The answer would displease many thousands - if not millions - of American Christians who believe, badly mistakenly, that they know their own gentle and benign Bible well and follow its tenants, but blame political violence in the Muslim world on the bloody Koran.
Which leads us to the conclusion that you can't really blame behavior on scripture. And you can't really quote scripture to defend behavior, unless you are prepared to defend all the rest of scripture as accurate, defensible, and necessary to be followed.
As one of the most quoted - but still valid - examples:
"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." (Leviticus 20:13)
Well, okay. That's pretty clear, and it is frequently quoted by those opposed to other people's homosexual behavior. (Isn't there also a bit of scripture that forbids spying through other people's bedroom windows? Maybe not.)
But why don't these individuals also quote, say:
"And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire." (Leviticus 21:9)
So, misbehaving daughters of priests and ministers should not simply be scolded to within an inch of their lives, but should actually be killed for going out behind the chicken house with the quarterback of the high school football team. And how often is this done, Cassandra wonders.
And what about this one?
"Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." (I Timothy 2:11-14)
So, shut up, Hilary. No, wait...
"Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?" Ernest Gaines
The Bible-Koran image above is borrowed, with thanks, from http://www.quranreading.com/blog/
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