Odds are there's no 'holy war' in Qur'an

Want $1 million? All you have to do is find a reference in the Qur'an to "holy war."

The offer is being made by Jamal Badawi, professor emeritus of management and religious studies at St. Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His only requirement is that the reference be in the original Arabic, not an English translation of the holy Islamic text.

Is that $1 million Canadian or American? "It doesn't matter," Badawi said. "It can be a million Canadian, a million U.S. or even a million euro [which would be worth almost $1.5 million]. I don't have that much money, anyway. I've been making the offer ever since 2001. I've never had a taker, and I never will."

Badawi was in the Twin Cities a week ago as part of a continuing effort to combat negative stereotypes about Muslims and violence, especially terrorism. He said that one of the biggest misconceptions he encounters is that the Qur'an promotes war, especially against those of different faiths.

"There is nothing in the Qur'an that says you should fight someone because they are of a different religion," he said. "Just the opposite is true. In its writings on other faith communities, it encourages dealing with them with kindness and justice."

The only time war is mentioned is in passages saying that believers can defend themselves from attack or oppression. Asked if a Muslim who sees the West as a threat could interpret that as an endorsement of a preemptive attack, Badawi said, "Humans have an inexhaustible ability to justify the wrong they're doing. It's no different than a Christian who is opposed to abortion using that as justification for bombing an abortion clinic. He's not indicative of Christians as a whole. He's a religious extremist, and the same term applies to anyone who plants a bomb in the name of their god. ... The ends do not justify the means in Islamic philosophy."

Badawi also mentioned the news media's misappropriation of the term "jihad," often using it as a label for Muslim aggression.

A Cuban Shabbat

Cuba is not the first place that springs to mind when considering strong Jewish communities. Which is one reason why former Minnesota Department of Transportation commissioner Len Levine and his wife, Carole, were surprised by what they found there on a recent visit.

"We went to services on a Friday night in Havana where, once we were in the synagogue, we could have been in Minnesota," he said. "The prayers were the same. The service was the same. Everything was the same."

There aren't many rabbis in Cuba. Levine discovered after the fact that the service had been conducted by a lay leader.

"But you wouldn't know that from the service," he said. "I learned later that he had been taught to lead services by his father, who also was a lay leader."

"There's a real shortage of the common medicines, the stuff we buy in drugstores, like Band-Aids and cough medicine," he said. "Everything we brought with us we bought at Target right before we left. The synagogues act as community distribution centers -- not just for their members, but for the entire community."

There are only about 1,500 Jews in Cuba, most of them in Havana, he said. But there is a rich Jewish heritage.

"At the start of the Holocaust, a lot of [German] Jews fled to Cuba," he said. "Many countries weren't letting them in, including the United States. But Cuba was an open port."

Most of them moved on to the United States or Israel when Fidel Castro came to power. But the roots are there. In fact, while the rest of their group was off sightseeing, the Levines visited cemeteries, hoping to track down the grave of a member of Carole Levine's family. They eventually found it.

"The rest of the family left, but this woman, for some reason, decided to stay," he said. And now she will be remembered. "There's a Jewish tradition of praying and putting a stone on the headstone, and we did that. Their cemeteries are not very well maintained, so we hired someone to tend to the grave."