An Exercise in Missing the Point

I read this article today in Time by a young Muslim girl who was offended by what her text book said Islam.   But the quote she cites actually says nothing about Islam, it says something very specific about the Quran.  Those are two different discussions.  What this girl should be upset about with regard to this text book is not stereotyping Islam but rather misinterpreting the Quran.  Of course we don’t get the whole quote in the article, but the portion she seemed to be upset with goes like this:

“According to the Quran, women are to satisfy men’s sexual desires and to bear children …women are considered sexually seductive …”

This girl’s response was to claim that such a statement was stereotyping Muslims when the article didn’t say anything about Muslims so much as it said something very specific about the Quran.  I don’t have an agenda against Islam here, I just want to point out that if the Quran doesn’t say anything of the like that is pretty easy to demonstrate. I would have found the whole thing more appropriate if she had actually addressed the Quran, but instead her point was that most Muslim’s aren’t like that.  Do you see what I am getting at?  She didn’t actually address what her text book said.

Though misrepresentations of Islam are probably more common in our country that misrepresentations of Islam (though that is changing), I do not get upset when Christianity is misrepresented in our culture, I do get upset when the Bible is misrepresented, and my labor is rarely to defend Christians themselves or their actions, but what the Scriptures say when they are misrepresented.  If Scripture’s words are true, then I need to be able to articulate why some of the more difficult things it says are true.