“The existential crisis behind today’s Islamic violence”

Joel J. Miller is mounting an interesting theological challenge to Islam.  I’ve already posted a link to his article “Islam is a religion of violence: Or, why abstract theology actually matters,” indicating that I disagreed with him at some crucial points.

Now he’s published “The existential crisis behind today’s Islamic violence”:

http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/joeljmiller/islamic-violence/

As I say, I find his challenge interesting and important.  And I mean that.  But I don’t think he’s right.

I think I’ll need to respond to him in some detail, sometime.  But, without elaborating on them, here are some places where I would challenge him:

1.  It isn’t true that Islamic theology “drove conquest” “from Day One.”  For the first ten years of the existence of Islam, Muslims were persecuted.  And, thereafter, they were under military attack for most of the rest of Muhammad’s life.

2.  It seems simplistic to assume that Islam lacks a deep concept of love because it isn’t Trinitarian.  Judaism isn’t Trinitarian, either.  And Christianity itself — think of the Crusades, think of European colonialism and the slave trade, think of the Spanish Reconquista and the Inquisition, think of Slobodan Milošević (how ironic that Joel Miller relies so heavily upon the anti-Muslim sentiments of, of all things, a Serbian writer!), think of innumerable other examples — hasn’t always exhibited divine love.

3.  The claim that “Islam began as a Christian heresy” is dubious, at best.  Dante thought so, but he had the excuse of being an under-informed medieval Catholic.

Mr. Miller probably deserves an essay in response.

Posted from Marbella, Spain