In "Worshippers of Death," WSJ 3 March 2008, Alan M. Dershowitz discusses the case of Zahra Maladan, an educated and accomplished Lebanese Muslim woman who edits a magazine, and who was quoted in the New York Times as telling her son, "If you're not going to follow in the steps of the if the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you." By "Islamic resistance martyrs, she is taken to mean suicide bombers. Dershowitz characterizes her attitude as worshipping death.
I think it's worse than that. Let's go back more than 2000 years to the ancient Middle East. A cult existed throughout the region involving the sacrifice of children to a god called Moloch (also known as Molech). The Hebrew prophets (all of whom are also accepted by Muslims as Muslim prophets) struggled to abolish this idolatrous practice from the time of Moses - "You shall not give any of your children to devote them by fire to Moloch, and so profane the name of your God." - Leviticus 18:21 - to the time of Jeremiah and beyond.
Indeed, it seems that not even the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) could finally put a stop to this practice. Instead of abandoning child sacrifice, some Muslims have simply grafted the idolatrous worship of Moloch onto the worship of Allah. That is to say, they associate an attribute of Moloch with Allah, even though the association of anything with Allah is expressly forbidden in Islam. By raising their children for sacrifice they have contaminated their Islam with a custom from the Time of Ignorance before the coming of the Prophet.
Now such people are a minority of Muslims, so this contamination is only superficial. Since idolatry was often compared to harlotry in the Hebrew Bible, it is thus fair to call this modern version of child sacrifice a chancre on the face that Islam presents to the world.
5 comments:
Hi Scooper, Interesting connection--it certainly feels appropriate to me, even matches on the fire part.
-- Vance
I was a young woman raised on storys of christian martyers...young women with their eyes gouged out,their brests cut off ,death preferable to violation,fed to lions...does a loving father demand a a blood ranome ? Does the sacrafice of life serve a greater good ? These questons come close to home;No ?
Wings
Wings,
Well, yes, but none of the Christian martyrs actively tried to kill as many people as possible while committing suicide as an offering to God.
As to the image of a god demanding blood sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christ was supposed to end all that, at least for Christians. There are lots of explanations for the Incarnation-Crucifixion-Resurrection event, but my take on it is that God is a Sacred Humanist - God believes that you are worth dying for.
Vance,
Thanks for your comment. I have said even nastier things about suicide bombers here.
A young person willing to die and kill inocents.?Is this not what every nation state asks of its children . Suiside bombers have grown up with death of inossece every day and maybe they wonder why no one sees or cares...sometimes I see these (mostly)kids reporting to whoever will listen we are have been betrayed be our Leaders and Teachers .
AMG,
Actually, nation-states raise armies of young men to go kill other combatants. The suicide bombers are recruited by Islamofacist clerics to go kill as many as they can, non-combatants preferred, because they are softer targets. And I guarantee you that we, living in the liberal democracies, have not been betrayed by our leaders and teachers in anything like the way that young Muslims are being betrayed by the social movement called Islamofacism.
There is nothing like equivalency or parity here, moral or otherwise. That's why the Islamofacists use the tactic.
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