In 2011, Ben Shapiro produced a video titled “The Myth of the Tiny Radical Muslim Minority.” The purpose of this video is deceptive. There is nothing incorrect about saying that many Muslims throughout the world hold radical views. The problem is that Ben portrays radical beliefs as something unique to Muslims, or at least to a level more extreme than can be found among other nations or religions. He makes this point clear in the beginning of the video:

There’s plenty of violent material in the Old and New Testaments. Hey, I’m an Orthodox Jew, I read the Old Testament a lot. But believers in those particular texts are not currently ramming airliners into towers or beheading journalists or mutilating female genitalia.[1]

There are many Jews who commit similar actions. Rather than suicide attacks with airplanes, Israelis use the weaponry from their planes for terrorist activities, such as the attack on the USS Liberty[2] and the destruction of hospitals in Gaza.[3] Alison Weir writes,

In Israel’s 2009 “Operation Cast Lead” Israeli forces used these weapons systems to carry out more than 2,360 air strikes on Gaza, in its 2012 “Operation Pillar of Defense” Israel carried out 1,500 strikes on Gazans, in it’s 2014 “Operation Protective Edge” Israeli forces launched 4,762 strikes across Gaza, and in 2021’s “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” Israeli forces carried out 1,500  air strikes on Gaza. Altogether, these killed at least 4,288 Gazans, a large percentage of them women and children. Gazan resistance groups during the same “wars” killed 99 Israelis.[4]

Female genital mutilation is not a practice among Jews, but Israelis do engage in organ harvesting of Palestinians. Until 2008, when Israel’s Knesset “banned the purchase and sale of human organs,”[5] Israel was known as one of the top countries where organ harvesting traffickers conducted their business, according to Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the founder of Organ Watch.[6] Targeting of Palestinians for organ harvesting continues to this day.[7]

As for Ben’s specific claims of Muslims “ramming airliners” into towers, he is presumably referring to 9/11. The 9/11 hijackers were members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group espousing an extreme Wahhibist interpretation of Islam that is exported from Saudi Arabia, an ally of the U.S. Although no one would say the U.S. is a Muslim country, it maintained its relationship with Saudi Arabia, even though “The intelligence community identified [Saudi Arabia] as the primary source of money for al Qaeda both before and after the September 11 attacks,” the 9/11 Commission reported.[8]

As Ben lists the beliefs of Muslim countries in support of his claim of a radical Muslim majority, there is a question as to whether nations like the Christian-majority U.S. and Jewish-majority Israel are “moderate” when compared to Muslim-majority nations. It seems that the claims of radicalism can be applied to these Western countries as well.

For example, after President Biden’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, 42% of Americans held that this was the wrong decision.[9] This is in spite of the fact that hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been killed in that war.[10] 48% of Americans believe that torture is acceptable in some circumstances.[11] 62% of Americans say they support abortion.[12] Among Jewish Americans, support of abortion is at 83%.[13]

32% of U.S. Jews “believe God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people,” and among Orthodox Jews like Ben, this number rises to 87%.[14]

56% of Jewish Israelis support abortion.[15] According to Pew Research, “roughly half of Israeli Jews (48%) say Arabs should be transferred or expelled from Israel.”[16] This is a view Ben himself at one point publicly supported. In a 2003 article, he wrote, “If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It's an ugly solution, but it is the only solution. And it is far less ugly than the prospect of bloody conflict ad infinitum.”[17] Probably due to backlash, he later repudiated this position: “Some on the right have proposed population transfer from the Gaza Strip or West Bank as a solution. This is both inhumane and impractical. Moving millions of Palestinians out of areas they have known for their entire lives will certainly not pave the way to peace.”[18]

Only 21% of Israeli Jews believe there is discrimination against Muslims.[19] This is surprising in light of the fact that Israel imposed a starvation diet on Gaza,[20] continuously bombs Palestinian hospitals and schools, bulldozes their homes, and indiscriminately massacres them under any conceivable pretext. Apparently, Israelis do not believe this radical behavior counts as discrimination.

An October 18-19, 2023, poll given during the assault on Gaza showed that 47% of Israeli Jews thought that Israel should “not at all” “take into consideration the suffering of the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza when planning the next phases of fighting there.”[21] By the beginning of November over 9,000 Palestinians in Gaza were killed, more than 3,700 being children.[22]

Ben says nothing of the Israeli military’s shared belief in the liceity of targeting civilians. For example, a booklet was published by the Central Region Command of the Israeli Army, and included the following quote by the Command’s Chief Chaplain:

When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or in a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakhah they may and even should be killed ... Under no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilised ... In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.[23]

As Israel Shahak notes, influential rabbis with followers in the Israeli army label Palestinians as Canaanites and Amalekites, and advocate genocide by quoting Deuteronomy: “you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them.”[24]

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, said of Gentiles:

“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel.”

“In Israel, death has no dominion over them… With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.

“This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.”

“Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat… That is why gentiles were created.”^[25]

Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel, an educator “at the state-sponsored military prep-academy Bnei David in the West Bank settlement of Eli,” spoke of Palestinians as goyim that need to be enslaved:

Abolishing legal slavery has created deficiencies. No one is responsible for that property. With God’s help it will return. The goyim (non-Jews) will want to be our slaves. Being a slave of the Jews is the best. They must be slaves, they want to be slaves. Instead of just wandering the streets, being foolish and harming each other, now he’s a slave, now his life is beginning to come into order.^[26]

The Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, a leader of the Hasidic movement who has been celebrated with a national holiday by every U.S. president since Carter, said, “Two contrary types of soul exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness.” He also said, “The entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews.”[27]

Many of these Muslim countries that Ben lists as having radical beliefs, such as support of Osama bin Laden or honor killings of women, have been supported by Western nations both economically and politically. If the West is supporting these extremist countries, are they not complicit in radicalism?

In 1979, Father Anselm Günthör wrote that “the statements of the ecclesial Magisterium [on the death penalty] are occasional assertions and do not represent a fully definitive position; we must not undervalue them, but nor should we consider them to be unchangeable and perennially valid Magisterial statements.”[1] In other words, there was never any infallible teaching on the death penalty at that point.

There was a unanimous consensus among the Church Fathers on the death penalty. The Fathers allowed for the liceity of the death penalty, yet many still called for forgiveness. For example, St. Augustine, who was not averse to capital punishment in principle, still called for the forgiveness of criminals.

During the trial of the murderers of two priests, Saint Augustine asked the judge not to take the life of the assassins with this argument: “We do not object to your depriving these wicked men of the freedom to commit further crimes. Our desire is rather that justice be satisfied without the taking of their lives or the maiming of their bodies in any part. And, at the same time, that by the coercive measures provided by the law, they be turned from their irrational fury to the calmness of men of sound mind, and from their evil deeds to some useful employment. This too is considered a condemnation, but who does not see that, when savage violence is restrained and remedies meant to produce repentance are provided, it should be considered a benefit rather than a mere punitive measure… Do not let the atrocity of their sins feed a desire for vengeance, but desire instead to heal the wounds which those deeds have inflicted on their souls”.[2]

It should be noted that an unanimous teaching of the Church Fathers does not necessarily entail the teaching is infallible. As Jimmy Akin observes in his book Teaching with Authority: How to Cut Through Doctrinal Confusion & Understand What the Church Really Says,

It … isn’t sufficient to produce a catalogue of quotations from churchmen spanning many centuries to show that a teaching is infallible by the ordinary and universal magisterium. For that, the quotations must indicate that the teaching is definitively to be held. If, in their own day, the churchmen only taught in a way that required “religious assent of will and intellect” then the matter would be a longstanding teaching but not an infallible one. As in every other exercise of magisterium, definitiveness—not length of time—is the key to infallibility.[3]

We do not see a definitive magisterial statement on the death penalty in the first millennium. We see statements approving of the liceity in several local councils and statements of popes, but these cannot be considered definitive. As E. Christian Brugger notes in his book Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition, “the early-fourth-century Spanish Synod of Elvira and the late-fourth-century Council of Rome were local rather than universal councils, and the relevant writings of Popes Gregory I and Innocent I were personal letters, not documents promulgated with the specific intent to solemnly define doctrine.”[4]

Brugger further writes,

Pope Innocent III in 1210 had required members of the Waldensian sect as a condition of their reconciliation with the Church to profess (among other things) “that the secular power can (potest) without mortal sin impose a judgment of blood provided the punishment is carried out not in hatred but with good judgement, not inconsiderately but after mature deliberation”.... Did this constitute an infallible proclamation? It did not. The profession in which the statement appears was published in a personal letter to the group’s leader and not in a papal bull to the universal Church. If some proposition in the profession was not already a matter of faith, its inclusion in the Waldensian oath did not constitute it as such. So Innocent’s statement could have been mistaken.

It is not unprecedented for a non-dogmatic profession to teach error. The fifteenth-century “Decree for the Armenians” in the bull Exsultate Domino by Pope Eugene IV taught that the sacrament of Holy Orders is “conferred by handing over the chalice with wine and the paten with the bread”.... This, of course, is an error since the Sacrament of Orders is conferred by the laying on of hands by a Catholic bishop. Neuner and Dupuis confidently conclude that the Decree for the Armenians is “neither an infallible definition, nor a document of faith.” The same could be said of the Waldensian profession. The death penalty’s legitimacy has never been defined by a pope or ecumenical council.[5]

There was also the Roman Catechism commissioned by the Council of Trent. This catechism likewise approved the death penalty, but this section was not written with language to have defined the subject definitively. Moreover, the section relating to the death penalty mentions that civil rulers can without sin lawfully resort to the death penalty for “The end of the [Fifth] Commandment is the preservation and security of human life.”[6] But since prison systems have improved, resorting to the death penalty is unnecessary. Since a murderer can be imprisoned successfully to prevent further murders, the death penalty would be immoral, for it unnecessarily takes a life, even if that person is a murderer. Prison allows redemption, a strong message of the Gospel.

Pope Francis legitimately developed the doctrine on the death penalty when he updated the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which now reads, “the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”[7] The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith confirmed that “the new formulation of number 2267 of the Catechism expresses an authentic development of doctrine that is not in contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium.”[8]

Even though prescriptions for the death penalty were recorded in the Old Testament, Jesus teaches forgiveness:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”[9]

God forgave Cain, David, and Paul for their involvement in murders instead of having them put to death, and we are called to do the same. This is why the current doctrine on the death penalty derives from the message of forgiveness from the Gospel.

The American Revolutionary War is a source of celebration for all Americans. The claims of the Declaration of Independence are taken for granted, and it is considered to have been a just war. However, under scrutiny, this war cannot be considered just.

John D. Roche writes,

Historically, Christian thinkers have held that biblical passages such as Romans 13 clearly prohibit rebellion. Although a few Catholic writers such as John of Salisbury argued that tyrannicide may be justified in extreme circumstances, prior to the Protestant Reformation the vast majority of Christian thinkers rejected its legitimacy. Early Protestant leaders, including Martin Luther and John Calvin, initially accepted this view, but by most accounts they eventually embraced the position that inferior magistrates may actively resist tyrants. Within a generation, Calvinist thinkers such as John Ponet, Christopher Goodman, George Buchannan, and Samuel Rutherford had embraced this position. That Calvinists developed such a robust resistance ideology is particularly important in the American context as this tradition was, according to Sydney Ahlstrom, “the religious heritage of three-fourths of the American people in 1776.”

But it was not only Calvinists who argued that tyrants may be resisted. Particularly important in the American context is John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government (1689). Locke was likely influenced by earlier Calvinist thinkers, but he secularized and helped popularize the idea that the people themselves could justly overthrow tyrannical governments. As well, patriot colonists were influenced by the Whig political ideology which developed between the turn of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century.[1]

It was this Protestant perversion of just-war theory which fermented in Britain and adopted by Americans that allowed the latter to justify what they claimed was resistance of tyranny.  Protestant clergy in the colonies preached that resisting tyranny was a duty, one such figure being the Boston Congregationalist minister Jonathan Mayhew who stated that “Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not entitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of anything here laid down by the inspired apostle.”[2] There were other influential pastors like

the Presbyterian Abraham Keteltas. Keteltas preached a sermon entitled “God Arising and Pleading His People’s Cause” in 1777 during which he expounded upon the religious dynamics of the American struggle, arguing that “the cause of this American continent, against the measure of cruel, bloody, and vindictive ministry,” was “the cause of God” and that, since the colonies were God’s chosen people, Britain’s war against the colonies was “unjust and unwarrantable.”[3]

For American patriots, “the interrelated issues of taxation, representation, and Parliamentary sovereignty formed the central crux of the imperial debate and justification for their rebellion.”[4] But simply put, the tax situation did not justify armed rebellion.

When Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, the colonies were only paying £1,800 annually. Although Parliament did seek a thirtyfold increase, £60,000 annually with the Stamp Act, this amount would only cover seventeen percent of the £350,000 required to keep ten thousand regulars in the colonies. More importantly, the colonists’ tax burden paled in comparison to that of those living in England. Following the Seven Years’ War, Britons in the home islands paid an average of twenty-five shillings annually versus the colonists’ six pence of imperial taxes, which translates to fifty times the colonists’ tax rate.[5]

Although the Declaration of Independence claimed that “[King George] has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us,”[6] it was actually Americans who escalated violence from Lexington that led to complete warfare. British troops marched to Concord in an effort to prevent armed conflict by seizing weapons thought to be there. However, the Lexington militiamen refused to be disarmed since they insisted they had a right to self-defense. When these two forces met, British Major John Pitcairn ordered the militiamen to disperse, which they refused. Pitcairn never gave the order to his men to fire, but the shooting did commence, although we don’t know which side fired first. This outbreak of hostilities resulted in eight dead colonists and nine others wounded, while on the British side the only casualty was a soldier with a bullet through his thigh.

When the British finally made their way to Concord, they destroyed all the war material they saw. They also set fire to the town’s liberty pole, a fire which then spread to the courthouse nearby, which is when things got out of control. As Roche writes,

the town’s militiamen who had been watching from above the North Bridge mistakenly believed the British were burning the entire town. This prompted them to attack, and the New England militiamen harried the British troops all the way back to Boston. When the British had finished running their gauntlet, 73 were dead, 174 had been wounded, and another 26 were missing. On the American side, only 49 had died, 39 were wounded, and 4 were missing. The colonists followed up this assault by laying siege to the city of Boston with an Army of Observation. The patriots further escalated the conflict when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Army of Observation as the Continental Army on June 14, 1775, and made George Washington its commander. By this action, the Congress transformed a regional rebellion into a continent-wide civil war. Four days later, the New England troops enticed the British to attack them by fortifying Breed’s Hill. The final aggressive act the colonists made prior to the Declaration of Independence was the invasion of Canada. The Americans hoped to wage a war of liberation and make Canada the Fourteenth Colony. At a minimum, it seems reasonable to classify the patriots’ actions as something more than mere “self-defense.”[7]

Roche concluded:

By any measure, the War of Independence was not a war of last resort. The British were still willing to make compromises through the summer of 1776. Parliament proposed the Conciliatory Resolution in February 1775, which offered to allow the colonies to tax themselves as long as they contributed “their proportion to the common defence.” The Continental Congress rejected this offer. When Admiral Lord Richard Howe and General William Howe arrived in New York City at the head of thirty-two thousand troops in July of 1776, they came not only as military commanders but also as peace commissioners. They were authorized to settle the issue of taxation under the terms of the Conciliatory Resolution, as well as grant pardons and remove trade restrictions. Unfortunately for Lord Howe, the Americans declared independence eight days before he arrived.[8]

Because of the colonists’ drive for war, tens of thousands perished in an unjust war:

Throughout the course of the war, an estimated 6,800 Americans were killed in action, 6,100 wounded, and upwards of 20,000 were taken prisoner. Historians believe that at least an additional 17,000 deaths were the result of disease, including about 8,000–12,000 who died while prisoners of war.

Unreliable imperial data places the total casualties for British regulars fighting in the Revolutionary War around 24,000 men. This total number includes battlefield deaths and injuries, deaths from disease, men taken prisoner, and those who remained missing.

Approximately 1,200 Hessian soldiers were killed, 6,354 died of disease, and another 5,500 deserted and settled in America afterward.[9]