Is the Quran more peaceful than the Bible?

NPR reports that Penn State professor Philip Jenkins thinks so:

“”Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible,” Jenkins says. Violence in the Quran, he and others say, is largely a defense against attack. “By the standards of the time, which is the 7th century A.D., the laws of war that are laid down by the Quran are actually reasonably humane,” he says. “Then we turn to the Bible, and we actually find something that is for many people a real surprise. There is a specific kind of warfare laid down in the Bible which we can only call genocide.”

It’s an interesting idea. It’s also probably a good thing that he tempers his statement by noting that, though Christianity and Judaism were much more violent in the past, they’re basically grown out of it.

One critic, Andrew Bostom, finds Jenkins’ theory “preposterous,” noting:

“There’s a major difference between the Bible, which describes the destruction of an enemy at a point in time, and the Quran, which urges an ongoing struggle to defeat unbelievers.”

I don’t think Bostom’s critique holds much water. However the messages and meanings of each holy book are framed (and they both have significant amounts of both stories and general rules), they both have the potential to be used as a call to war – or as a call to peace, for that matter. These texts are complex, and the various meanings they contain can be actualized in different ways by different people. It’s a good lesson for Quran-bashers to bear in mind.

–Aaron Bekemeyer