If holy war is a serious problem in the Middle East and in the world today, the French atheist Michel Onfray knows where the whole thing started: with the Jews. Onfray's Atheist Manifesto, a bestseller in Europe, has a section called "The Jewish Invention of Holy War." Onfray traces a direct line "from the bloody sword of the Israelites killing off the Canaanites to the use of airlines as flying bombs in New York."
One might think the radical Muslims perpetrated 9/11 and other contemporary atrocities. But Onfray holds monotheism responsible for the Islamic mindset, and since Judaism came before Christianity and Islam, he insists that the roots of religious intolerance and conflict are in Moses and Abraham. First, the Jews declared themseves God's chosen people, implying that their enemies were the enemies of God. According to Onfray, "Yahweh blessed war and those who waged it. He sanctified combat, supervised it...sanctioned crimes, murders, assassination." Onfray goes on, "Yahweh steps in to justify the Jews in their extermination of certain peoples explicitly named in the Torah: the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites and Jebusites." In an inflammatory way, Onfray even holds the ancient Israelites responsible for what he calls "the first genocide": the wholesale destruction of Jericho. If Bin Laden ever wanted a model, Onfray suggests, he could easily find it here.
I'm not suggesting Onfray is anti-Semitic: he is equally hostile to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In this, Onfray resembles America's atheist troika of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. But in the process Onfray--like his British and American counterparts--fails to make necessary distinctions. The Old Testament depicts a harsh world, but it is no harsher than that of ancient Greece and Rome, with their Melian expeditions, savage wars of conquest, large-scale slavery, gladiatorial contests, and persecution of the Christians. So why hold monotheism responsible for practices that were hardly distinctive to it?
Moreover, the punitive tribal ethic of the Old Testament is specifically repudiated in the New Testament which replaces it with an ethic of universal brotherhood. Onfray flails away at Jesus, but he can find nothing in Christ's teachings that condones violence or terror. Yes, there were historical abuses committed in the name of Christianity, but even here Onfray goes overboard, attempting for example to blame Christianity for the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Finally Onfray does not even mention that there are important differences in the way the three monontheisms have evolved. These differences help to explain why much of the terrorism is the world is being perpetrated by Muslims and not by Jews or Christians. Where is the Jewish Bin Laden, the Christian Ahmadinejad? They exist only in the atheist imagination.
Reader Comments ( Page 2 of 7)
16. Every week I read your blog and every week I wonder, How did you get into Stanford?
You missed the WHOLE point of the book.
Your misguided, status quo and illogical conclusions are hilarious.
Are you really serious? Or are you satirizing?
Tony at 6:41PM on Jul 23rd 2007
17. The fact that America won't ever have a Bin Laden or Ahmadinejad in a position that matters, is a tribute to our spectacular democracy. It's a form of self-policing that assures that someone like either Pat (Buchanan & Robertson)or either Hitler (Ann or Adolph)will ever be a factor in our public life to the same extent that Bin Laden or Ahmadinejad are in the Muslim world. And no matter how much you despise him (and I do) don't give me...please...George Bush! We've had some terrible presidents, but thank God (unless you're Michel Onfray) we've never had a hitler.
And by the way, does the Muslim world have any "self-policing" mechanism?
Steve at 6:48PM on Jul 23rd 2007
18. doneinbyoneself--Only a fool knows there is no god, and only a sap knows that there is a god. I we just say, "I think, there is no god, I believe there is a god" we become agnostics. There's where I have ended up.
Tom Edgar at 10:21PM on Jul 23rd 2007
19. The Jews are very intelligent people and they know how to make money. Jealously seems to be at the core of hatred for the Jews.
fran at 6:54PM on Jul 23rd 2007
20. looksbooks54, you have obviously wondered on to the wrong blog -- I believe you are looking for Nazimorons.com, where you will feel quite at home.
richter at 7:21PM on Jul 23rd 2007
21. I agree Fran, and would add that also, some people do not like Jews because the Jews were the ones who brought the notion of being held responsible by God Almighty for the sins you commit.
Before Moses came down the mountain, the average person did not think much about what was "sinful". Before that, basically anything and everything was Ok, as long as one did not cross the king/pharoh/emperor or one of his minions.
Sloth, jealousy, selfishness, ignorance, and the fact that some people do not want to be told they should live decent respectable lives, rather wollowing in their own set of situational ethics (i.e., moral relativism, or low-brow morals) are some of the reasons why some have looked down on Jews through the ages.
Ken Berg at 7:24PM on Jul 23rd 2007
22. First problem is you're an athiest and believe in nothing. Second problem is you're an idiot that believes his own crap!!
dave at 7:34PM on Jul 23rd 2007
23. D'souza is wrong again. Monotheism is the entire problem. The Jews were the 1st to commit genocide in Western recorded history.
The Romans tolerated any religions, even Judaism. I guess D'souza never heard of the "pax romana". The poor "conquered peoples" by this time were standing in line to get into the Empire. The first volleys were shouts of "What took you guys so long to get here". Why? Security, tolerance, and many other perks (roads) inexchance for there taxes instead of the old rulers "nothing for everything" deal.
The Empire of Empires began to crumble when they closed the boarders. Hmmm.
olymonn at 7:47PM on Jul 23rd 2007
24. Well, it's not like various christian sects don't have an anti-jew history. You want anti-jew vitriol? Look no further than the father of protestantism: Martin Luther.
At any rate, it looks like Dinesh has now decided to not be buddies with Onfray, after buttering him up. Dinesh is schizoid, and just plain hateful toward atheists.
Knight_of_BAAWA at 7:59PM on Jul 23rd 2007
25. And here I thought that the election of Sarkozy would make a change in France. The same antisemitic canards abound, at a time when only one religion is waging war on civilization- Islam. The French can go to hell. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.
Bertrand Agus at 8:05PM on Jul 23rd 2007
26. Wars have been declared in the name of the gods or god since the dawn of civilization. In the ancient city-states of Sumer such as Ur, Eridu, and Uruk (Biblical Erech) wars were fought in the name of their particular patron god or godess. Gods like Anu, Enlil, Enki, Inanna, and Ninurta all had wars fought in their name. Abraham came the town of Ur which was in existence long before Abraham was born. You can read about these wars in their clay tablets and stelae, that is if you can read cuneiform writing. So to say the Jews started the idea of Holy War is rediculous. Furthermore, I can't think of another group that has been persecuted more often than the Jews. Let me recount some of the nations that have persecuted them: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Germany, and Rome. Also, they were killed by the Crusaders, blamed for the plague in Europe, and were just as low on the totem pole in America as African Americans were in America at the beginning of the 20th century.
tim at 9:01PM on Jul 23rd 2007
27. I think someone has their religions mixed up. Just because god told the isaraelites to slay the canaanites is no holy war. Man wages a holy war (a jihad) against man. The middle east has had it's problems when the jews had god and the arabs worshipped idols. The only time it will end is when god comes back to earth. Meanwhile, the jews and the arabs, palestinians, lebanese, syrians and jordanians are going to have to live with each other until He comes. You mess with me and my country(USA), we'll have to open up a can of whupass on yah!
Lawrence Cox at 3:02AM on Jul 25th 2007
28. Barry #8 - the fact that you would defend a piece of garbage like Ann Coulter speaks volumes about you.
The "flame thrower" for the GOP? Even the GOP runs away from this nut job like a dead shunk in the road..
David S. at 8:35PM on Jul 23rd 2007
29. One huge differencs between Coulter and Ahmadinejad
is that he doesn't advocate the extermination of all members of any religion who wont convert to his own. His threatening posture toward Isreal is not about Judiaism per se but rather has to do with the Zionist re-invention of holy war in the middle east in the twentieth century.
Islam has traditionally been much more tolerant of the other two religions in the tradion whose adherents they called people of The Book (those who, like the Muslims themselves, have the Old Testament as part of their religious tradition-ie. Jews, Christians). When the Muslims conquered territory they did insist upon conversion to Islam but only for pagans. Conversion was not required for Jews and Christians, who were allowed to continue to practice their own religions.
Jews were persequeted far less in the middle east by Muslims than they were in Europe where vicious pogroms were common throughout the middle ages and the Jews were actually expelled from many European nations. Nothing approaching these European Christian atrocities occured in the Holy land under Islamic rulers.
Of coarse it was European Jews who began and sustained Zionism up to and through the conquest of land in the middle east upon which the nation of Isreal was founded. The Zionist extremests of Isreal continue to persecute the Palistinian people
and have not shown themselves to be interested enough in peace to give up any but the most worthless territory conquered in 1967 to attain it. Moreover, they have the Palistinians cordoned off in Bantustans, making a viable state impossible. The wouldn't negoiate with Hamas or even release funds which belonged to that duely elected government of the Palistinians. If Hamas had agreed to recognize Isreal before even beginning negotiations they would have sacrificed their main bargining chip. It's very easy to blame the Palistinians for the stalemate with the scewed media coverage we get here but Isreal has done more to subvert the peace process than have the Palisrtinians.
Louis Rue at 5:44AM on Aug 11th 2007
30. Olymonn writes: "D'souza is wrong again. Monotheism is the entire problem. The Jews were the 1st to commit genocide in Western recorded history."
If you are using the Old Testament as your source for "Western recorded history" please start reading from the beginning of the Old Testament. You skipped The part where the Egyptian pagans enslaved and murdered the Jews as a race in abusive slave labor camps(ie: "genocide"). Just because they were not successful in throwing all the male Jews into the Nile does not mean that it wasn't genocide. My proof that UNSUCCESSFUL targeted killing of a specific race is still called genocide? umm..Try the Holocaust??
Do a little more research next time.
d0r at 8:41PM on Jul 23rd 2007