Blogs For Victory

Food for thought as Christians and Moslems start a series of meetings to discuss the shared beliefs of the two faiths:

Christian and Muslim leaders from around the world met this summer at Yale University for the first of four conferences to discuss “the foundational principles” of the two faiths…

…Last fall, 138 Islamic leaders from forty nations sent a letter, “A Common Word between Us and You,” addressed to the pope and other Christian leaders worldwide. The twenty-nine-page letter invited Christians to meet with Muslims on the basis of “what is common to us and most essential to our faith and practice: the Two Commandments,” i.e., love of God and love of neighbor…

…Many are ready to dismiss this … as mere piety or naivete. They should reconsider: The history of democracy in the West owes a great debt to these two commandments. Secular-minded historians and political scientists would like us to believe that democratic ideals emerged from the triumph of Enlightenment thought—in opposition to Christian doctrine. In fact, the Biblical concepts of human dignity and equality supplied the philosophical pillars of liberal democracy, especially in the Anglo-American tradition. Ministers on both sides of the Atlantic, for example, regularly cited the golden rule—what they called “the great rule of equity”—to argue for religious toleration and equal justice under the law.

Are the Christian leaders who gathered at Yale familiar with this history, and are they willing to press its lessons upon their Muslim guests? Participating groups such as the liberal National Council of Churches have shown scant interest in defending the persecuted church, the principle of religious freedom, or the democratic institutions that sustain it. Yet if Muslims are serious about the golden rule, they must explain why the governments of most Islamic states represent such a brutal contradiction to its democratic expression.

Another potential problem with “The Common Word” dialogue is its implication that the Christian Church must reform itself no less so than the Islamic community. There’s no doubt that reform is needed. Whether the issue is materialism, hypocrisy, or the politicization of the gospel, there are real problems in the Church. Yet the danger here is the trap of moral equivalency—the assumption that modern Christianity is as prone to terrorist violence as Islam. As the Muslim letter put the matter: “The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.”

The future of the world depends on no such thing. The existential threat to international peace and security is not a religious war between Islam and Christianity. The global threat today is a faith-based version of European fascism—a re-emergence of the totalitarian impulse, animated by the theology of radical, Islamist jihad. This ideology of bloodlust and martyrdom claims millions of adherents worldwide, inspires terrorist cells across entire continents, and is obsessed with acquiring the world’s most destructive weapons to unleash against civilian populations. “Why were millions of people astounded by what happened to America on September 11?” writes Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s second in command. “We have the right to kill four million Americans—two million of them children—and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands.”

There is simply no equivalent to this perverted religion anywhere in the Christian world—it is a crisis within Islam, a moral and spiritual malaise that has grown unchecked for decades. It is incumbent upon the Christian leaders engaged in this dialogue to ask why this is the case, and what their Islamic interlocutors intend to do about it.

They might take a cue from a Muslim reformer, Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, the former dean of the law faculty at Qatar University. He argues that terrorism is the result of a “culture of hatred” in Arab countries and “a discourse of denial” about its homegrown sources. “How can this miserable creature called the Arab and Muslim individual not turn to extremism, when he is surrounded by an overall atmosphere of extremism, bound by the shackles of repression and prohibitions, and girded by the ideas of intimidation and terrorization, and of almost endless torment?” he writes. “Go to hear a Friday sermon, and you will find a preacher who is enraged at the world, angry at civilization, spreading the poison of hatred and enmity.”

And yet there is that – love of God and love of neighbor, which is the foundation of the West and, as noted, the foundation of our modern liberties. Moslems do profess this love, and thus there is grounds for hope. Of course, for this hope to be realised it will require not just Moslems willing to reform, but Christians willing to stand foursquare for Christian beliefs – the liberties built upon love of God and neighbor are being erroded in the West by consumerism and despair, two sins the Moslems radicals use to great effect, telling their followers that failure to fight for Islamism will result in the same moral disintegration in the Moslem world. The other problem on the Christian end, as noted by the author of the piece, is all too many Christians willing to ignore Christian belief…when the Archbishop of Canterbury starts saying that sharia law is ok by him, you know you’ve got a terrible problem in Christianity.

For Moslems to listen to us they first have to respect us – as it is, Moslems in Iraq respect our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Why is this? Because they are strong men and women who act upon their convictions with no thought to personal risks. But looking past the Marine on patrol, the Moslem world can still see an America slouching ever further into a sewer of moral decay. It is a fair question for any Moslem to ask – if we are to become democratic, does this mean we have to suffer the social breakdown the West has undergone? If the answer to that question is “yes”, then it is easy to see why a lot of Moslems would be wary of democracy and willing to lend an ear to Islamist propaganda. We must show the Moslem world that freedom means the freedom to do the right thing, not an excuse to do whatever depraved thing you want.

Victory in the war, peace with the Moslem world and repairing our badly damaged society go hand in hand – and just so long as we listen to those who offer us the easy way out, so will this war go on, and our society continue to decay. On the other hand, if we arrest our rot and start back on a path to social sanity – and no better place to start than in the matter of abortion – we will show that freedom is a boon, not a bane, and the Moslem world will follow suit.