Qurans on the House!

“Qurans on the house! My treat…”

That is what the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said this week to Washington. Triggered by Obama’s recent speech in Cairo, in which he quoted from the Muslim holy book, CAIR plans on distributing 100,000 Korans to local, state, and national leaders.

For the record, I’m no fan of Islam. Though some of its adherents are no doubt moral people and I love them dearly, I think Islam is a false religion at best, and, if its core tenets are faithfully followed, leads to various acts of violence.

Nevertheless, I’m not going to conjure up some cocka-may-mee argument that says they shouldn’t be able to distribute those Korans. I’ve got that freedom, and so I must be fair, even (especially!) to those religions I deem hopefully misguided. I’m not a card carrying ACLU member, I’m not one of those false tolerance pansies, and I’m not gonna go yelping around about the some “separation of church and state.” Just because a Muslim gives Qurans to some politicians doesn’t mean we are on our way to a Mullahcracy.  So I say: go for it.

They plan on going further: since a recent survey showed that almost 60% of Americans are “not very knowledgeable” or “not knowledgeable at all” about Islam, they plan on distributing 1 million copies to the public over the next 10 years.

Ok, fair enough. However, I find one thing odd: CAIR is spinning this as simple education about Islam. No proselytizing here!

I don’t buy this, not for one second. Islam is an evangelizing religion! Muslims employ means, some of which are less, uh, violent, than others, to gain followers. Proselytizing is an undeniable impulse of the religion.

I don’t mind this, you know. Christianity is an evangelizing religion, so I’m not gonna wag some faux-tolerant pluralistic finger at them. I’m just snickering at the downplaying of the evangelistic instinct that’s latent in this campaign.  Even if its not an explicitly persuasive enterprise, it’s there.  If this wasn’t at least partly evangelistic, they would educate through other means than distributing their holy book.

It seems like downplaying the evangelistic impulse is all the rage in the public sphere these days. It’s a pity that many, many Christians do it…and now Muslims? What’s the world coming to?  Usually Muslims are very forthright in their efforts to persuade.  I mean their ain’t a relativistic bone in their body.  This has made my encounters with them very refreshing.

Pluralists (those who think all religions are true/the same) are quick to try to persuade others (especially exclusivists) that pluralism is true, it’s just a bad thing, somehow, for some reason, when  Christians and Muslims try to persuade.  This is passive-aggressiveness, plain and simple.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be good PR, ultimately, to own up to that tenet of Islam. But they’d gain some respect from me if they stood up and said, “yah, so we wouldn’t mind if you converted. So what?”

And on the “education” note, if CAIR really wants to educate the public about Islam, it would be nice if they started with a detailed account of Mohammed’s life (as well as a comparison between him and Jesus), the treatment of women under Islam, and what it’s like to be a non-Muslim under Islamic rule.