A number of years ago I was studying under a Jewish professor at the University of South Carolina who gave me a rule of knowledge in four words:  “No Contrast, No Knowledge”.  This axiom has profoundly changed the way that I look at books and news reporting.

We live in a multicultural age which seems deeply enamored of the idea that similarity indicates knowledge.  How many times do you hear people talking about how two different groups or religions or issues are really very much the same?  Islam is very similar to Christianity, for instance.  Homosexual marriage is really the same as heterosexual marriage.  Occasionally on a radical atheist website might publish a tirade about how “all religions are the same,” which is usually meant in a negative sense.

Recently I came across a book by Philip Jenkins, a scholar I deeply respect, which emphasizes sameness.  In his latest book entitled “Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses,” he writes, “Commands to kill, to commit ethnic cleansing, to institutionalize segregation, to hate and fear other races and religions—all are in the Bible, and all occur with a far greater frequency than in the Qur’an. But fanaticism is no more hard-wired in Christianity than it is in Islam.”  Do you hear the emphasis on sameness here?  His point: all religions are really the same.  If any of them is worse, surely it is Christianity.

The message of Jenkins’ book seems to be “Christians cannot engage with neighbors and critics of other traditions—nor enjoy the deepest, most mature embodiment of their own faith—until they confront the texts of terror in their heritage.”  The straw man argument is that Christians don’t deal with these texts, they ignore them and thus remain “dangerously dormant for extremists to revive in times of conflict.”

I taught on such texts this past fall and have heard them taught upon many times.  I am not aware of any Christian teacher anywhere who advocates the literal application of these texts in the modern age.  Inevitably Christian teachers will state that the teachings of Christ have supplanted, what even for Jews, were texts considered only applicable for a brief period in human history 3500 years ago.  Some of these texts are in the Torah itself and therefore are read in synagogues every year.  Yet I’ve never heard of a Jew advocating the actions of any of these violent texts

What concerns me about Jenkins’ approach is the notion that all religions at their core are the same: they are good and peaceful.  A Christian who preaches genocide in the name of Christ hijacks his religion, just as a Muslim who preaches genocide is hijacking Islam.  The arguments for similarity seem to create confusion and prevent clear thinking. When was the last time you heard a Christian preacher teach genocide?   I haven’t seen one yet.  When have you ever heard a Jew teach genocide?  Surely the mainstream media would make this front page news if they found one.  I have heard many Muslim preachers in televised mosque sermons call for the extermination of all Jews on planet earth.  The religious leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, made a statement to that effect this past week, as did the Mufti of Jerusalem.  There are hundreds of videotapes like that available for anyone who looks.  Remember, knowledge comes from contrasts, from differences, not from similarities.  So what is different?

In my thinking, a Muslim Syrian woman devastated Jenkins’ supposed argument some five years ago in a debate with a Saudi Sheikh on Al-Jazeera television.  She incisively and brilliantly illustrated the difference in a statement about the hated Jews.  This statement, which I consider one of the most brilliant quotes of the 21^st century, illustrates the principle of difference giving knowledge in a powerful way.  Here is her statement:  “I have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant.”

Proponents of similarity do not want to talk about this: 30,000 Muslims have blown themselves up, and the vast majority of them have done this in the midst of fellow Muslims!  How is it that Jews, in the historical reality of the worst genocide in human history perpetrated against their people, have not coughed up a single suicide bomber to take revenge?  Surely, Jenkins would remind us, they have the texts to justify it.  But Muslims, many of them educated and middle class in background, have lined up for the privilege to blow themselves up or fly airplanes into buildings. 

We can draw comparisons to the Kamikazes of Japan.  During World War II, Japan was being firebombed in its cities with thousands of civilians dying every night, but was willing to send perhaps 1000 young pilots on suicide missions against well defended warships of their enemy—regardless of citizen casualties. Today, Muslim suicide bombers blow themselves up in the midst of unarmed civilians who share their faith. Cities of the Muslim world are being firebombed for the same agenda.  There are genocides being carried out in the Muslim world, by Muslims to kill Muslims, as in Darfur, Sudan.

The argument for similarity is not realistic. Clearly, in these religious there are serious differences. From the contrast comes knowledge.  Who is looking for that contrast?  Who is looking for that knowledge?  Apparently, not Philip Jenkins.

Dr. David Cashin
Professor of Intercultural Studies, Columbia International University

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