azi Germany nearly wiped Jews off the face of the earth, but hostile attacks of revenge on the part of Jews has never been a part of the Jewish ethos.  Not even in the State of Israel itself.  I shall return to this point momentarily.  The great philosopher David Hume made a most simple observation, namely that we know a tree by the fruit it produces.  In modern contemporary times, Islam is the only religion that I know of that unapologetically makes unvarnished hatred and revenge virtues.  We must either accept and acknowledge this truth and then respond accordingly.  Or, we should accept the fact that this truth speaks to our own impending doom.  Nowadays, at least, when Jews or Christians go on killing rampages, we can with enormous justification quickly dismiss them as deranged in some way. 

Of course, there was a time when religious conquests were common fare many hundreds of years ago.  While the Crusades readily occur to us, there was no shortage of religious conquests on the part of Islam as well.  By the end of World War II, a moral poignancy shook the very foundations of Christianity, as people realized that supposedly justifying the wholesale killing of a people, namely Jews, surely has to be utterly incompatible with the ideals of Christianity. 

What has been significant about Christianity is that it found a way to maintain its self-respect, if you will, and be respectful of other religious traditions.  To be sure, there are strands of Christianity that do not fit this mold.  And guess what: we consider them to be fringe groups.  The folks of the Westboro Baptist Church are an incontrovertible case in point.  These folks embarrass even Christians. 

Committed Christians can be found just about everywhere.  But hatred is nowhere to be found among just about any of them. 

A like claim holds for Jews, including ultra-Orthodox ones.  The ultra-Orthodox tend to be so besotted with their various rituals that they do not have time to think about hating anyone.  Typically, if they are left alone, they will leave everyone else alone.  They are not trying to expand or win over converts.  Insofar as there are fringe groups among Jews, the ultra or ultra, ultra-Orthodox fall into that category.  Hatred simply does not have center stage in the rhythm of their lives. 

It is a striking truth that although for years many Jews would not by German products, owing to the Holocaust, visceral hatred and revenge towards Germany as such has never much been a significant part of the Jewish ethos—certainly nothing that has ever inclined to Jews to inflict damage upon Germans on German soil.  Here is a nation that nearly wiped a people off the face of the earth.  Yet, even in Israel itself, one does not hear talk of seeking revenge against Germany. 

This brings me back to Islam.  On 2 June, the FBI arrested Muslim terrorists.  In May, a terrorists attack was foiled in New Jersey.  In August of 2006, a terrorist attack involving jetliners bound to the United States from Great Britain was foiled.  In nearly all of the cases of foiled terrorist attacks involving Muslims, we get vitriolic expressions of hatred and the desire for revenge on the part of various Muslim suspects. 

Of course, I know that not all Muslims are violent.  That is a silly view.  I do not hold it; and I shall not dignify it by discussing it any further. 

While not all Muslims are violent, what is strikingly true is that expressions of hatred and revenge in the name of Allah take place on a regular basis by people who take themselves to be very committed Muslim.  It would be one thing if these Muslims were like the Christians of Westboro Baptist Church.  Westboro Christians are seen by other Christians as desecrating God’s name.  But the problem is that these very Muslims seem to have serious standing among way too many other Muslims who themselves would never act in such a way. 

Here is a very disturbing observation: Even nowadays, killing oneself or even killing others in the name of Islam seems to have the same standing in Islam as being a Mother Theresa has in Christianity.  The case of suicide bombers make this abundantly clear.  Now, nothing motivates killing another like hatred and the desire for revenge.  From this it does not follow that in terms of what the literal text says that Islam is a religion that sanctions hatred and revenge.  What does follow, however, is that in terms of how many, many practitioners of Islam, including many Imams, commonly interpret the text, Islam can be thus construed.  Thus, we do not hear Imams around the world condemning such efforts even when the fruition of such efforts would result in the lost of many, many innocent lives—although there are exceptions. 

From a practical point of view, the way in which many authorities of a religion construe their religion has considerable significance, even if there is a counterweight.  When I read Farhad Khosrokhavar’s recent book Suicide Bombers: Allah’s New Martyrs, it is manifestly clear to me that Islam can be pushed to valorize hatred and vengeance.  What is more, this fact about Islam is very visceral, in that the idea strikes a responsive chord in folks who themselves would never so much as even think to behave in such a way. 

It in this regard, it seems to me that one of the greatest failings of liberalism in modernity is its steadfast unwillingness to acknowledge this truth about Islam.  This one can do without embracing the silly view that all Muslims are would-be-suicide bombers.  On the one hand, Islam does not have Christianity’s doctrine of universal love.  On the other, Islam is quite unlike Judaism in that Islam seeks converts, whereas Judaism eschews them.  Christianity insists that one should love the “other”.  Judaism asks to be left alone by the “other”.  For Islam, however, the “other” is left to be conquered. 

These are three very different mindsets; and when put into practice, they give us three quite distinct ontological ways of being in the world—three ontological ways of being which yield quite different fruits.  And in the end, it is the fruit that a tree produces that justifies the name that we give to it.  Islam, in its present incarnation, is not the exception to this rule. 

I have been told that Islam is a religion of peace.  For all I know, the text of Islam may support that very view.  Just so, it is very clear that an awful lot of practicing Muslims seem to put a quite different slant on Islam.  And that is a reality that all of us, non-Muslims as well as Muslim, must acknowledge if evil is to be vanquished.