Opinion

Is Allah reasonable?

Mark Judge Journalist and filmmaker
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They still haven’t answered the question.

If God cannot be contained by human reason, or love, or simply decency, then he can do anything, and we have to submit to his will. Everything from wife-beating to blowing up innocent people can be his will. He can turn evil into good.

And no one can say a thing about it. They can only submit. How this is so is the question that is at the heart of Islamic terrorism. It’s why the Muslim community, in America and elsewhere, is so silent whenever another Islamic act of terror occurs. And because the media and our politicians don’t like to talk about theology other than in broad and childish terms, it never gets answered. But to understand what motivated the two terrorists in Boston, not to mention the others, we should not be avoiding their religious beliefs — it should be the main thing we’re talking about.

I add that we can do so with respect. In fact, keeping the temperature down can create enough space to actually get the question of the reasonableness of God answered.

Because it seems that once you understand the Islamic concept of God and how it differs from Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and even atheism, Islamic terrorism becomes easy to understand. Further, by driving right to the heart of Muslim belief, we can truly have that constructive dialogue that liberals are always babbling about.

So instead of dumb clichés about how all faiths are the same, let’s get real. In Islam, God — or Allah — is so all powerful that he cannot be bound, even if he himself chooses to do so, by reason or love or even pity. What happens in the world is the will of God, period. God can decide any kind of ethical system at any given time and we just have to live with it. If a young girl gets raped, God can decide that it is good, and thus, it is. If God loves music one day and hates it the next, then music must be condemned. If what pleases God is blowing up the Boston Marathon, then so be it.

In Christianity, God’s prime commandment is to love. The Koran has various rules and regulations, including the directive to convert infidels, but nothing so simple as the commandment to love given by Jesus.

The problem of God, Islam, and reason was examined most famously by Pope Benedict in his 2006 Regensburg lecture, which made many Muslims and the American left purple with rage. In the lecture, the pope quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who was trying to convince a Persian that God is reason and love: “God is not pleased by blood — and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats. … To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death.”

In Christianity — or at least the better denominations — God is a God of reason. He allows us to understand him through reason, intellect, the conscience, senses, logic (he is “the logos”) and, most importantly, love. He allows himself to be limited by love. He also doesn’t contradict the ways we grasp him in the world he created. Take something as simple as music. As I write this I’m listening to a very addictive and joyful pop band, Hot Chip, and their music is filling me with happiness and making me want to dance. Islam has long had a problem with music, particularly Western rock and roll. This leads to an odd situation: the joy we feel in our bodies and souls when we hear a great rhythm is somehow false. It feels right, God created time so that we could hear the music, and music seems to elevate our souls. And yet despite our every instinct and even our souls telling us we are inside something beautiful, God can turn it into an evil. Is this reasonable?

One might argue that there were plenty of Christians who fought against rock and roll, but it’s worth noting that they lost that argument. And in the 1960s my church, the Catholic Church, came out emphatically in favor of the right of freedom of conscience.

In Islam, your conscience doesn’t matter any more than a cockroach; all that matters is the Koran. Like the Bible, the Koran is very violent. Unlike the Bible, it has no New Testament that brings God close to us and makes him sane.

So put yourself in the place of a young Islamic suicide bomber. You aren’t motivated because you feel like a loser in America, or came from a war-torn country, or have bad breath. When you begin to argue that jihad is the will of God, other Muslims may try to ignore you, or even kick you out of the mosque, but they can’t point to anything in Islamic theology and tell you that you’re wrong. There is no Jesus to point to who will allow them to do what Christians in America have done in our history: tell the killer, racist, or rapist that he is clearly violating the will of God.

I agree that there are millions of peace-loving Muslims in America and around the world. In the wake of Boston, I would respectfully ask them a simple question.

Is Allah a God of reason?

Mark Judge is the author of A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.