HOW THE SOUTHERN BAPTISTS MISUNDERSTAND ISLAM

Well, its that time of year again - time for the annual convention of the Southern Baptists, and the annual controversy triggered by releasing their standard messages of intolerance and religious triumphalism into the general public discourse. This year's winner is a speech by the Rev. Jerry Vines, who called Islam a religion founded by "a demon-possessed pedophile" and claimed that Muslims do not worship the same G-d as Christians.

In years past, the Southern Baptists have used this platform to attack dual-covenant theology (the idea that Jews do not have to accept Jesus, but can gain salvation through observing Jewish commandments), promote conversion of Jews during the High Holidays, and other landmarks to religious pluralism. So it is no surprise to see the SBC launched a full-on assault against the mainstreaming of Islam in America.

The more serious issue is the content of the attack. Vines' source for his pedophilia claim is a well-known hadith about Muhammed's relationship with his youngest wife, Aisha that states that she was 6 when betrothed and 9 when the marriage was consummated. On its face such a passage seems crystal clear, and the claim by the notoriously unreliable CAIR that many Muslim scholars have interpreted Aisha's age to be in fact 16 and 19 seems dubious. This skepticism however, reveals an ignorance not only of the origin and role of the hadith in Islam, but of religious hermeneutics in general.

Unlike the Qu'ran, which Islam considers G-d's word, the hadith's origin is the oral tradition that passed down from the companions of Muhammed. A formal canonization of the hadith did not occur until centuries after the life of Muhammed. Both the Qu'ran and hadith have been since interpreted by Islamic jurists in their creation of a comprehensive Islamic law. Thus, one can not simply quote a passage from the hadith, out of context and be confident that they truly understand Islam's view on a certain matter. It is critical that one remembers that the hadith are an oral tradition. They can not be seperated from the world of their origin - which in many ways was shaped more by pre-Islamic Arab customs than by the values of Islam. And although this is a major debate within Islamic law, there are important strains of Islamic legal thinking that recognize the imperfection in the transmission process, and discount hadiths that are in conflict with the core principles of Islam.

This is not to say that there are not offensive passages in the core texts of Islam - simply that what is critical is how these texts are interpreted. The reason that our conflict is with Islamic fundamentalism and not Islam is that the fundamentalists refuse to see Islam as organic and rational, and hold strictly to archaic aspects of their faith that set them at war with the rest of the world. It is no surpise that Christian fundamentalists would join in articulating such a dim view of Islam. It is unacceptable for opponents of fundamentalism to not see that the same mediating and rationalizing hermeutics they use on their own faith's texts can be applied to Islamic texts. This is a powerful tool for Muslims striving to create a progressive Islam, an Islam of peace.