One of difficulties in telling the difference between a person who follows a peaceful faith and a non peaceful faith, is the problem of honesty on the part of those being questioned. It’s all too easy for those of ill intent to say: ‘Yes my religion is a religion of peace’, even if it plainly is not. The difficulties in determining which followers of which faith are genuinely peaceful and which are not is further compounded by the fact that the religious scripture of both peaceful and non peaceful faiths may contain tales of appalling violence that occurred in their pasts. For example stoning adulterers to death is part of both Jewish and Islamic scripture but in Judaism, unlike in Islam, stoning adulterers to death has been consigned to the dim and distant past.

So if we acknowledge as we should do, that both the Tanakh (Christians will know this as the Old Testament) and the Koran contain tales of violence, how does one tell the difference between a peaceful Jew or Christian and a not so peaceful Muslim? One idea that has been suggested by a number of people is a ‘declaration of peaceful intent’, which would call on the religious believer to denounce the verses of violence in their scripture. This sort of declaration is relatively easy for a Jew or a Christian to make as both Christianity and modern Rabbinic Judaism has relegated the violence in the Tanakh to the dim and distance past. You’d be very hard pushed to find a modern Jew, outside of one confined to a secure psychiatric hospital, who would want things like the stoning of adulterers for example to be brought back. However the violence in the Koran is not a historical record as is the violence in the Tankah but is instead a contemporaneous exhortation to the followers of Islam to commit violence.

It’s worth having a look at the piece linked below from a group calling itself the ‘West In Danger’ for more information about this. I know that when dealing with Muslims there is the problem of taqiyya or lying to promote or protect Islam and we see Muslims lying about the nature of their ideology every day. If a Muslim says to you that Islam is peaceful then they are normally either lying their heads off about Islam or know bugger all about the ideology and therefore just trot out the sort of guff that has worked before. However, it is one thing to just ask someone ‘is your religion peaceful’ and get back an easy lie, it is quite another to ask people to look at specific religious instructions and ask them to distance themselves from them and declare themselves against them.

Here’s the link to the page about making a ‘declaration of peaceful intent’.

http://westindanger.com/declaration.html

Have a look at this and let us know what you think. If nothing else it forces people of a religious faith to think about the nuts and bolts of their belief system. I as a Jew have no problem with denouncing harsh punishments for adultery and other offences that are present in the Tanakh because I know that these rules applied to a Jewish culture that existed thousands of years ago not to the Jewish culture that exists today. I and many others both Christian and Jew would see little problem morally, ethically or spiritually in saying ‘that was then, this is now’ when it comes to the violence in the Tanakh, the question is are Muslims prepared to do the same?