate the Canaanites and surrounding peoples. Such violence is therefore an expression of God’s will, for good or ill. Regardless, all the historic violence committed by the Hebrews and recorded in the Old Testament is just that — history. It happened; God commanded it. But it revolved around a specific time and place and was directed against a specific people. At no time did such violence go on to become standardized or codified into Jewish law. In short, biblical accounts of violence are descriptive, not prescriptive.

This is where Islamic violence is unique. Though similar to the violence of the Old Testament — commanded by God and manifested in history — certain aspects of Islamic violence and intolerance have become standardized in Islamic law and apply at all times. Thus, while the violence found in the Qur’an has a historical context, its ultimate significance is theological. Consider the following Qur’anic verses, better known as the “sword-verses”:

Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way.[7]

Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day, and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden – such men as practise not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book – until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled.[8]

As with Old Testament verses where God commanded the Hebrews to attack and slay their neighbors, the sword-verses also have a historical context. God first issued these commandments after the Muslims under Muhammad’s leadership had grown sufficiently strong to invade their Christian and pagan neighbors. But unlike the bellicose verses and anecdotes of the Old Testament, the sword-verses became fundamental to Islam’s subsequent relationship to both the “people of the book” (i.e., Jews and Christians) and the “idolaters” (i.e., Hindus, Buddhists, animists, etc.) and, in fact, set off the Islamic conquests, which changed the face of the world forever. Based on Qur’an 9:5, for instance, Islamic law mandates that idolaters and polytheists must either convert to Islam or be killed; simultaneously, Qur’an 9:29 is the primary source of Islam’s well-known discriminatory practices against conquered Christians and Jews living under Islamic suzerainty.

In fact, based on the sword-verses as well as countless other Qur’anic verses and oral traditions attributed to Muhammad, Islam’s learned officials, sheikhs, muftis, and imams throughout the ages have all reached consensus — binding on the entire Muslim community — that Islam is to be at perpetual war with the non-Muslim world until the former subsumes the latter. Indeed, it is widely held by Muslim scholars that since the sword-verses are among the final revelations on the topic of Islam’s relationship to non-Muslims, that they alone have abrogated some 200 of the Qur’an’s earlier and more tolerant verses, such as “no compulsion is there in religion.”[9] Famous Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) admired in the West for his “progressive” insights, also puts to rest the notion that jihad is defensive warfare:

In the Muslim community, the holy war [jihad] is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force ... The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense ... They are merely required to establish their religion among their own people. That is why the Israelites after Moses and Joshua remained unconcerned with royal authority [e.g., a caliphate]. Their only concern was to establish their religion [not spread it to the nations] ... But Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.[10]

Modern authorities agree. The Encyclopaedia of Islam’s entry for “jihad” by Emile Tyan states that the “spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general ... Jihad must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam ... Islam must completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad [warfare to spread Islam] can be eliminated.” Iraqi jurist Majid Khaduri (1909-2007), after defining jihad as warfare, writes that “jihad ... is regarded by all jurists, with almost no exception, as a collective obligation of the whole Muslim community.”[11] And, of course, Muslim legal manuals written in Arabic are even more explicit.[12]

Qur’anic Language

When the Qur’an’s violent verses are juxtaposed with their Old Testament counterparts, they are especially distinct for using language that transcends time and space, inciting believers to attack and slay nonbelievers today no less than yesterday. God commanded the Hebrews to kill Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites — all specific peoples rooted to a specific time and place. At no time did God give an open-ended command for the Hebrews, and by extension their Jewish descendants, to fight and kill gentiles. On the other hand, though Islam’s original enemies were, like Judaism’s, historical (e.g., Christian Byzantines and Zoroastrian Persians), the Qur’an rarely singles them out by their proper names. Instead, Muslims were (and are) commanded to fight the people of the book — ”until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled”[13] and to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them.”[14]

The two Arabic conjunctions “until” (hata) and “wherever” (haythu) demonstrate the perpetual and ubiquitous nature of these commandments: There are still “people of the book” who have yet to be “utterly humbled” (especially in the Americas, Europe, and Israel) and “idolaters” to be slain “wherever” one looks (especially Asia and sub-Saharan Africa). In fact, the salient feature of almost all of the violent commandments in Islamic scriptures is their open-ended and generic nature: “Fight them [non-Muslims] until there is no persecution and the religion is God’s entirely. [Emphasis added.]”[15] Also, in a well-attested tradition that appears in the hadith collections, Muhammad proclaims:

I have been commanded to wage war against mankind until they testify that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God; and that they establish prostration prayer, and pay the alms-tax [i.e., convert to Islam]. If they do so, their blood and property are protected. [Emphasis added.][16]

This linguistic aspect is crucial to understanding scriptural exegeses regarding violence. Again, it bears repeating that neither Jewish nor Christian scriptures — the Old and New Testaments, respectively — employ such perpetual, open-ended commandments. Despite all this, Jenkins laments that

Commands to kill, to commit ethnic cleansing, to institutionalize segregation, to hate and fear other races and religions ... all are in the Bible, and occur with a far greater frequency than in the Qur’an. At every stage, we can argue what the passages in question mean, and certainly whether they should have any relevance for later ages. But the fact remains that the words are there, and their inclusion in the scripture means that they are, literally, canonized, no less than in the Muslim scripture.[17]

One wonders what Jenkins has in mind by the word “canonized.” If by canonized he means that such verses are considered part of the canon of Judeo-Christian scripture, he is absolutely correct; conversely, if by canonized he means or is trying to connote that these verses have been implemented in the Judeo-Christian Weltanschauung, he is absolutely wrong.

Yet one need not rely on purely exegetical and philological arguments; both history and current events give the lie to Jenkins’s relativism. Whereas first-century Christianity spread via the blood of martyrs, first-century Islam spread through violent conquest and bloodshed. Indeed, from day one to the present — whenever it could — Islam spread through conquest, as evinced by the fact that the majority of what is now known as the Islamic world, or dar al-Islam, was conquered by the sword of Islam. This is a historic fact, attested to by the most authoritative Islamic historians. Even the Arabian peninsula, the “home” of Islam, was subdued by great force and bloodshed, as evidenced by the Ridda wars following Muhammad’s death when tens of thousands of Arabs were put to the sword by the first caliph Abu Bakr for abandoning Islam.

Muhammad’s Role

Moreover, concerning the current default position which purports to explain away Islamic violence — that the latter is a product of Muslim frustration vis-à-vis political or economic oppression — one must ask: What about all the oppressed Christians and Jews, not to mention Hindus and Buddhists, of the world today? Where is their religiously-garbed violence? The fact remains: Even though the Islamic world has the lion’s share of dramatic headlines — of violence, terrorism, suicide-attacks, decapitations — it is certainly not the only region in the world suffering under both internal and external pressures.

For instance, even though practically all of sub-Saharan Africa is currently riddled with political corruption, oppression and poverty, when it comes to violence, terrorism, and sheer chaos, Somalia — which also happens to be the only sub-Saharan country that is entirely Muslim — leads the pack. Moreover, those most responsible for Somali violence and the enforcement of intolerant, draconian, legal measures — the members of the jihadi group Al-Shabab (the youth) — articulate and justify all their actions through an Islamist paradigm.

In Sudan, too, a jihadi-genocide against the Christian and polytheistic peoples is currently being waged by Khartoum’s Islamist government and has left nearly a million “infidels” and “apostates” dead. That the Organization of Islamic Conference has come to the defense of Sudanese president Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, is further telling of the Islamic body’s approval of violence toward both non-Muslims and those deemed not Muslim enough.

Latin American and non-Muslim Asian countries also have their fair share of oppressive, authoritarian regimes, poverty, and all the rest that the Muslim world suffers. Yet, unlike the near daily headlines emanating from the Islamic world, there are no records of practicing Christians, Buddhists, or Hindus crashing explosives-laden vehicles into the buildings of oppressive (e.g., Cuban or Chinese communist) regimes, all the while waving their scriptures in hand and screaming, “Jesus [or Buddha or Vishnu] is great!” Why?

There is one final aspect that is often overlooked — either from ignorance or disingenuousness — by those who insist that violence and intolerance is equivalent across the board for all religions. Aside from the divine words of the Qur’an, Muhammad’s pattern of behavior — his sunna or “example” — is an extremely important source of legislation in Islam. Muslims are exhorted to emulate Muhammad in all walks of life: “You have had a good example in God’s Messenger.”[18] And Muhammad’s pattern of conduct toward non-Muslims is quite explicit.

Sarcastically arguing against the concept of moderate Islam, for example, terrorist Osama bin Laden, who enjoys half the Arab-Islamic world’s support per an Al-Jazeera poll,[19] portrays the Prophet’s sunna thusly:

“Moderation” is demonstrated by our prophet who did not remain more than three months in Medina without raiding or sending a raiding party into the lands of the infidels to beat down their strongholds and seize their possessions, their lives, and their women.[20]

In fact, based on both the Qur’an and Muhammad’s sunna, pillaging and plundering infidels, enslaving their children, and placing their women in concubinage is well founded.[21] And the concept of sunna — which is what 90 percent of the billion-plus Muslims, the Sunnis, are named after — essentially asserts that anything performed or approved by Muhammad, humanity’s most perfect example, is applicable for Muslims today no less than yesterday. This, of course, does not mean that Muslims in mass live only to plunder and rape.

But it does mean that persons naturally inclined to such activities, and who also happen to be Muslim, can — and do — quite easily justify their actions by referring to the “Sunna of the Prophet” — the way Al-Qaeda, for example, justified its attacks on 9/11 where innocents including women and children were killed: Muhammad authorized his followers to use catapults during their siege of the town of Ta’if in 630 C.E. — townspeople had refused to submit — though he was aware that women and children were sheltered there. Also, when asked if it was permissible to launch night raids or set fire to the fortifications of the infidels if women and children were among them, the Prophet is said to have responded, “They [women and children] are from among them [infidels].”[22]

Jewish and Christian Ways

Though law-centric and possibly legalistic, Judaism has no such equivalent to the Sunna; the words and deeds of the patriarchs, though described in the Old Testament, never went on to prescribe Jewish law. Neither Abraham’s “white-lies,” nor Jacob’s perfidy, nor Moses’ short-fuse, nor David’s adultery, nor Solomon’s philandering ever went on to instruct Jews or Christians. They were understood as historical acts perpetrated by fallible men who were more often than not punished by God for their less than ideal behavior.

As for Christianity, much of the Old Testament law was abrogated or fulfilled — depending on one’s perspective — by Jesus. “Eye for an eye” gave way to “turn the other cheek.” Totally loving God and one’s neighbor became supreme law.[23] Furthermore, Jesus’ sunna — as in “What would Jesus do?” — is characterized by passivity and altruism. The New Testament contains absolutely no exhortations to violence.

Still, there are those who attempt to portray Jesus as having a similarly militant ethos as Muhammad by quoting the verse where the former — who “spoke to the multitudes in parables and without a parable spoke not”[24] — said, “I come not to bring peace but a sword.”[25] But based on the context of this statement, it is clear that Jesus was not commanding violence against non-Christians but rather predicting that strife will exist between Christians and their environment — a prediction that was only too true as early Christians, far from taking up the sword, passively perished by the sword in martyrdom as too often they still do in the Muslim world. [26]

Others point to the violence predicted in the Book of Revelation while, again, failing to discern that the entire account is descriptive — not to mention clearly symbolic — and thus hardly prescriptive for Christians. At any rate, how can one conscionably compare this handful of New Testament verses that metaphorically mention the word “sword” to the literally hundreds of Qur’anic injunctions and statements by Muhammad that clearly command Muslims to take up a very real sword against non-Muslims?

Undeterred, Jenkins bemoans the fact that, in the New Testament, Jews “plan to stone Jesus, they plot to kill him; in turn, Jesus calls them liars, children of the Devil.”[27] It still remains to be seen if being called “children of the Devil” is more offensive than being referred to as the descendents of apes and pigs — the Qur’an’s appellation for Jews.[28] Name calling aside, however, what matters here is that, whereas the New Testament does not command Christians to treat Jews as “children of the Devil,” based on the Qur’an, primarily 9:29, Islamic law obligates Muslims to subjugate Jews, indeed, all non-Muslims.

Does this mean that no self-professed Christian can be anti-Semitic? Of course not. But it does mean that Christian anti-Semites are living oxymorons — for the simple reason that textually and theologically, Christianity, far from teaching hatred or animosity, unambiguously stresses love and forgiveness. Whether or not all Christians follow such mandates is hardly the point; just as whether or not all Muslims uphold the obligation of jihad is hardly the point. The only question is, what do the religions command?

John Esposito is therefore right to assert that “Jews and Christians have engaged in acts of violence.” He is wrong, however, to add, “We [Christians] have our own theology of hate.” Nothing in the New Testament teaches hate — certainly nothing to compare with Qur’anic injunctions such as: “We [Muslims] disbelieve in you [non-Muslims], and between us and you enmity has shown itself, and hatred for ever until you believe in God alone.”[29]

Reassessing the Crusades

And it is from here that one can best appreciate the historic Crusades — events that have been thoroughly distorted by Islam’s many influential apologists. Karen Armstrong, for instance, has practically made a career for herself by misrepresenting the Crusades, writing, for example, that “the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam.”[30] That a former nun rabidly condemns the Crusades vis-à-vis anything Islam has done makes her critique all the more marketable. Yet statements such as this ignore the fact that from the beginnings of Islam, more than 400 years before the Crusades, Christians have noted that Islam was spread by the sword.[31] Indeed, authoritative Muslim historians writing centuries before the Crusades, such as Ahmad Ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri (died 892) and Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari (838-923), make it clear that Islam was spread by the sword.

The fact remains: The Crusades were a counterattack on Islam — not an unprovoked assault as Armstrong and other revisionist historians portray. Eminent historian Bernard Lewis puts it well,

Even the Christian crusade, often compared with the Muslim jihad, was itself a delayed and limited response to the jihad and in part also an imitation. But unlike the jihad, it was concerned primarily with the defense or reconquest of threatened or lost Christian territory. It was, with few exceptions, limited to the successful wars for the recovery of southwest Europe, and the unsuccessful wars to recover the Holy Land and to halt the Ottoman advance in the Balkans. The Muslim jihad, in contrast, was perceived as unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule. ... The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic law.[32]

Moreover, Muslim invasions and atrocities against Christians were on the rise in the decades before the launch of the Crusades in 1096. The Fatimid caliph Abu ‘Ali Mansur Tariqu’l-Hakim (r. 996-1021) desecrated and destroyed a number of important churches — such as the Church of St. Mark in Egypt and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem — and decreed even more oppressive than usual decrees against Christians and Jews. Then, in 1071, the Seljuk Turks crushed the Byzantines in the pivotal battle of Manzikert and, in effect, conquered a major chunk of Byzantine Anatolia presaging the way for the eventual capture of Constantinople centuries later.

It was against this backdrop that Pope Urban II (r. 1088-1099) called for the Crusades:

From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians [i.e., Muslim Turks] ... has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion.[33]

Even though Urban II’s description is historically accurate, the fact remains: However one interprets these wars — as offensive or defensive, just or unjust — it is evident that they were not based on the example of Jesus, who exhorted his followers to “love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”[34] Indeed, it took centuries of theological debate, from Augustine to Aquinas, to rationalize defensive war — articulated as “just war.” Thus, it would seem that if anyone, it is the Crusaders — not the jihadists — who have been less than faithful to their scriptures (from a literal standpoint); or put conversely, it is the jihadists — not the Crusaders — who have faithfully fulfilled their scriptures (also from a literal stand point). Moreover, like the violent accounts of the Old Testament, the Crusades are historic in nature and not manifestations of any deeper scriptural truths.

In fact, far from suggesting anything intrinsic to Christianity, the Crusades ironically better help explain Islam. For what the Crusades demonstrated once and for all is that irrespective of religious teachings — indeed, in the case of these so-called Christian Crusades, despite them — man is often predisposed to violence. But this begs the question: If this is how Christians behaved — who are commanded to love, bless, and do good to their enemies who hate, curse, and persecute them — how much more can be expected of Muslims who, while sharing the same violent tendencies, are further commanded by the Deity to attack, kill, and plunder nonbelievers?

________

Raymond Ibrahim is associate director of the Middle East Forum and author of The Al Qaeda Reader (New York: Doubleday, 2007).

[1] Andrea Bistrich, “Discovering the common grounds of world religions,” interview with Karen Armstrong, Share International, Sept. 2007, pp. 19-22.

[2] C-SPAN2, June 5, 2004.

[3] Philip Jenkins, “Dark Passages,” The Boston Globe, Mar. 8, 2009.

[4] Deut. 20:16-18.

[5] Josh. 10:40.

[6] “The Fall of Jerusalem,” Gesta Danorum, accessed Apr. 2, 2009.

[7] Qur. 9:5. All translations of Qur’anic verses are drawn from A.J. Arberry, ed. The Koran Interpreted: A Translation (New York: Touchstone, 1996).

[8] Qur. 9:29.

[9] Qur. 2:256.

[10] Ibn Khaldun, The Muqudimmah: An Introduction to History, Franz Rosenthal, trans. (New York: Pantheon, 1958,) vol. 1, p. 473.

[11] Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 60.

[12] See, for instance, Ahmed Mahmud Karima, Al-Jihad fi’l-Islam: Dirasa Fiqhiya Muqarina (Cairo: Al-Azhar University, 2003).

[13] Qur. 9:29.

[14] Qur. 9:5.

[15] Qur. 8:39.

[16] Ibn al-Hajjaj Muslim, Sahih Muslim, C9B1N31; Muhammad Ibn Isma’il al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari (Lahore: Kazi, 1979), B2N24.

[17] Jenkins, “Dark_Passages.”

[18] Qur. 33:21.

[19] “Al-Jazeera-Poll: 49% of Muslims Support Osama bin Laden,” Sept. 7-10, 2006, accessed Apr. 2, 2009.

[20] ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Ali, Hilf al Irhab (Cairo: Markaz al-Mahrusa li ‘n-Nashr wa ‘l-Khidamat as-Sahafiya wa ‘l-Ma’lumat, 2004).

[21] For example, Qur. 4:24, 4:92, 8:69, 24:33, 33:50.

[22] Sahih Muslim, B19N4321; for English translation, see Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 140.

[23] Matt. 22:38-40.

[24] Matt. 13:34.

[25] Matt. 10:34.

[26] See, for instance, “Christian Persecution Info,” Christian Persecution Magazine, accessed Apr. 2, 2009.

[27] Jenkins, “Dark_Passages.”

[28] Qur. 2:62-65, 5:59-60, 7:166.

[29] Qur. 60:4.

[30] Bistrich, “Discovering the common grounds of world religions,” pp. 19-22; For a critique of Karen Armstrong’s work, see “Karen Armstrong,” in Andrew Holt, ed., Crusades-Encyclopedia, Apr. 2005, accessed Apr. 6, 2009.

[31] See, for example, the writings of Sophrinius, Jerusalem’s patriarch during the Muslim conquest of the Holy City, just years after the death of Muhammad, or the chronicles of Theophane the Confessor.

[32] Bernard Lewis, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2000 Years (New York: Scribner, 1995), p. 233-4.

[33] “Speech of Urban — Robert of Rheims,” in Edward Peters, ed., The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), p. 27.

[34] Matt. 5:44.

________

This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

Jamie Lee Curtis said the key to her 40-year marriage with the filmmaker Christopher Guest is not to leave — even when they hate each other.

Speaking to Entertainment Tonight on Sunday after winning a Creative Arts Emmy for her guest role on “The Bear,” Curtis said she learned the phrase, “If you stay on the bus, the scenery will change,” while overcoming alcoholism. She explained that the same is true in marriage.

“Like all of a sudden, you literally wanna hate each other. And the next day, it’s a pretty sunny day, and the dog does something cute, and your child does something cute, and you look at each other, and you’re like, ‘Aw, gosh,’ and then you’re on another track,” Curtis said.

The 65-year-old actor added that “perseverance, patience, gentleness, and a really good dose of hatred” are what she thinks make a marriage work.

The “Everything Everywhere All at Once“ star said she was interviewed for a book about long marriages, written by the actor Marlo Thomas and the late talk-show host Phil Donahue, called “What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share with Us the Secrets to a Happy Life.”

Thomas and Donahue, who had been married for 44 years, asked Curtis what she thought the secret to a long marriage was. Curtis said she replied, “The amount you can hate each other and stay in it.”

Curtis said she asked if she was the first to bring up hating her spouse, to which Thomas replied, “Mmmhmm [Yes].”

“I said, well, that’s the truth. You’re going to hate each other,” Curtis said, adding, “We’re human beings.”

“And so, not leaving. Not allowing that hatred to then cause you to make some choice that you’re gonna regret. I think that’s really the secret,” she said.

Curtis wrote in an essay for People in 2022 that she opened an issue of Rolling Stone in 1984 and saw Guest in a story. She said, “I’m gonna marry that guy” — and six months later, she did. The couple went on to have two daughters, Annie, 37, and Ruby, 28.

Curtis told “Today“ in 2015 that her marriage advice was not to get divorced. “It’s a fascinating thing,” she said. “I could write a book on marriage called ‘Don’t Leave.’”

The science of loving and hating your partner

Relationships aren’t always rainbows and butterflies — and research has shown that’s normal.

In a 2014 study published in the Social Psychological and Personality Science journal, researchers asked 37 participants to think about their significant other and then report their positive and negative feelings about the person. Although participants were quick to categorize positive words after seeing their partners’ names, they associated negative words with them faster.

The researchers found that people don’t love or hate their partners. Rather, they love and hate them.

While “hatred” can sometimes manifest as criticism, there are ways to avoid too much negativity in a relationship. Avigail Lev, a therapist in San Francisco, previously told Business Insider that couples could follow the psychologist John Gottman’s “magic ratio of 5:1.”

Based on the ratio, Gottman advised couples that for every negative interaction they had, they should follow up with five positive interactions. Lev said an example is giving five compliments for every criticism you give your partner.

“We don’t have to decrease criticisms,” Lev said. “We just add more appreciation and gratitude.”

Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. “That sort of talk makes them sick,” they say. And half of you already want to ask me, “I wonder how’d you feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?”

So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you ... what I could do – I can do precious little – I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sill against us.” There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do?

It is going to be hard enough, anyway, but I think there are two things we can do to make it easier. When you start mathematics you do not begin with calculus; you begin with simple addition. In the same way, if we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo. One might start with forgiving one’s husband or wife, or parents or children, or the nearest N.C.O., for something they have done or said in the last week. That will probably keep us busy for the moment. And secondly, we might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbor as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself!

Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently “Love your neighbor” does not mean “feel fond of him” or “find him attractive.” I ought to have seen that before, because of course, you cannot feel fond of a person by trying. Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous relief. For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are. Go a step further. In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can at look some of the things I have done with loathing and horror. So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man’s actions, but not hate the bad man: or as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

For a long time I used to think this is a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life – namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact, the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.

Consequently Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.

Man once prayed to know what Heaven and Hell were like. Dreamed angel came to take on tour. HELL: Huge banquet table -- sumptuous feast. Everyone sitting/not eating. Weeping & wailing. All had 6 ft. long arm, little fork, no elbow. HEAVEN: Huge banquet table -- sumptuous feast. Everyone had 6ft. arm/small fork/ no elbow. Eating, laughing, happy! The difference? In heaven they were feeding each other!

At the end of the Bob Harrington/Madalyn O'Hair debates, the Wittenburg Door interviewed them both. After summing up what she had to say about Harrington, O'Hair summed up what she believed about Christianity: "Christianity is intolerant, anti-democratic, anti-sexual, and anti-life. It is anti-woman, and I cannot stand

that. It is anti-everything that is good and human and decent and kind and love-filled and understanding. I used to have an intellectual hatred for Christianity. I think that is broadening now. I am 'enjoying' hating the whole thing."

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres called July 23 for a global information campaign into the phenomenon of suicide bombings after reports of the militant Islamic Jihad operating summer camps in the Gaza strip for youth, some as young as 11, to instill in them the virtues of becoming suicide bombers, CNSNews.com reported.

Palestinians girded with explosives, who blow themselves up in close proximity to Israelis, have proven to be the most deadly terror weapon against Israel, usually always causing multiple fatalities in each attack. The bombers have been hailed as martyrs and heroes by most of their own people.

Speaking to a visiting delegation of Anti-Defamation League representatives from the United States, Peres charged that Islamic clerics were "brainwashing" Palestinian youth, indoctrinating them with lies and promising they will go to paradise if they blow themselves up in order to kill Israelis.

If such leaders really believe paradise could be attained through suicide bombings, Peres told the ADL delegation, Islamic Jihad leaders should do their own dirty work in their own backyards, instead of brainwashing youngsters to do it for them.

Wayne Firestone, ADL's Israel director, said July 23 the issue of suicide bombings is of "tremendous concern" to his organization. It would certainly spread the message, he added.

The phenomenon is antithetical to the values of Islam, Firestone said in a telephone interview, but is likely to continue until "clear voices" from the Palestinian side demand that it stop.

The Palestinian Authority led by Yassir Arafat would only take a stand, Firestone added, if the world stood up against suicide bombings.

"No civilized society can accept this," he said.

Weekend BBC television footage showed Islamic Jihad-run summer camps in which young Palestinian boys are given military training and shown pictures of suicide bombers.

"We are teaching the children that suicide bombing is the only thing that make[s] the Israeli people very frightened," camp counselor Mohammed el Hattab said on the BBC report. "Furthermore, we are teaching them that we have the right to do it."

The camp leader also stated, "We are teaching them that after the suicide attacks, the man who makes it goes to the highest state in paradise." In paradise, the youth are taught, they will be greeted by 70 virgins.

Fourteen-year-old Mohammed was filmed drawing a picture of himself with explosives girded about his body. He said he wanted to become a suicide bomber "to liberate Palestine and be part of the revolution."

The Palestinian Authority reportedly has said it will close down the camps since hearing about them through the media reports.

But a source who works in the PA-controlled areas and who spoke on condition of anonymity told CNSNews.com that hundreds of children ages 11-15 are being trained in paramilitary camps in Gaza and the West Bank. The camps are run, not only by Islamic Jihad and Hamas, but also by PA Chairman Arafat's Fatah faction.

Congressmen have in past years expressed concern about PA summer camps at which children are taught acts of violence against Israelis.

The CNSNews.com source said he was not aware specifically of "suicide bomber" training in the Islamic Jihad camps. Nevertheless, he said, the children are taught how to fight in "field conditions" as well as given lessons on history and politics.

Judit Arenas of the British-based Coalition To Stop the Use of Child Soldiers said that while she did not know specifically of the BBC report, the main concern of the coalition is that the welfare of the child comes first.

"We could actually call strongly on Islamic Jihad to put the best interests of the child first," Arenas told CNSNews.com by phone.

Arenas said her organization is "keeping a close eye" on what is happening in the PA areas as well as the territories still under Israeli control. It had been concerned about reports of military-type children's camps.

However, she said the children concerned would not be considered child soldiers, because there was no chain of command structure or military-type recruitment process; nevertheless, the children must be protected from being considered viable targets because they have been given military training.

Reports of the training camps come amidst claims by Hamas and Islamic Jihad that they have dozens of Palestinians ready to become human bombs.

Two Israelis were killed in a suicide bombing the week of July 16 in the northern Israeli town of Binyamina.

Twenty-one young people were killed and more than 100 others wounded and maimed in a suicide bomb attack on a Tel Aviv disco in June.

Seven more were killed in a similar blast outside a Netanya mall in May. And last March, two teenagers were killed in a suicide attack on schoolchildren waiting for a bus.

--30--

Stahl is the Jerusalem bureau chief for CNSNews.com. Used by permission.

Is hate a disease? Some psychiatrists think so. This was the subject of a recent WASHINGTON POST article, titled “Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness.” The title suggests the ominous implications.

The POST explains, “Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.”

In short, several psychiatrists are now pushing for racists and people who suffer from “homophobia” to be labeled mentally ill.

Could such a label possibly be justified? Well, the POST tries to make the case by telling about a man who turned down a job because he feared a co-worker might be gay, and who would not go places where he thought he might run into a gay person. Now that was an extreme case. The man did indeed have a phobia that was interfering with his life, and probably needed help. The man's psychiatrist told the paper, “He felt under attack, he felt threatened.” Normally, that would be called paranoia. We wouldn't be developing some new mental illness.

Just think about where this could lead: In short order, we might begin to put people who strongly oppose homosexual behavior on the same level as people who suffer irrational fears of gays, and declare both people mentally ill. After all, the American Psychiatric Association says that homosexual behavior is normal. So to strongly oppose it would be irrational. It's a very short step from there to saying that this person is suffering from “pathological bias.”

Already, the California Department of Corrections is experimenting with drugs to eliminate prejudices. “We treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders,” reported Shama Chaiken, the department's chief psychologist. A number of distinguished scientists agree that the “clinical experience informs us that racism may be a manifestation of the delusional process.” Sometimes that's true, as with a woman mentioned in the POST who was deathly afraid of Jewish people. But it's not true that racism or homophobia always signal mental disorder. And if we do not make that crucial distinction, we are asking for big trouble.

It may sound extreme, but this is the beginning of a process that has long been popular with tyrants. In the Soviet Union, Christians were sent by the hundreds of thousands to mental institutions. The state was officially atheist, so if you believe that there was a God, you were insane. And it's still a wonderful tool for oppressors in places like China and North Korea.

There's another side to this. As a psychiatrist told the WASHINGTON POST, if we began to call bias a mental illness, it would let criminals off the hook for any behavior. It will take a few years, of course, to go all through the medical and clinical analyses and deliberations of the American Psychiatric Association.

But if the day should come that opposition to homosexual conduct is labeled homophobia, and homophobia labeled delusional, then it is a very short step to saying that belief in the Bible, which labels that conduct sinful, is also a mental disorder.

Frightening? Indeed. Impossible? I'm afraid not.

________

Copyright (c) 2005 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Jamie Lee Curtis said the key to her 40-year marriage with the filmmaker Christopher Guest is not to leave — even when they hate each other.

Speaking to Entertainment Tonight on Sunday after winning a Creative Arts Emmy for her guest role on “The Bear,” Curtis said she learned the phrase, “If you stay on the bus, the scenery will change,” while overcoming alcoholism. She explained that the same is true in marriage.

“Like all of a sudden, you literally wanna hate each other. And the next day, it’s a pretty sunny day, and the dog does something cute, and your child does something cute, and you look at each other, and you’re like, ‘Aw, gosh,’ and then you’re on another track,” Curtis said.

The 65-year-old actor added that “perseverance, patience, gentleness, and a really good dose of hatred” are what she thinks make a marriage work.

The “Everything Everywhere All at Once“ star said she was interviewed for a book about long marriages, written by the actor Marlo Thomas and the late talk-show host Phil Donahue, called “What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share with Us the Secrets to a Happy Life.”

Thomas and Donahue, who had been married for 44 years, asked Curtis what she thought the secret to a long marriage was. Curtis said she replied, “The amount you can hate each other and stay in it.”

Curtis said she asked if she was the first to bring up hating her spouse, to which Thomas replied, “Mmmhmm [Yes].”

“I said, well, that’s the truth. You’re going to hate each other,” Curtis said, adding, “We’re human beings.”

“And so, not leaving. Not allowing that hatred to then cause you to make some choice that you’re gonna regret. I think that’s really the secret,” she said.

Curtis wrote in an essay for People in 2022 that she opened an issue of Rolling Stone in 1984 and saw Guest in a story. She said, “I’m gonna marry that guy” — and six months later, she did. The couple went on to have two daughters, Annie, 37, and Ruby, 28.

Curtis told “Today“ in 2015 that her marriage advice was not to get divorced. “It’s a fascinating thing,” she said. “I could write a book on marriage called ‘Don’t Leave.’”

The science of loving and hating your partner

Relationships aren’t always rainbows and butterflies — and research has shown that’s normal.

In a 2014 study published in the Social Psychological and Personality Science journal, researchers asked 37 participants to think about their significant other and then report their positive and negative feelings about the person. Although participants were quick to categorize positive words after seeing their partners’ names, they associated negative words with them faster.

The researchers found that people don’t love or hate their partners. Rather, they love and hate them.

While “hatred” can sometimes manifest as criticism, there are ways to avoid too much negativity in a relationship. Avigail Lev, a therapist in San Francisco, previously told Business Insider that couples could follow the psychologist John Gottman’s “magic ratio of 5:1.”

Based on the ratio, Gottman advised couples that for every negative interaction they had, they should follow up with five positive interactions. Lev said an example is giving five compliments for every criticism you give your partner.

“We don’t have to decrease criticisms,” Lev said. “We just add more appreciation and gratitude.”