More Scriptural Justification for Killing

In previous entries, I have criticized fundamentalist Christians for using the Bible to condemn people who disagree with their doctrines. In fact, the Old Testament often calls for the killing of people who disagree with them.

These fundamentalists seem to ignore the distinction between the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament called for the stoning of people having sex outside of marriage. But when hard-line religious people brought to Jesus a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery, Jesus forgave her. (One of course wonders what happened to the man, whose sin was apparently excused by the religious authorities.) Clearly Jesus was preaching a message of forgiveness rather than of condemnation: a code for a church rather than for a government. But modern Christian fundamentalists continue to quote Old Testament condemnations of people they do not like, especially gays and lesbians, even though the man whom they revere as Lord and Master disregarded Old Testament condemnations.

In most cases, this takes the form of white conservative Christian preachers condemning other people. But not always. Let me mention some counter-examples.

Many white fundamentalist preachers are infamous for using their oratory and organizational structure to defraud money from their followers. There are more examples of this than you can shake an assault weapon at. But there are a few examples of black evangelists bilking their poor black followers also. One example is from Tulsa, where I live. Willard Jones, a black Baptist minister, defrauded the community center that he led of $933,507 and he had $390,061 of unreported income in 2011. He got caught in 2014.

But the most famous example of religious oppression outside of white Christian fundamentalism is from radical Islam. I have written little about it, since it is a relatively minor force in the United States, especially the fundamentalist Christian stronghold of Oklahoma. But I want to discuss it briefly now. Islam, like Christianity, has many moderate adherents who do not believe that God, or Allah, wants them to condemn all the people that their religion condemned many centuries ago. My comments, therefore, are limited to Christian and Muslim fundamentalists.

The Koran does not have Old and New Testaments. It has version of one book, authoritative and inerrant for all time, according to conservative believers. All the following quotes are from Quran.com. And here are some of the things that the Koran says:

8:60: And prepare against them [unbelievers, according to verse 59] whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom Allah knows.

8:65: O Prophet, urge the believers to battle. [Unlike Jesus, Mohammed did not say that “my kingdom is not of this world,” thereby indicating a spiritual battle.]

9:5: And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. [At least, we can take comfort that this is followed by “But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.” But Muslim extremists kill other Muslims more often than they kill people of other religions.]

9:30: The Jews say, “Ezra is the son of Allah;” and the Christians say, “The Messiah is the son of Allah.” That is their statement from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved [before them]. May Allah destroy them; how are they deluded?

9:123: O you who have believed, fight those adjacent to you of the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness.

22:19-20: But those who disbelieved will have cut out for them garments of fire. Poured upon their heads will be scalding water by which is melted that within their bellies and [their] skins. [This is in the context of Hell for non-Muslims.]

47:4: So when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds, and either [confer] favor afterwards or ransom [them] until the war lays down its burdens. That [is the command].

It seems to me, then, that one of the principal dangers in the world is fundamentalism, in which people use their sacred writings as a justification for oppressing or even killing people of other religions, particularly pagans. And some creationists (especially at the Institute for Creation Research and Creationism.org insist that evolutionary scientists are pagans. There is no hope for the world unless the adherents of all religions agree that God is love, rather than believing that God wants all followers of other religions or of no religion to be dead.