On March 13, Rev. William Owens, President of the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP), demanded that Amazon enforce its own policies regarding “offensive and controversial materials” when it comes to anti-Christian products. CAAP has launched an online petition asking Amazon President Jeff Bezos to remove anti-Christian products currently on available on the website.

Citing the online retailer’s decision to remove items deemed Islamophobic, Rev. Owens pointed to multiple products currently available on Amazon that are offensive or demeaning to Christians. These items include:

• A throw pillow declaring “I hate Jesus.”
• Multiple items from the anti-Christian band Marduk, including a patch that shows a woman using a cross as a sex toy and a demon performing a sex act on the crucified Christ.
• Bumper stickers and other products mocking the Christian fish symbol.
• Bathroom mats and toilet covers emblazoned with the face of Christ.
• Numerous t-shirts that combine an anti-Christian message with Satanic or anti-Christian imagery.

“Anti-Christian prejudice has become the last acceptable form of bigotry,” stated Rev. Owens. “Products and messages that would be met with outrage if they targeted other religions are tolerated when they are aimed at Christians.”

Rev. Bill Owens

“This is unacceptable,” Rev. Owens continued. “Amazon has a clear policy against offensive products, but they have applied that policy in an uneven way that raises questions about the bias and outlook of the company. We are asking Mr. Bezos to demonstrate that he will not allow Amazon to profit off of anti-Christian bigotry and remove anti-Christian products from the site.”

A Gross Double Standard

It would be one thing if Amazon had a completely laissez-faire attitude towards products it sells. Let’s say it acted like a neutral platform. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and other social media companies claim such a mantle, in their case to avoid the libel and defamation liabilities that come with being a publisher who edits content. Which of course, they do — with an increasingly aggressive and obvious leftist, anti-Christian bias.

Then in all fairness Rev. Owen, you, and I, would have to say, “Even Steven. They sell just about any book, except those that are illegal.”

Or else imagine that Amazon banned all books that denigrated any religious or racial group.

Running Interference for Sharia

But neither is true. I assigned a talented scholar of Islam, Dr. Timothy Furnish, to write a review of a book on the Quran. It happens that I’ve read much of the book. So I know what it contains. British free speech and anti-Sharia activist Tommy Robinson co-wrote (with Peter McLoughlin) a book called Muhammed’s Koran. It does not denigrate Muslims, nor Arabs or any race. It doesn’t accuse any individual people of criminal acts. Nor does it call for cruel or discriminatory behavior on the part of private individuals or the government. And Furnish informed me that Amazon no longer sells it. They banned it last week.

What Robinson’s book does do is something simple. He takes the puzzling document called the Quran (or Koran) and decodes it. Yes, you read that right. Because the Qurans that most Muslims use, which you can buy in the bookstore, are structured in a profoundly puzzling way. They don’t give the “revelations” which Muhammad claimed to receive from the archangel Gabriel in any logical order. They are not organized according to topic. Nor according to when he said he received them. Instead, the “suras” of the Quran typically appear in the most arbitrary fashion imaginable. They’re organized by length.

Decoding the Quran

Just imagine if the Bible didn’t begin with Genesis and end with Revelation. If instead it began with the book of Obadiah, which is just a single chapter with 21 verses. And it ended with the Psalms, with 2,527 verses. (Using a different counting system, the Gospel Coalition cites Jeremiah as the Bible’s longest book, but the point is the same.) And every other book within was organized by length. If you weren’t a Christian, and hadn’t grown up in a Christian culture, and you picked up such a Bible, would you know what to make of it?

Likewise non-Muslims find the Quran profoundly puzzling.

The Latest “Revelations” Trump the First Ones

What’s more, the chronology matters in that holy book even more than it does in the Bible. That’s because even though the revelation Muhammad claims was offered to just one person, it contradicts itself. In the early period of his prophetic career, Muhammad was poor and powerless. He had few followers, and sought the goodwill of other monotheists in the pagan city of Mecca. His “revelations” during that period speak of kindness and tolerance toward other “people of the book” (i.e., Jews and Christians).

Driven out of that city, he took refuge in Medina. There he fell into a position as arbiter of inter-tribal conflicts. And he ended up the city’s absolute ruler, and newfound prophet. Once he had such power, Muhammad quite conveniently began to receive a very different set of “revelations.” They were harsh and intolerant, and seemed to reflect both his newfound self-confidence, and his bitterness at the rejection his message had met with among Jews and Christians.

Instead of a Kumbaya live-and-let live message, which we find in the Meccan verses of the Quran, the Medinan verses sound like the program of a theocratic dictator. And conqueror. Which of course, Muhammad became.

And here’s the key to understanding Islam: Like U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the latest “revelation” is the most binding one. Allah is free to change his mind, so the last thing he said to Muhammad is always the definitive revelation. So Muslim scholars universally agree.

Unscrambling the Quran

Wouldn’t it be helpful for us outsiders to read the book, then, in chronological order? So we’d know which verses Muslims themselves took seriously? And which ones they considered dead letters like the Dred Scott decision?

That’s what Muhammed’s Koran does. Like many editions of the Quran before 1940 or so, it uses Muslim sources to present the verses chronologically. And it offers some lucid commentary. All so that we know what the book really means to Muslims themselves.

You Can Buy Jew-Hating Books and Bomb-Making Manuals

So why is it that Amazon has banned this book? But it will sell “I Hate Jesus” pillows, which contain no intellectual content whatsoever. It will sell more than a dozen different editions of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. And A Torchlight for America, by Louis Farrakhan. Plus Henry Ford’s enthusiastic edition of the infamous anti-Semitic forgery The Learned Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And even The Anarchist’s Cookbook (plus a Corrected and Updated edition) which actually explains and diagrams how to make bombs to kill people.

One of the products available at Amazon.

But it won’t sell a book that decodes the Quran. What exactly is going on?

Rev. Owens encourages you to sign his petition to Amazon to complain about the anti-Christian products.

Expect Dr. Furnish’s much more complete and detailed review of Muhammed’s Koran at The Stream later this week — along with information on how to obtain it despite Amazon’s bizarre act of censorship. Unless, of course, the censors get to those venues, too.