Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't
by Robert Spencer
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Book Summary Information
Author: Robert SpencerEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-08-13
ISBN: 1596985151
Number of pages: 264
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Book Reviews of Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't
Book Review: An evil book
Summary: 1 Stars
Robert Spencer produces a hateful, revisionist, and triumphalistic argument about why he thinks Christianity and the Western world (he conflates the two) are superior to Islam. Christianity is a religion of peace and dialogue and Islam a religion of terror and suppression. He accuses Christianity's detractors of "cherry-picking" evidence of the support of violence in the Old and New Testaments, but then goes on to do the same in his treatment of the Qu'ran and Christian history itself.
But the most basic error he makes is to dismiss the long and bloody history of Christian cruelty, forced conversion, slavery, destruction of native cultures, and environmental disaster with a flick of his temporal wand. Yes, there were Christians who did such things in the past, he notes, but this was not essential to Christian's message of peace and love for others. Besides, most of these more troublesome episodes of Christian history were not as bad as they seemed and have now passed. Christian anti-Semitism was not all that bad (especially compared with Muslim anti-Semitism). Slavery was a mistake and Christians finally figured that out.
Even if one accepts the latter point that such Christian atrocity-mongering has diminished (which is eminently debatable with good Christians in America still enthused for racial and gender inequality and positively foaming at the mouth for guns, capital punishment, and a vast nuclear arsenal) it is patently false to suggest that it was anything other than the Enlightenment, the throwing off of theocracies, and the embrace of secular, constitutional democracies, that spurred our best, though always fragile, efforts to live with our differences without killing each other.
No one is arguing, as Spencer seems to believe, that there are not Islamic terrorists and theocrats who wish to suppress people with Sharia law. They use religion to justify their violence. Yet Spencer ignores the consensus that most of the anger that drives such things is political rather than religious. It is anger at Western cultural hegemony, globalization, and the inequality of wealth that feeds the discontent of radical Islam.
Why should Christians who do evil get the benefit of the doubt that they simply missed the point of their faith's deeper teachings on peace in the pursuit of more worldly and self-serving ends, while Muslims do so because they are just following their religion? Because Spencer wants to goad on the great "Clash of Civilizations" view of the world and take up good, loving, Christian arms, if necessary, to defend the great Western civilization of peace and reason. With books like these, he and his ilk may just succeed.
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