I watched a television interview which mentioned Churchill’s comparing Hitler’s Mein Kampf to the Koran. I have searched and searched. Was the reporter telling the truth? (Who knows these days.) Thank-you for your time. —C.C.
You are referring to Fox News on February 24th, wherein Glenn Beck interviewed Geert Wilders, the Dutch lawmaker facing possible jail for anti-Islamic remarks:
BECK: I just have to give you this quote and get your thoughts — oh, there are my glasses. “The fact that in Mohammedan Law, every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property either as a child, a wife, or concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.”
Pretty outrageous stuff.
WILDERS: Yes.
BECK: You didn’t say that, though.
WILDERS: I didn’t say that, no.
BECK: No. Winston Churchill said that.
WILDERS: Yes. And Winston Churchill, as a matter of fact, in a book in the ’50s also made a comparison, like Oriana Fallaci in Italy but also Winston Churchill, the comparison between Mein Kampf and the Koran. One of the reasons that I’m being prosecuted, I don’t remember Winston Churchill who got a Nobel Prize for this book and really would have been prosecuted.
Beck was accurate in his Churchill quotation (“The fact that in Mohammedan law…”). This is from Churchill’s The River War (London: Longmans Green, 2 vols., 1899), II: 248-50, which was deleted from the abridged edition published in 1901 and in print ever since.
On Churchill’s comparison of Mein Kampf to the Koran, Wilders must have read last week in a review in The Washington Times of my new book, Churchill by Himself. The reviewer was quoting from page 55 of Churchill by Himself, under “Mein Kampf and the Koran”:
All was there—the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit ofthe world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.
–Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 1, The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell, 1948), 43.
Wilders had the date wrong (it was 1948, not the 50s), and of course the quote takes on added significance in the light of 9/11. However, it is important to distinguish the context: Churchill was referring to Mein Kampf as an article of faith, like the Koran, but he could as easily have said the Bible. He was not saying the Koran is an earlier version of Mein Kampf.
One other point: Churchill received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for the totality of his historical and biographical writings, and not for The Second World War, which was not completely published at the time.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello. First of all, there is nothing like “Mohammedan Law” in the universe. The laws that are given in Koran are the laws of the creator, Allah.
Secondly, Winston Churchill’s saying is absolutely wrong. There is nothing like “every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property either as a child, a wife, or concubine” in the Koran. The truth is Islam has always encouraged the extinction of slavery and protected to laws of women. Let me give you an example.
In his final sermon, the last prophet said, “Do treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers.”
Please do more research on Islam if you want to learn its immense vision of life.
Hold on there. The purpose of my post is to correct various misstatements made about Churchill by Glenn Beck and Geert Wilders, not to state my opinion. (It was Wilders who misrepresented Churchill’s comparison with Mein Kampf.) But if you’re asking my opinion, it is that by “Mohammedan law” Churchill was referring to what he saw among Mohammedans where he was at the time, and remember, he was writing in 1898. However, I also have eyes to observe, for example, how woman are treated in certain places in 2011. And I beg to register my disapproval.
Mein Kampf passages support world conquest through violence — the Nazi master race will control all, one way or another. Koran passages support world conquest through violence. Bible passages do not support world conquest through violence. The ancient Jewish nation had a national border and lived within it — no one was forced to live there. So-called Christians in the past have used violence, but they could not find Bible passages that would support that violence.
I’m not sure what your point is. “Articles of faith” have been used to support violence since there were Articles. Violence in the name of Christianity peaked 1300-1400 years after the founding of the religion, ironically the same age as Islam is today. It’s not what is written, it’s the use people make of it. In this respect Churchill’s comparison was apt.