Arlandson quotes from the Quran to establish his factual claim about Muhammad:
24:2 Strike the adulteress and the adulterer one hundred times. Do not let compassion for them keep you from carrying out God’s law—if you believe in God and the Last Day—and ensure that a group of believers witnesses the punishment. (MAS Abdel Haleem, The Quran, New York: Oxford UP, 2004)
The “supposed historical context” of this instruction from Muhammad is “a raid of a tribe in December 627 or January 628”.
Arlandson insists that Muslim apologists “have to answer why the true God would send down the harsh punishment of lashing in the Quran…” and he concludes that, “cruel violence sits at the heart of early Islam…”.
I agree that this is a harsh punishment for adultery, and I agree that this is an example of cruel violence. Furthermore, given that such a punishment was harsh, cruel, and violent, Arlandson is right to challenge the claim that such a policy was one that “the true God would send down” to us.
Since God is assumed to be a perfectly good person by Christians and Muslims, it is very implausible that God would institute such a harsh and cruel punishment. We should indeed be skeptical about the Muslim belief that these words from the Quran were inspired by God.
However, this legitimate objection that Arlandson raises against Islam, can be raised against Christianity as well. So, before Arlandson and his Evangelical Christian friends begin to pray “Lord, we thank thee that we are not like the cruel and violent Muslims…”, they need to take a good long look in the mirror of history, and then, out of shame and embarrassment, fall silent about point #9.
About a thousand years after Muhammad spoke those “harsh” words of “cruel violence”, a group of devout Christian were forming a new settlement in North America, called the Massachusetts Bay colony. Consider the following inspiring words of one of the leaders of these followers of Christ: