5. Love of God and love of one's neighbor are the central commandments not only in the Bible but also in the Qur'an.

A comparison of the texts shows that the Qur'an is at least as tolerant as the Old and New Testaments. God and his prophets do sometimes express themselves in very martial tones in all three scriptures. In the Old Testament Book of Numbers 31:7,15,17 it is written: "They did battle against Midian, as the Lord had commanded Moses, and killed every male. … Moses said to them, ‘Have you allowed all the women to live? … Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him'".

In the New Testament, Jesus is quoted in Matthew 10:34 as having said: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." In his Table Talk the powerfully eloquent Protestant Martin Luther said: "One may give short shrift to heretics. While they perish at the stake, the faithful should destroy the evil by the root and bathe their hands in the blood of the bishops and the pope."

Surah 4:89 of the Qur'an is no less violent: "They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do (…). Take (…) not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of God (from what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them."

Extremists and preachers of hate in East and West almost always ignore the historical context of these passages. Moses, Jesus and Muhammad were not born in a historical vacuum but into a belligerent world. At first glance, the Old Testament, especially in its historical passages, might seem to be the bloodiest of the three holy books - much bloodier than the Qur'an.

But anybody who has studied the Old Testament knows that its central commandment - apart from the commandment to love God and justice - is: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). For Christians too, love of one's neighbor and justice are the most important commandments after the love of God (Matthew 5:6, 5:10).

The Qur'an tells Muslims to "Do good … to neighbors who are near, or neighbors who are strangers" (Surah 4:36). Islam also endorses the "Ten Commandments," including the prohibition on killing - with the sole exception of the commandment to observe the Sabbath, as according to the Islamic view God did not need a day of rest after creating the world. The Qur'an calls for "more humanity and more justice" (Hans Küng).

The main problem with the Western debate about the Qur'an is that everybody talks about it but hardly anybody has read it. The bellicose passages in the Qur'an have to do with "the religious wars of the period between Mecca and Medina and therefore only (have to do with) the people of Mecca and Medina of the period," as the Egyptian minister of religious affairs Mahmoud Zakzouk has correctly pointed out.

In Surah 29:46 it is written: "Our God and your God is one," even though God is called Jehovah in Hebrew and Allah in Arabic - by Arab Christians as well. We are all children of Abraham. Is it not outrageous blasphemy when Jews, Christians or Muslims misuse the Bible and the Qur'an as a weapon, in order to hammer home their particular view of this one God?

Terrorism is never religious. To be a terrorist is to adopt the methods of the devil; no terrorist may invoke God. There is no "Islamic" terrorism, just as the terrorism of the IRA in Northern Ireland was never "Christian" or "Catholic". There is merely terrorism that bears an Islamic mask, and it does not lead to paradise, but to hell, as do wars of aggression that bear a Christian or democratic mask.

The claim that violence is above all a religious problem is an atheist myth. People committed murder before religion existed and have continued to do so ever since. The mass murder of the Nazis and of the Soviet and Chinese Communists are the sad proof that man is the cruelest creature - with and without religion.

The shocking fascination of contemporary suicide terrorism is based on two kinds of shamelessness: the shamelessness of some Western politicians who continue to spill Muslim blood at a ratio of 10:1, and the shamelessness with which those who mastermind terrorism distort the Qur'an and try to make young Muslims believe that all they have to do to become Islamic martyrs is blow themselves up as suicide bombers.

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