Is it wrong to call the Koran a Mein Kampf?

In response to my praise of Orianna Fallaci’s remark that the Koran is the Mein Kampf of our time, a correspondent said:

I find the phrase, “the Koran is the Mein Kampf of our time,” to be, frankly, silly. Mein Kampf laid out the plans for the extermination of the Jews. Every single passage in it was dedicated to that campaign and to “Aryan” supremacy. It was the strategy.

While it is very useful to point out that the call for jihad comes from the Koran, it is self defeating to call the whole document a Mein Kampf.

Pipes may indeed straddle a fence on this issue, but Fallaci crosses the line…

I replied:

In order to be valid, an analogy between two different things does not have to involve a point by point similarity between the substantive contents of the two things. It means a similarity of form. Mein Kampf laid out the murderous thinking and aims of Nazism, for anyone to see. The Koran lays out the murderous thinking and aims of Islam, on almost every page, for anyone to see.

Another correspondent added:

Larry is absolutely right. Sura 9 has been aptly termed a chapter of war proclamations, not against abstract or extinct populations, and not for any circumscribed period, but against pagans, Jews, and Christians, for eternity, until the whole world is submitted to Islamic domination, and the Shari’a defines the global order.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 30, 2005 06:25 PM | Send