Gary Wills, "What the Qur'an Meant: And Why It Matters"

I'm pleased to welcome Gary wills to politics and prose wills is a Pulitzer prize-winning historian and the author of several New York Times bestsellers including definitely not limited to what Jesus meant papal sin why I am a Catholic and why priests in his latest book what the Quran meant and why it matters wills a non Muslim with an open mind embarks on an in-depth reading and timely analysis of the Koran the central religious texts of Islam in a time when many Americans make judgments about what they think is in the Koran well as examines the text thoroughly and thoughtfully debunking several myths and reminding us that no one can judge the text that they haven't read however wills is interested in more than the what of the Koran he also wants to know why why for instance Muslims and non-muslims alike find it such an inspiring book and why it can be difficult to interpret much in the same way the Old Testament and the New Testaments can be difficult to parse Publishers Weekly declares what the Quran meant to be a work of intimate and charitable inter-religious dialogue and the New York Times Book Review describes wills as not only one of the country's most distinguished intellectuals but also one of its most provocative bringing his learning to bear on great questions of history and contemporary politics and on that note please join me in welcoming Gary wills [Applause] well I've been on many book tours and whenever I got a list of places I'm going to from the publisher I'm always happy to see politics and prose on it because I know though we'll be intelligent questions and discussions I'd like to begin with little experiment how many of you have read the Quran let me ask the people who have read it what did you think about the passage about the 72 virgins that are waiting martyrs anybody find that there what did you think about martyrs who are engaged in terrorist act being especially favored in heaven to find anything there about that in fact did you find anything in there about holy war there are all kinds of things that a lot of people think are in the Quran and they're not and I was surprised by many things that were not there and buy more things that are there and I was ashamed that I had not read it until after 9/11 then a group of academic friends were together and we asked each other have you read the Quran and none of us had and friend said to me Gary you hadn't read it years you've been a student of religion I thought and it was a truly embarrassing moment so I went off immediately planning to read the Quran as I say there were many things they were surprising for instance before I read it would I have known what is the Muslim creed dictated by Allah let me know when do you think it's surprising Allah tells Muhammad the Creed he should live by it is this we believe in God and in what was sent down to us and what was sent down to Abraham Ishmael Isaac Jacob and the tribes and what was given to Moses Jesus and all the prophets by their Lord we make no distinction between any of them and we devote ourselves to him now that's not quite the Creed that President Trump sings is being preached in the Quran in the night in the 2016 election he said Islam hates us and the next time he was on TV that was on either Anderson Cooper's show the next time he was on TV they he was asked do you really think that you do you want to modify that or qualify it and anyway he said no there's a whole lot of hate there if there's a whole lot of hate in this song we have to be very afraid after all Islam makes out 23% of the world's population second only to Christianity a billion and a half Muslims and two billion Christians and the gap in numbers is narrowing about 2015 there'll be equal according to most projections and if that's the case how do you cope with hatred coming from all world's places and all those people in all those countries the the Gallup Organization did one of its most expensive and extensive surveys of world believers in Islam and asked how many of you approve of the attack on the Twin Towers in America you know how many approved seven percent 93 percent did not that was a very careful expensive poll and the pollsters worked it out and published a book on it now other polls don't have as spectacular a finding in England it was something like eighty eight percent not twenty three and in other countries it was small according to how many Muslims were there and how much their state accepted them but in every country a majority disapproved so how can you call the the attack an expression of Islam which is of course is what Trump was saying and many other people tell us that we should take that as typical of the whole of the spiritual religion of Islam William Buckley for instance thought when he found out that people were going to educate children in a little book on the Koran which wasn't the Quran it was about the Quran wrote a column saying we can have allowed children to read the Quran it wasn't even about reading the Quran it was a discussion of the Quran but anyway he said because they'll grow up to do 9/11 attacks the Quran is what instill the teaching that leads men acted out on 9/11 though they were not very good Muslims after all they drank alcohol and got lap dances before the their day of wrath and most Muslims not only condemned them but said they were ignorant they didn't know what the Quran says that 72 virgins are not there there in one of the traditions thousands of traditions hadith and a discredited one anyway but we're not expected to know what islam teaches because so many people like me immediately after the attack have never read the Quran and we really should because as I say it's it's a surprising book surprising in what isn't there that we're told is there and what is there what we never normally would suspect for instance that creed that I read why is he saying we that Muslims should say we believe in the prophetic writings of Moses and of Jesus well one of the first things that surprised me is that the Quran is more inclusive than either the Torah or the New Testament the Torah in its strongest teaching says that there are the chosen people of the circumcised the Christians and their strongest preaching notes all argued now is that there's a chosen people of the baptized but the chosen people for Allah are all monotheists the only people who are excluded are the polytheists which he calls normally idolaters that is the worshipers of the different gods that you have statues of everyone else has the understanding that gods especially set up for all believers in him and when we're told things like Islam hates the infidels infidel is not a word that he uses that's the Quran normally uses for one thing if we said that we'd say that today we might mean by infidels atheists secularists etc they were not in the purview of the 7th century there are no atheists in the 7th century believe me anywhere even the most enlightened Greeks even Aristotle even Plato said that oh of course there are a lot of God's around we have to pay attention to them though the highest good for Aristotle was the unmoved mover and the highest good for Plato was the unchanging good but they all went through their prayers to the local gods that's what Muhammad was told we can't do and that's because the central worship place in Mecca was the Kaaba as it is today the great pilgrimages to Mecca are to proceed around the Kaaba and it was part of the lasting covenant that God struck out with the people and it was built originally and then rebuilt by Abraham and when the Prophet Muhammad went to the Kaaba he found that there were statues of gods there of other gods than the true God that what's to whom the building was dedicated Mecca is an oasis in a desert and it's an entreprenuer caravan Muhammad married a woman who was a rich manager of caravans and when these people from various parts came in they put up their own idols there and when Muhammad preached only one God he was driven out by his own tribe interestingly and when the people from Mecca attacked Medina for the first time he said you can have war but only defensive war so the idea that you you begin I suppose now historians say monotheism is the end product of a lot of policy ISM when people start working out the difficulties and that that is if God's fight each other who's gonna win and there must be a superior God there's still a God and it's only later on that according to the secular view of that monotheism becomes powerful Muhammad found out from Allah that there was always monotheism and it was a departure into these idolatries that was wrong with the world so when you read about all of the prophets they begin with Adam Adam falls in the Quran just as he does in the Old Testament men new and is condemned to bring forth children with original sin bequeathed by him that's not in the Quran there's another original sin in the Quran there is sim but when Adam repents God says I'm always merciful and so you are accepted back into the fold of the monotheists and he becomes the first prophet and all through history Allah says I'm always saying prophets they are always my messengers and I'm always talking to them so when one prophet comes along and it's different from the others we're supposed to say we have a different covenant than you but it's still a covenant with the one god there's only one so Allah says as the god of the Jewish people I struck a covenant in Hebrew and what's called Yahweh when the Christians came along I've struck a covenant with them in Greek and called myself the father of Jesus and when you are now here I'm striking a covenant with you Muhammad and your followers in Arabic and I won't be called Allah but they're all names for the same thing for me which is what that Creed said and it's not an isolated text by the way there are several versions of that all the way through the Quran so when we look at the history of prophecy policy of course in those days didn't mean predicting the future it meant proclaiming the Lord we wonder why there are fights between the various religions Allah says in the Quran you don't have any reason to fight each other you're worshiping me you just have to tell each other that I'm the one you're worshipping and it's true I will have no God before me as I said in the Hebrew covenant but the only gods that could that pretend to be considered other than me are those of the adalat errs so the the the whole world of Islam is more ecumenical than any other religion and I have experienced it's more a matter of spirituality than of tribalism and the whole point of the teaching is that we must worship the One God and he not only says that all prophets are from me but he says that the world is preaching me it's the ecologist a dream extremely after you with the Quran he says everything I made preaches me he says expressly David and the mountain preached me Solomon and the ants preached me Solomon all of the universe is worshipping me and I want to remind you of that water worships me you know of course in the Arabic desert water was a very powerful symbol and so he said I'd sent you our sin do water it's a great blessing so that you will recognize that it's preaching me there are a number of places where inanimate sings talk even when a sinner gets to hell and there's more hell in the Quran that in in most places and the sinner says oh I didn't do that his skin says yes you did and he says and the sinner says why are you talking and the skin says because God gave me chalk it gives everybody talk when Solomon calls a meeting of the birds you know st. Francis was said to preach to birds in the Quran birds preach to us when Solomon calls together the birds the Hoopoe it doesn't show up and he says where's the Hoopoe I'm gonna really reprimand him and then the Hoopoe comes flying in and says I found a place where the Queen and Sheba the Queen of Sheba was ruling but she doesn't believe in you and so Allah says go back to her and deliver this message so the Hoopoe flies back and talks to the queen of sheba and she says okay I'll come believes in the one Lord and he flies back and reports now I don't think that Donald Trump knows that story it's hardly a hateful story doesn't even hate the Queen of Sheba for not believing in him fields that it must talk to him so I'm not going to say that there are not imperfect I wouldn't say imperfection I would say flaws in the Quran that are like the flaws in the Old Testament the New Testament for instance they all countenance slavery all three of them on the other hand the Quran more than most says that the best way to earn God's favor is to free a slave and he parcels out how many slaves you should free for this or that sin and there are he says there are three things you can do to make up for a sin fasting and prayer and freeing a slave so that's a flaw in all three we all now think and we should it's also misogynist as most seventh century and all centuries are it says for instance that a woman's testimony is worth only half of a man's and said if you need witnesses to a contract it should bring two men or three wins one man and two women and then there's an accumulated worth in that and he says when you're leaving behind a bequest to your family the son should get twice as much as the woman and then of course it's a culture that accepted misogyny rather excuse me multiple marriages polygyny the same DNA root that is many wives how many normally four usually you were allowed four wives only on the proviso that you could support them in a way that was dignified and would keep them you know status of acceptance otherwise you can't marry and he said the idea that you might marry because you wanted help in bringing up children or something like that that's a very bad idea said another of the things that you can do in order to repent of sin is to adopt orphans but don't bring in extra wives to take care of them if you're not able to take care of them in the first place there's great care throughout the whole book of Orson's because well our he thinks it's because I lost told him to it to do it but our secular world knows that he was an orphan Mohammed was an orphan so he he really liked taking care of orphans there's another difference between this kind of political polygyny and that of say the Mormons or others it's that the dowry system which our whole Western world maintained until recently with the matter of the father of the bride to be paying a tribute to the bride's family they went to her family which sounds of course to us like selling a family and that led to tremendous difficulties of people father trying to raise enough money to sell to dowry its children off in a dignified way and when he ran out of money extra daughters had to be sent to them nunnery her can continue to live in a very degraded state in the Quran the dowry is paid from the by the groom to the bride and that dowry is her property and can't be taken away from her even by the husband and if there's a divorce she takes the dowry with her which is a great inhibitor of the man wanting to divorce the woman uh-oh their coasts of the dowry yeah another difference is that although the male could have multiple wives include up to four for most people there was a special thing exceptions made for Mohammed who acquired more than that in all kinds of ways that didn't involve sex consummation for instance the the widows of his companions at a time when he was very revered he would marry some of those widows even though he had no intention of having sexual intercourse with them as a way of honoring them honoring their former husband's so the bride could also initiate divorce she could leave him it was always consensual on both sides and it was easily dissolved and it was easily resumed he said God loves you to have spouses and if you break up we will try to prevent them he recommended counseling to keep the marriage together but if it falls apart you can pick it up again and so by contrast just the idea they are gonna get 72 virgins in heaven and unlike the Christian view in the Christian scripture Jesus says there's not a giving of marriage in heaven there are there's no marriage in heaven they're all spiritual and there's no question of physical connection well in the gardens which is the word for heaven in the Quran your spouses are always married the ones that you've had and even the ones you resumed but there's no it's also an entirely spiritual realm there's no intercourse anymore there's no physical pleasure in heaven as opposed to the very common misconception of the Quran the the people you love on earth you love in heaven your children your other relatives fathers and their children spouses and their spouses so the world of heaven is the perfect oasis that people are yearning for in the arabian desert it is a garden full of water water springs up at your feet you know in the in the desert your yearning for water is easily baffled towards it you have to find the way to an oasis and that by the way Surya means way it's only used one time in the Quran and it's not legislative he's he's encouraging Muhammad at a time when he's feeling sad because people are rejecting his message it's very like the Prophet prophets of the Old Testament that the Prophet says they're going to kill me if I say that and God says go ahead and say it anyway you're supposed to deliver the message well that was true of Muhammad too and he was encouraging Muhammad on many of the times when he's talking to him he's saying keep at it you've got to preach me no matter what and he says at one point you're on the right Sharia you're heading to the right goal so keep keep going and that's why not only Sharia but other words four paths are constantly used you've got to get on the pass that was the language of the New Testament especially in Nuuk where the believers you know they they were not known as Christians in the first generation and when it was used it was used as a insult they were brothers sisters but mainly they were people of the way hey-ho das in greek but even more than in those passages the Quran is always thinking of keep on the way the true path which meant the path to the next oasis that was knowing that was a key to life if you didn't know it you could wander in the desert and die so it constantly talks of the way as a way to get to the final Oasis and the Oasis you know it doesn't have many physical pleasures mainly spiritual pleasures of being happily United with votes you agree with in your contemplation of God but what the pleasures that you do have are for instance you can drink wine you know the Quran says you shouldn't drink wine except in this or that circumstance anybody said God will forgive you if you stop he's always merciful but when you get to heaven you can drink wine because it's perfect wine it's kind of doesn't muddle your head you can drink you can drink milk because it doesn't come from a cow anymore it's just there and figs will dry it will drop on you you don't even have to work to pick them and water will spring up at your feet doesn't come from clouds anymore that's the it's a kind of science fiction heaven but very far from the kinds of physical pleasures that many people think of as the essence of heaven in the Quran so I found it hard to read the Quran at first it's a very disjointed saying it was dictated to Muhammad by Allah and Muhammad was it literate he said they'll believe that it's me talking because they know you can't write he he says you have to you have to dictate it to a friend or a follower and they wrote them down on the people he dictated to all all authorship was dictation then by the way as in the Old Testament New Testament anything time and it was not until after he was dead that they put all these things that had been written down on the Handy surface and organized it into a book and they didn't know how to organize it in any orderly way so they just did the longer things first and the shorter things after so it's a when you try to read it with our expectations of logical structure or sequence or anything of that sort doesn't make much it doesn't it's not easy to follow but once you start appreciating the kinds of things that are being said it becomes astonishing and you begin to understand why Pope Francis says it's a spiritual document that Christians and learn devotion from I'm sorry mr. Trump it's not about hate [Applause] could you comment at least briefly what Isis misuse of the Quran and why it has been attracting individuals worldwide well hundreds and hundreds of Muslim scholars have said the Quran has nothing to do with Isis Isis is a corruption of the Quran as the Crusades were a corruption of the New Testament the the history of the reason I went back to the original and just said ah I'm talking about what the Quran meant not about all of the other things that have been attributed to it because that would of course been it's like saying if I'm gonna study Christianity should I study just the New Testament or should I study all the things a Christian said were in the New Testament which led them to Wars and Crusades and burnings of heretics and all of those things they went through the Muslims went through what we Christians did they began as a persecuted sacked then they began to get some social leverage and they became more self protective and they fought the Quran says only defensive war is just war Augustine said the same thing but then they got more power and they became a super state they became an empire as Christianity did and it got whole new structures of authority and the ability to punish so you end up going from the New Testament teaching on love and forbearance to medieval popes with prisons and armies and Crusades and burnings of heretics etc so if you're going to ask what Muslims believe the question is not they can believe all kinds of crazy things as we as we Christians can but what are they supposed to believe according to they all we cite back to the New Testament even in times of imperialism and we can't really condemn imperialism unless we say wait a minute that's not there so we've got to be able to say the same thing about Isis any of the things they do are not there there's nothing in there about beheading there's nothing in there about terror nothing in there about raids or destruction of unbelievers or anything of that sort it's just not there but how are we gonna say that if we haven't read it so I say at the beginning must we read the Quran and I answer we better yes no thank you as with the Jewish and Christian scripture as much depends on how you interpret the particular language of the text and over time many different schools both in Judaism and Christianity came of very different views perhaps you'd comment with respect to Islam as you know the four primary schools of law have very different interpretations particularly in the degree of flexibility that you can have in interpreting the scriptures as opposed to taking them literally and specifically I'm asking and as to Isis you talk about what I believe is the hon Bali School where so D primary schools of Wahhabism come from and how they get from the Quran that you've read to the justification for a very very very rigid strict society well there are not four schools there are seven there are four Sunni schools and three G of schools and they differ between the all of them and you know it's like scholasticism in the Middle Ages there are tremendous efforts to refine and define and carry and on split differences between franciscan schools and Dominican schools and to mystic stuff I think the only thing you can do is say we're not going to get into that because it's not part of the original revelation one of the most amazing things to me is that we've had dozens of United States states that have passed or tried to pass anti Surya legislation now what the hell is the Shree of they're condemning and how is it going to sneak it up upon us is it one of the four Sunni Sharia laws or one of the three Shia and of course they have no idea because they don't know anything about what they're condemning what they're doing is saying my god they hate us they're sneaking up on us it's like our good anti communist states or no it was a communist communism was going to infiltrate into our government our religion our everything there were communists under the bed well now we've got Muslims under the bed so I deliberately didn't try to get into the things that were you know the Isis the state of israei of Islam that they're trying to restore is the Imperial state which was a big grandiose Empire and by the way it was a far more tolerant Empire than the Christian Empire when it was in full power Edward Gibbon is really wonderful on that that he said people say that Islam is oppressive he said it was nothing next true Christian imperialism in the Middle Ages so I just accede to that's all of the Islamic scholars who said Isis is a in a strange aberration and by the way they also say they're ignorant of their own religion in that big Gallup poll said ninety-three percent disapproved they were that was the Quran approving people the three percent who didn't the terrorists didn't even know their own religion and then why were they acting that way the a lot of it was hatred and resentment against Western imperialism you know they wanted to hurt America or whatever country they're having terrorist raids on in the London raids at that kind of that kind of thing they're not representatives of mainstream Islam you know the the whole trumped attitude that we've got to fear these people and keep them out well they're already in you know if you think that every every Muslim in America hates us there are lots of Muslim policemen soldiers doctors there are two congressmen who are Muslims I don't think they hate us they went the first one when he was sworn in went to the Library of Congress and said could I borrow Jefferson's copy of the Quran and was sworn in on that so I don't think we have to fear the mainstream Islam the spiritual Islam we only have to fear these truly people truly are hateful hateful and you might say as lots of people - the whole anti-imperial movement in various countries around the world you concede their point of view they were deprived of their various freedoms by the virial powers see one of the great things one of the most important things that happened in the wake of World War two is that the Empyrean the imperial powers had used these colonies to fight for them and as soon as the war was over spokespersons for the various countries said oh we could have got rid of them you know we helped them out when they needed us but we don't have to be their servants anymore and so the anti-imperial movement grew up and went as it was quashed in various countries the resentment of the empires became stronger and stronger well the whole terrorists part of that story as part of that larger story these are people that were in a way heroes when they stood up to the colonial power and to the extent that we have not dispelled their hatred of empire for instance George Bush thought we were gonna spread democracy by going into Iraq and knocking off Saddam Hussein because he was a dictator and everybody wants freedom so they they'll be happy to see us and they'll thank us will be the liberators etc he had no idea that the problem in Iraq was that a Sunni government on minority Sunni government was ruling of Shia majority so when we went there we'd said oh well we've got to get rid of Saddam and get rid of Saddam ISM which was really Sunni ISM and so we'll we'll get rid of the party the bath party we'll get rid of the army get rid of the Sunni army Sunni controlled army and people at the time said to the whole Bush administration you know when you knock off the Sunni people they're the ones who have had position they're the they're the professionals they were the army they've gotten weapons they're going to resent very much what you're doing to them and of course they did so the whole of the tremendous reaction against us was religious and we we didn't know anything about the religion then again George Bush never read the Quran any more than Bill Buckley did or Trump so I think the thing to do is to say we can't sort out all of your differences any more than we can sort out all the differences in canon law and the middle Rangers but please pay attention to what you recite every Friday or Saturday or Sunday and go back to your spiritual roots sir I've read a lot of your books on Christianity Catholicism and they're fantastic and I'm looking forward to reading this but I have a question about sort of just the text because there I've read a lot of like scholars of krish of the old and new testaments like Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels who dissect the text and show that words were changed in in with translations and copying over time add one of the examples is the idea of Mary was a virgin was a translation basically when the Greek was translated into Latin but are there such issues in with the Quran and one of you could comment on yeah of course the Quran you know Allah says I've given you a Hebrew covenant and a Greek having and now in Arabic covenant and the idea that it is such a sacred text as happens with many is that you really must adhere to it in the original so everybody on Muslims all recite the Quran many of them memorized it it's an oral document even the ones who are no longer Arabic speaking so and they're the really strict school of Islam says there should be no translation that that was an original or inhibitor of translating at all but it's true that on certain matters you bring up a very good one about what it means in Isaiah about a young woman or a virgin conceives but whether you if you're talking only about the idea that there's a virginal conception other than that it's the general there's not a I went I used a lot of translations Lemes is the main one but many others and there's a very good saying the study Quran thousand page thing done recently and really helpful but I'm talking about general Jews the religion which are not all that different for instance we all I think talk about Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible without knowing all of those difficulties without knowing Hebrew or Greek or Arabic but the general message is pretty clear if you read it you know very minor difficulties can arise but the Bajor teaching is pretty clear that's why we all talk so readily about them and we don't pretend that we're scholars I don't say in the book this is a Catholic looks at the Quran and I say we should have the same thing from Jews looking at the Quran from Protestants looking at the Quran I think we'll mostly agree if we only take the trouble to read the damn thing I was just curious in about what your opinion is of the class clash of civilizations thesis that Samuel Huntington which which does have connection to you know the attitudes and approaches you know to Islam and and as a corollary what do you think how effective do you think the Interfaith dialog has been my father wrote the god of Justice in the Quran so you know I come from a family that has been involved in this controversy about Islam and three what do you think is the role of the of the secularist in within the Muslim world and whether you think that they also had some influence in the way Islam was perceived by the West well of course there's always a clash of civilizations that book was written to answer things like Francis Fukuyama is saying that secularism is going to take over the world and we won't need to bother about religion anymore that was a more realistic view that these are habits and attitudes and beliefs that will not be melted down into one secular thing now when you talk about secularism in the Jewish and the Muslim world of course if it's truly secularist it's not in the woods own world because you have to be a believer in the one God to be a Muslim according to the Quran there are people things that might people might think are secularists for instance there's a thriving feminist body in the Islamic world but it's not secular it believes in the you know law it just says there are things that in the Koran that are time bound by cultural conditioning that we can change we can build on for instance that whole thing about women is property owned in the seventh century that was a revolutionary thing and it's been built on by dozens and dozens of feminist scholars and it's interesting we I didn't get into the whole book out hijab controversy but it's interesting that the feminists some where the head covering and some don't and from this pretty common motives the ones who don't say we're not bound by that development in our culture and those who do say I do it to protest people who think that you can't be a Muslim and be a believer in modern values democratic values for instance I said I you know I didn't talk about the whole clothing for women business because that's generally not in the Quran it's true that the Quran says women should be modest and men should be modest they should boast for instant covered their private parts they were against nudity and you know they wouldn't want nude beaches of either sex but it said women should cover their shoulders area and that's you know that's kind of like st. Paul saying women should cover their heads in church it's part of the the whole adoption of identifying clothing symbols that you get in Jews who wear the our milk our Catholic priests who wear the Roman collar but the idea that I've admitted that the text is misogynist and what wasn't in the seventh century but you know the thing that they always say the critics is that there's the Vale verse in Scripture in the Quran but that's not about women's apparel at all it says that when somebody wants to petition one of Muhammad's wives he should do it through a screen through a veil that's normally but that's not what she's wearing it's a matter of etiquette and traffic at the court of Mohammed naturally when you have several wives and you ought to get to Mohammed and make some plea it's what normally happens you go through parts of his court to get there and he says okay you can petition my wives but you do it through a screen so that there's not face to face confrontation or solicitation or whatever it's and you might you wouldn't even know perhaps which wife you're talking to it's a matter of order and gravity at the court so when various parts of the Islamic tradition rapped women up in varying degrees of obfuscation it makes me think of I was taught by Dominican nuns but wonderfully charitable and learned people who helped me a lot but when I was in grade school my fellows and I couldn't tell whether our teachers had any hair or any breasts or waists or buttocks and we certainly wouldn't believe they ever went to the bathroom but that's not in the New Testament you know that's not that's not a part of Christian essence that's a part of growing Puritanism in the Catholic tradition but anyway if they were I don't know want to talk more about women which is a wonderful thing because some of the best scholars of the Quran now are women and last two chapters of my book are all on its treatment of women my daughter-in-law is from India and a Hindu and I am not entirely comforted by texts about it's okay to kill Auditors do you find any softening among contemporary Muslims of the hostility towards Buddhism and Hinduism and the ancient religions of Asia yeah well the Quran doesn't know Buddhism exists anymore than it knows atheists do it's a it's a revelation to a circumscribed part of the world as was true of the Hebrew and Christian revelations so I can't say that the Quran would be hostile to Buddhism or Hinduism because it doesn't say it what about contemporary Muslims are you aware of any thinking of rethinking oh yeah there are in a way the logic of ecumenical relations in the Quran opens up the possibilities of interfaith dialogue in a way that would have been astonishing in the seventh century but is a reasonable you know Allah says you have to be merciful and charitable to everybody and it's only you know his opposition to idolatry is only a matter of casting out statues in the Kaaba but it's not something that you can attack the idolaters the idolaters have to attack you first if you're gonna have any just roar they've you know again if you take out two verses out of context you can say oh this is a more like document which says go to war with the idolaters or doesn't say that the fire some of the early fights took place around the Kaaba the sacred place in Mecca and in the caravans arised the caravans that came in there was a tradition of peaceful accord and there were specific truces drawn up and when those were violated by idolaters if the Muslims were there and they were attacked he says can you fight back he said no not there in fact in the in the most famous called the sword verse though there's no sword in the text or anywhere in the Quran as opposed to the New Testament he says you can't break the truth even if they do but he said when the truce ends the most famous verse says after four months because that was the terms of Treece truce then you can lie in wait for them kill the ones who attacked you but not non-combatants not their relatives and if they plead for mercy you have to give it to them so in the two places that he's talking about that are in the holy areas around the Kaaba and that's why it says the one of the weird things is that it says he believes in holy war because he has to talk about the holy places in those two passages but he was not waging holy war he said war arose in the holy area so all of these caricatures of Islam are so far from the Quran that it doesn't take great scholarship it seems to me it just means reading it and most of the people who parrot these things haven't read it obviously when Bill Buckley said that if you teach the Quran they will all become terrorists [Applause] you

Channel: Politics and Prose

Views: 2,639,290

Keywords: P&P TV, Washington DC, Politics and Prose, Authors, Books, Events, Literature, Gary Wills, Qur'an, Islam, religion

Id: ulK5re6b52g

Length: 63min 53sec (3833 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 28 2017