- Christianity used to be a brutal, totalitarian religion with ecclesiastical control of government, torture, and crusades. After 1500 years of this, there was a reformation of Christianity that produced a kinder, gentler version of the religion that concentrated on personal religion and was compatible with modern pluralistic society.
- This kinder, gentler version of Christianity that was invented in the reformation was a more civilized version, which is the sign that the religion is past its uncivilized infancy and is now mature.
- Islam, coming several hundred years after Christianity, is due to be "matured" in the same way as Christianity. It is necessary and inevitable, and all we need is some "moderate" Muslims to take control of the religion and produce Islam 2.0 that will be compatible with our modern culture. Given as evidence of this possibility is
the existence of nominal Muslims all over the world who have no problem mixing in with western culture, who are friendly and basically non-religious.
Personally, I don't think that this is a realistic or rational hope. The problems with this idea are many and I would like to discuss them. Once you wade through all of the wishful thinking and fantasy, the view is based on several misconceptions, which either show a lack of historical perspective or willful ignorance. For instance:
They Misunderstand Original Christianity
The assumptions mentioned above about the early stages of Christianity are not true at all. Jesus was decidedly apolitical. His own nation was waiting for a political messiah to overthrow the Romans and reestablish the earthly throne of David. Instead, he refused (at that time) to
take a political position, even to the point of telling the leaders to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's". He sent his disciples (down to the current day) to preach the gospel of salvation "to every creature" and "make disciples of all nations", but this was to be a mission of making invitations by appealing to hearts, not killing those who would not join. He rebukes Peter in the garden, telling him that "those who live by the sword will perish by the sword". All but one of the apostles died a painful death at the hands of unbelievers, and not even the aggressive evangelist Paul advocated anything but preaching and reasoning with unbelievers to try to woo them to God. The gospel was to be spread through love and friendly outreach. This is original Christianity.The crusades, torture, and political control came after Constantine and making Christianity the state religion of Rome - an empire whose political structures of religion were left in place but "Christianized". An entire empire filled with non-believers suddenly found themselves conforming to the new order out of a desire to stay in good standing with the new "Christian" state. Those who were what I would call actual Christians (by conviction and heart conversion) were outnumbered by citizens who said "sure, I am a Christian". An empire which had just a few years before been feeding Christians to lions is now telling everyone "you must be a Christian, or else". To the public perception, the persecuted became the persecutors. The structure of the church had an uneasy relationship with the government and over time the old ways changed. A thousand years later it was not only very difficult to recognize the teachings of Jesus in what was now called the church, but when people came along and compared the organized religion called Christianity with the words found in the Bible, the church took the astounding tack of putting the Bible on the Index of Forbidden Books!
They Misunderstand the Reformation
The reformation was therefore not a new "re imagining" of Christianity, but a return to the original religion as described by its founder. It was a stripping off of over a thousand years of accumulated non-christian ideas from the world and its other religions. What Jesus taught was radical. What the "church" became was what all human religions of the time were - a works based, governmental body selling access to God with rules and special favors. The reformers rejected that (at the cost of many of their own lives) to try to get back to the teachings of Jesus. Did they do it perfectly? No, but there was steady progress. For instance, Martin Luther took a bold stand and was wonderful in many ways, but he still held some beliefs of the old church (for instance transubstantiation - there's a big word) and held strongly anti-Semitic views that tarnish his reputation now.
The point of all this is that the Christian reformation was a returning to the content of the Bible. The closer a believer is to the teaching of the Bible, the less like the medieval religion of Christianity they will be.
I should mention at this point that many people (including, sadly, our current president) try to discredit the Bible by pointing to verses in Leviticus and other places with strong punishments for religious crimes. Two things need to be said about that. First, the religious laws in the Torah are administrative laws for a theocracy. The biblical nation of Israel was a theocracy ruled by God and yes, it did have very strict laws. The nation of Israel was to be a special, holy people and these laws were part of their covenant with God and only for their local self-government. Secondly, the Jews were never commanded to go out and subdue the world for God and make everybody else submit to these laws. As Michael Medved has described it: Judaism is political but not evangelistic, Christianity is evangelistic and not political, but Islam is both evangelistic and political. That is the difference in a nutshell. To Islam the whole world is (or at least should be) a theocracy. A couple of real-world examples: While an observant Jew will refuse to eat pork, observant Muslims in this country have tried to force companies to take down billboards with cartoon pigs on them. Devout Christians will dress modestly and try to keep nudity off of prime-time TV, while often Muslims in England and France are right now justifying raping girls in western dress because they "dress like whores".
Author's Note: I don't want to be unfair in my characterizations above. Of course every religion has sickos (for instance the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas). The difference I am speaking of is not what many people might be doing in a religion but what the religion's founding documents, founder, and major leaders say. For example, Christians pretty much universally condemn Fred Phelp's church, as well as racists and abortion clinic bombers - quickly and decisively. Conversely, on 9-11 Muslims danced in the streets and celebrated all over the world. In the U.S., Muslims complain about persecution because people ask them to condemn terrorism (never gonna happen) or suggest a 13 story mosque should be built more than 600 ft from ground zero or make women show their faces for driver's license photos. On the other side, in many Muslim countries Christians hold services outside their burned-down churches which they can't re-build because it is against the law for them to do so. That is the difference I am speaking of.
They Misunderstand Islam
I understand that I am coming from an outside position on this one so I will try to not overstate my case. Islam started with political conquest. Unlike Christianity, the conquest did not start hundreds of years later but started with its founder, who established his religion with the point of a sword. Since then there has never really been a time where this has stopped. The initial spread of Islam reached up into Europe and was only stopped with bloody war. The Koran and other founding documents recount the initial military conquests of Islam and give rules for its continuance. This is a fact.
Some will point out that the Koran contains friendly and unfriendly verses. Established rules in Islam, though, include the law of abrogation, which states that later verses supersede the older ones, and the nastiest ones just happen to be the latter ones.
The very word "Islam" means "submission", and the essence of Islam is a strict system of works-based religious control that includes every part of life. It includes high religious duties as well as details as intrusive as which side to sleep on, what compass direction your bed should point in, which foot to use first when entering a room, which foot to put the most weight on when going to the bathroom, how to pick your nose correctly, etc. etc. etc. All of the individual's life comes under the control of the religion, all politics and family life comes under the control of the Mosque, and in a country under the control of Islam, non-Muslims will be tolerated but will live as second-class citizens, paying a special tax to the Muslim majority for the privilege of living and without any real rights. In countries where there a non-controlling but comparatively large population of Muslims (like Nigeria) there is constant violence - murder, kidnapping, burning down of churches and riots. These kinds of things are not limited to third-world countries but can be seen in places like Denmark, England and especially France. Again, these are the facts.
Moderate Means Different Things to Different People
The existence of large populations of generally nice Muslims in different countries is used to show the feasibility of "moderate" Islam. Added to this argument is the existence of those who call themselves Christians who "don't act all religious" all the time. To many modern people this is the best kind of religion and should be the goal of society. Sort of like a club people belong to. I remember the last episode of "7th Heaven" that I ever watched - one of the pastor's sons had a crisis of faith and went around to all of the different religions represented in his neighborhood. They were all friendly and in agreement with each other and it turned out that dad was regularly meeting with them and in unity with them. That is to be expected, I suppose, in a Hollywood show about a pastor who only mentioned the name of Jesus in one episode that I ever saw (he sang it after his heart attack as part of the song "do Lord"). That is the kind of moderate religion that the world likes. We're all on the same side and believe the same things - even pastors of churches are not "too religious".
The reason that this is important is because those who talk about Islam needing a reformation like Christianity had are thinking that modern, nominal Christianity was created by the reformation, which is totally false. There are nominal believers in every religion, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity, both Roman Catholic and protestant.
If We Go "Back to the Book"
If Christians go back to the book, they will be "in the world but not of it". They will seek to love and coexist. There is nothing in the New Testament about establishing a state church or forcing converts or fighting bloody wars "for Jesus". Conquering the world will have to be in hearts, by invitation, one person at a time, through conversation. The final destruction of the enemies of God will be at the spoken word of the returning Son of God, not by his followers. To achieve the same thing in Islam, you would have to get rid of the Koran, and disavow most of its founding. This just ain't gonna happen. Sorry. No way. Just a rumor of destruction of one Koran causes deadly riots all over the world.
The most that non-Muslims can hope for is that Muslims will not follow their religious documents closely, or that they will pick and choose just their nicer doctrines (like nominal Christians who pick and choose but don't really follow Christ). But nominal believers in any religion will not all stay that way. Nominal Christians may read a Bible at any time, become convicted and decide to follow Christ. Nominal Muslims become radicalized by the Koran all the time also. Just think about it. If your neighbor becomes a fundamentalist, biblical Christian, you may have to put up with someone asking you about whether you know Jesus and if you have eternal life. They might (horrors) ask you more than once! (Insert scary music here) But your neighbor becomes a fundamentalist Muslim, he may try to kill hundreds of people to guarantee his entrance to heaven. (Some of the 9/11 terrorists went to the Islamic center about a half mile from my house.) Slightly different outcomes....
Conclusion
The upshot of all this is that all of these hopeful articles about how "Islam needs to go through a reformation and then everything will be hunky-dory" are living in a fantasy world and do not understand the issues involved. Either that or they are hoping for the world described in the song "Imagine", which describes a paradise coming in some wonderful future time where nobody has any beliefs! Ah, wonderful. Only two problems with that view. One, it will never happen unless there is a planet-wide lobotomy reducing all people to little more than vegetables. Secondly, even if you could magically cause the human race to get rid of all organized religions, I believe the world would immediately descend into anarchy or totalitarianism. Besides, that state wouldn't last long. People need to believe in something. If not a god, then some sort of pseudo scientific political philosophy with an all-powerful state. No, a reformation of Islam is not going to happen, and hoping for one will just distract us from dealing with the world that is.
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