Conservatives attack Garry Wills’s book on the Quran

HNN Editor:  This article appears on the website of the conservative publication, The American Thinker.

What’s all the fuss about? If only we threw off our secular ignorance, religious ignorance and fearful ignorance, then we could interpret the Quran wisely and rationally; then we could reach this conclusion: “The religion of the Quran is a religion of peace.”

So says Garry Wills on p. 140 in his book What the Quran Meant: And Why It Matters.

Really?

But we can skip over his first three chapters on the three kinds of ignorance mentioned above. It seems no challenge can be rational, by definition, since peace and good will dominate the Quran, and it is actually misunderstood by the ignorant. The rest of his book is intended to correct the hysterics.

Instead, let’s analyze chapter 7 on peace, chapter 8 on jihad, chapter 9 on shariah, and chapters 11-13 on women’s issues.

Apparently the Quran extols an almost global family of believing Jews, Christians, and Muslims, living in harmony and tolerance. Great for Western utopians, as leftists tend to be.

However, he neglects to mention Muhammad’s atrocities against the Jews, when he ordered 900 men and pubescent boys to be slaughtered and the women and girls to be enslaved, after he conquered them outside Medina, which the Quran approves of (33:26-27). Was the atrocity a one-off? Islamic history says Jews and Christians suffered death and persecution and second-class treatment, as Muslims waged aggressive and unprovoked jihad for centuries. (See chapter 8, next). ...