IN HIS BOOK, Answering Jihad, Dr. Qureshi writes that the Bible is a very different book as compared to the Holy Quran, and it “recounts many events not endorsed by God”. Hence, only those battles which were commanded by God in the Bible should be compared with the Holy Quran. He gives the example of Genesis 34 where Jacob’s sons are mentioned as seeking revenge from the men of a Canaanite city as one of them raped their sister. Dr. Qureshi argues that this is not sanctioned by God, as compared to Deuteronomy 20:16-18 which refers to specific commands by God for violence.

The problem with this argument is that the account of Jacob’s sons in Gen. 34 does not show God condemning such actions either. Even though there is no specific phrase there, which says that “God approves the violence” committed by Jacob’s sons, the fact remains that this story is mentioned in the Torah – a holy book for the Christians – and the lack of condemnation of such violence is a form of approval in and of itself.

If the story had been mentioned just as an historical account in a book of history, this argument could have made some sense. But the Bible is not just a book of history. It is a holy book about holy people of God and Jacob was one such holy man. In Gen. 35, following the horrific and brutal actions of Jacob’s sons, the Biblical God appears to be unaware of their heinous crimes and during a journey, it says, “a terror from God fell upon the cities all around them”.217 Is this how a Just God is supposed to ignore such genocidal crimes committed by the same people he is protecting by casting “terror” on the cities that happen to be located around them?

Not only that, but God says to Jacob:

I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall spring from you. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you.218

The same people who committed such violence are honored by God and given lavish promises. If this is not a condoning by the God of the Bible for their crimes, then what is it?

It should be noted here that the Quran speaks positively about Jacob^as as a great Prophet of God, and Muslims are told by God to revere all the Prophets sent by God. However, Muslims also believe that the Bible’s message has been interpolated over time by human hands. As such, our criticisms above should be seen as a criticism of what the human authors of the Bible have written, not a criticism of the Prophets of God.

It is further argued by some Christians that the example of Jesus^as is one of grace and mercy and that this example replaces Old Testament teachings. Since Jesus^as never fought any wars and never committed any violence and even died for the sins of his enemies, we are now expected to follow his model. The problem with this position is that there is an internal inconsistency here. The same inconsistency was so strongly felt by an early Christian known as Marcion that he started a sect that believed in 2 Gods - a God of the Old Testament and a God of the New Testament. He could not reconcile the actions of the Old Testament God and those of what he believed to be the God of the New Testament. At the very least, this position is more consistent in light of Christian differentiation of violence in the Old Testament as compared to the New Testament.

Anyhow, this is not the case with most Christians today. They believe that Jesus is the same as the God of the Old Testament, as God is actually a Trinity or a Triune God - God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God the Son is Jesus Christ^as, which means that all of the Old Testament violence, whether ordered directly (as in Deut. 20:16-18) or ignored completely (as in Gen. 35), was sanctioned by Jesus^as himself as he is the co-eternal, co-equal partner of God, according to Christian doctrine.

As a result, the distinction between Old Testament and New Testament teachings in relation to violence is simply unwarranted and invented by the Church. According to the Christian concept of God, Jesus^as was the one who ordered the violence of the Old Testament. In fact, Jesus^as himself says that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17), and that he expects Christians to follow his example (John 13:15). This means that the Torah should not be set aside by Christians as Old Testament as it gives the impression that it has become obsolete whereas Jesus^as himself did not consider it obsolete. Therefore, in light of these statements of Jesus^as, all the teachings and commandments of the Torah are applicable to Christians today just as they did in the past.

At one point, this is illustrated when Jesus^as rebuked the Jews for not keeping the commandment of Moses to kill those children who are disobedient to their parents (Mk 7:9-10). If he considered the law old or obsolete, he would not have made this statement.

There are numerous examples of the kind of violence that God-Jesus sanctioned and ordered in the Old Testament, and they are such that they cannot be attributed to a Beneficent and Merciful God. Here are a few examples:

1. Exodus 21:20-21: When a slave-owner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property.
2. Leviticus 20:27: A man or a woman who is a medium or a wizard shall be put to death; they shall be stoned to death, their blood is upon them.
3. Deuteronomy 2:31-35: The Lord said to me, “See, I have begun to give Sihon and his land over to you. Begin now to take possession of his land.” So when Sihon came out against us, he and all his people for battle at Jahaz, the Lord our God gave him over to us; and we struck him down, along with his offspring and all his people. At that time we captured all his towns, and in each town we utterly destroyed men, women, and children. We left not a single survivor. Only the livestock we kept as spoil for ourselves, as well as the plunder of the towns that we had captured.
4. Deuteronomy 7:2: And when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.
5. 1 Samuel 15: Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.
6. Deuteronomy 17:2-5: If there is found among you, in one of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, and transgresses his covenant by going to serve other gods and worshiping them—whether the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden—and if it is reported to you or you hear of it, and you make a thorough inquiry, and the charge is proved true that such an abhorrent thing has occurred in Israel, then you shall bring out to your gates that man or that woman who has committed this crime and you shall stone the man or woman to death.
7. Deuteronomy 20:10-18: When you draw near to a town to fight against it, offer it terms of peace. If it accepts your terms of peace and surrenders to you, then all the people in it shall serve you at forced labor. If it does not submit to you peacefully, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword. You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children, livestock, and everything else in the town, all its spoil. You may enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you. Thus you shall treat all the towns that are very far from you, which are not towns of the nations here. But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded, so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the Lord your God.
8. Deuteronomy 21:18-21: If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid.
9. Leviticus 21:9: When the daughter of a priest profanes herself through prostitution, she profanes her father; she shall be burned to death.
10. Leviticus 24:13-16: The Lord said to Moses, saying: …And speak to the people of Israel, saying: Anyone who curses God shall bear the sin. One who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death; the whole congregation shall stone the blasphemer. Aliens as well as citizens, when they blaspheme the Name, shall be put to death.

In the chapter on Shariah, we discussed the philosophy of certain harsh punishments in Islam. However, their harshness pales in front of some of the laws of the Torah quoted above. These examples are just a few among many which demonstrate that the Bible is a very violent book.

In contrast, the Holy Quran says:

Take to forgiveness, and enjoin kindness, and turn away from the ignorant219

And the recompense of an injury is an injury the like thereof; but whoso forgives and his act brings about reformation, his reward is with Allah. Surely, He loves not the wrongdoers.220

O ye who believe! be steadfast in the cause of Allah, bearing witness in equity; and let not a people’s enmity incite you to act otherwise than with justice. Be always just, that is nearer to righteousness. And fear Allah. Surely, Allah is aware of what you do.221

And if they incline towards peace, incline thou also towards it, and put thy trust in Allah. Surely, it is He Who is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.222

O mankind! there has indeed come to you an exhortation from your Lord and a cure for whatever disease there is in the hearts, and a guidance and a mercy to the believers.223

… and lower thy wing of mercy for the believers.224

And We are gradually revealing of the Quran that which is a healing and a mercy to the believers…225

You are the best people raised for the good of mankind; you enjoin what is good and forbid evil and believe in Allah.226

Hence, the essential teachings of the Holy Quran are based on peace, mercy, and compassion for others.

This comparison of the Holy Quran with the Bible in terms of violence has also been done by independent researchers. A software engineer, Tom Anderson, processed the texts of the three holy books - the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Holy Quran - to find out which contained more violence. According to an article on his findings published by The Independent, he used a text analytics software named Odin Text, and categorized words into eight emotions - Joy, Anticipation, Anger, Disgust, Sadness, Surprise, Fear/Anxiety and Trust. The analysis found that “the Bible scored higher for anger and much lower for trust than the Holy Quran”.227

His analysis also showed that killing and destruction was more frequently found in Christian texts than the Holy Quran. In his blog post, Anderson writes:

Killing and destruction are referenced slightly more often in the New Testament (2.8%) than in the Holy Quran (2.1%), but the Old Testament clearly leads—more than twice that of the Holy Quran—in mentions of destruction and killing (5.3%).

He later summarizes:

In fact, of the three texts, the content in the Old Testament appears to be the most violent.

Furthermore, the author was “surprised” to find that the Holy Quran mentioned the concept of mercy far more than the Christian texts.228 This analysis is yet further evidence that critics of Islam cherry pick verses of the Holy Quran due to their bias.

Coming back to the specific comparison between Jesus^as and Prophet Muhammad^sa, one more thing that should be kept in mind is that this is not a fair comparison at all. While Jesus^as spent a life in subjugation according to the Gospels, Prophet Muhammad^sa attained authority and power near the end of his life and forgave his bitterest opponents. Jesus^as never had the chance to do that, as he never gained any power. His ascendancy to power is left to be demonstrated in future on the occasion of his long-awaited “second coming”. Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad^as expresses this sentiment when he writes:

...the moral qualities of Haḍrat Masīḥ [Jesus Christ^as], peace be on him, cannot be established to a perfect degree… rather… they cannot be established even with regard to one type. Because the Masīḥ showed patience under distress, the perfection of this quality would have been demonstrated only if the Masīḥ had obtained authority and power over his persecutors and had forgiven his oppressors from the bottom of his heart, as did Haḍrat Khātamul-Anbiyā’ [Seal of Prophets, in reference to, Prophet Muhammad], peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, who obtained complete victory over the Makkans and others and after virtually having his sword upon their throats, forgave them their crimes, and he punished only those few who had been condemned by a special decree of Allah the Almighty to undergo punishment. Besides these eternally accursed few, every sworn enemy was pardoned. And having achieved victory, he announced to them: “No blame shall lie on you this day”.229

Hence, there is no doubt that Prophet Muhammad^sa cannot fairly be compared to Jesus^as as the former’s forgiveness and magnanimity was properly demonstrated by his ascendency to a kingdom. Regarding Jesus^as, we cannot possibly know what he would have done if he had come to power. Would he have taken revenge on his enemies? Would he have put them all to the sword? We cannot know because it never happened. In the case of Prophet Muhammad^sa, it did happen and we saw that he forgave his enemies, and he demonstrated that he was truly the prince of peace.