Anti-Semitism in Islam--Not Decreed By Heaven - Haim Weitzman

There he goes again--Benny Morris is giving the battle against Islamic anti-Semitism a bad name. But then he's not alone in fray. Nearly every passionate participant in the battle--Pipes, Horowitz, you name it--would make the angelically tolerant Roger Williams, the great American founder of religious toleration, go apoplectic.

Morris would have us believe that his catalog of Islamic holy texts that vilify the Jews means that Islam is uniquely stained with a tradition that makes toleration impossible. But one could easily put together a similar catalog of sacred Christian writings.

As any modern, thinking religious person of any faith knows, texts on their own determine nothing. Texts are supremely important, but in every great religion the same texts can be used to justify the most heinous of crimes, or to inspire people to superhuman acts of charity, self-sacrifice, and selflessness. The choice between the way of intolerance and violence and the way of peace and justice is not determined by the holy texts, but by how the believer chooses to read, understand, and live those texts.