Every few weeks, it seems, Islam makes headlines in the U.S., whether the topic is a television show like All-American Muslim, a state prohibiting Sharia law, or just a grandstanding platform statement in a primary. No less predictable are the basic arguments: Islam is evil, violent and repressive in its basic nature, and not because of the attitudes or political decisions of particular Muslims. Islam owes these evils to its fundamental scriptures, and above all in the Quran that a faithful Muslim believes to be the revealed word of God. If the founding scriptures are so vicious and so abhorrent, it literally is not possible to reform the religion founded on those sinister foundations. Although these arguments are common enough, they should be strictly off-limits to anyone who claims religious roots in the Bible, which of course has more than its fair share of extraordinarily violent texts. But in the whole catalogue of biblical horror stories, one tale in particular cries out for attention as a driving force in contemporary violence and bigotry. Before attacking Islam, Christians and Jews need to think carefully about one name in particular, which is that of Phinehas, the patron saint of hate crime.
Most modern Christians are never likely to hear his name in church, as the text containing his mighty deeds (Numbers 25) is simply not included in the cycle of readings used by virtually all mainstream congregations. But it is quite a story. The children of Israel have intermarried with Moabite women, so that the two peoples begin to share in worship. God furiously commands that the chiefs of Israel be impaled in the sun as a means of quenching his anger; Moses commands his subordinates to kill anyone who has married a pagan; a plague kills 24,000 Hebrews. Fortunately, Phinehas, grandson of Aaron, takes decisive action to preempt the worst of the catastrophe. He slaughters a mixed-race couple, the Hebrew man Zimri, who had married a Midianite woman. Mollified, God ends the plague and grants Phinehas a "covenant of peace."
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