Distinguishing Islam From Arabic Culture

Just as there are those who criticize the Bible out of ignorance of its actual teachings, there are those, often Christians themselves, who criticize the Quran without having read anything more than a few Quranic verses removed from their contexts, or without having read the Quran at all.  There is no point in defending Islam itself as a contender for a religion that corresponds to reality, for reasons I will explain below.  This does nothing to change the fact that a straw man is illegitimate even if the worldview being straw manned can only be erroneous.

No rationalist could entertain the idea that the Quran is possibly true for long if they have basic knowledge of Biblical and Quranic legal ethics.  Islam can only be false, as its own claims about the Old Testament necessitate that the Quran is incorrect whether or not the Bible is actually true.  This is because the Quran blatantly contradicts the Old Testament while affirming that the Torah has divine authority, meaning the Quran is false if the Torah is true and false if the Torah is itself false [1].  However, it is still vital to distinguish between the actual teachings of the Quran, the ultimate foundation for Islam, and the constructs of Arabic culture, just as it is crucial to distinguish between actual Christianity and the evangelical ideas that are so commonly mistaken for it.

One example of this distinction between actual Islam and the culture that often claims the religion is the fact that Arabic culture pressures women into wearing burkas, though the Quran demands no such thing.  Thus, the actual Quranic stance on this issue is far closer to that of the Bible.  Now, if Islam was truly consistent with the Old Testament, it would not only not prescribe burkas, but would also permit the public nudity of both genders (Genesis 2:25 with 1:31, Deuteronomy 4:2, and Isaiah 20:1-6) because the human body is not shameful or sinful according to the Bible.  Even a slight disparity in the ethical stances of the Torah and the Quran logically falsifies the latter.

Nevertheless, the Quran does not endorse many ideas that are ascribed to it.  Religious texts, like logic, science, and many miscellaneous worldviews, tend to be misunderstood by both their proponents and opponents alike.  This is as true of the Quran as it is of the Bible, the true teachings of which scarcely resemble the evangelical conception of Christianity in any regard whatsoever.  It is rather easy to deceive many people about the nature of ideological matters as it is, but when religious zeal, which is often rooted in faith instead of reason, is manipulated on a broad social level, a thorough distortion of religious texts is often present.

The point is not that genuine Islam is true or even that it is logically possible for a Quranic worldview to be true.  I have already cited a contradiction that inescapably renders it false.  After all, only one genuine contradiction is needed to invalidate a religion, though there are other such ethical disparities between the Quran and Torah.  Instead, the point is that very few Westerners understand true Islam, and many Christians who object to Islam have likely not read the Quran thoroughly, if at all.  They are only reacting to an Arabic culture that itself does not consistently understand the Quran.  The pseudo-Islamic ideologists who prescribe burkas ironically share many similarities with American evangelicals: both represent a religious text that they distort and contradict in direct violation of its command to not contrive additional rules (compare Deuteronomy 4:2 with Surah 16:116-117).


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/quranic-punishment-surah-538.html