How did we end up in a culture where it is not acceptable to state that the Quran/Islam is backwards and evil, when great thinkers and idols, like Voltaire and Goethe, have stated that before Islam was even known of in the Western world?
Well, I can’t speak for Voltaire, who I haven’t read.But I have read a fair bit of Goethe, and I would like to know this: if Goethe at any rate thought Islam was so gosh-darned evil, why did he actually study the Arabic language and Arabic literature between 1814 and 1827? Especially when what came of this was not a denunciation of Islam, but a remarkable and sympathetic poem about Muhammad, the Mahomets Gesang, as part of a drama he planned to write about the prophet, as well as one of his finest collections, the West-östlicher Divan, written under the influence of Persian literature and incorporating many motifs from Arabic literature. In fact, Goethe’s engagement with Arabic culture was probably the deepest, most prolonged and most sympathetic I can think of from any major European writer.Whereas, the White House can hire as an expert on counter-terrorism a guy who can’t even read Arabic.What did Goethe think of Christianity? Let’s look up the Venetian Epigrams:Vieles kann ich ertragen! die meisten beschwerlichen Dinge Duld ich mit ruhigem Muth, wie es ein Gott mir gebeut;Wenige sind mir jedoch wie Gift und Schlange zuwider, Viere, Rauch des Tobaks, Wanzen und Knoblauch und †Or, in the fine translation by Jerome Rothenberg, who follows the convention of deciphering that last little cross symbol:Lots of things I can stomach. Most of what irks meI take in my stride, as a god might command me.But four things I hate more than poisons & vipers:tobacco smoke, garlic, bedbugs, and Christ.I believe David Luke, in his Penguin translation, translated it as ‘a Christian’ but I don’t have my copy to hand just now.Edit: I’ve since consulted Luke’s edition of Goethe’s Selected Verse. In the manuscript of this poem, Goethe actually wrote ‘Christ’, but in the original published version it’s printed as ‘†’. ‘Christ’ in context could either mean ‘Christ’ or ‘a Christian’.