Religion of Peace
Posted by Daniel Lyons Thu, 21 Sep 2006 04:07:25 GMT
A friend of mine had this to say about Islam: “The religion of peace has spent its capital. People aren’t buying it anymore.”
Today I heard a commentator say that basically what the Pope had said was that Christianity and Islam cannot connect theologically, because Christianity is assumes Hellenistic principles of reason and the reasonableness of G-d, and Islam basically rejects them altogether. Therefore, the Pope said, we should instead engage in a cultural dialogue, because that would be possible.
At about the same time as this all began I was wondering to myself if I would ever meet any of these reasonable Muslims that I assume exist. (If anyone who reads my blog is a Muslim, please email me or comment, because I’d like to hear from you.) I read Mustafa Akyol’s blog, but apart from him I don’t think I can point to a reasonable Muslim voice I hear from on a regular basis, and he doesn’t post that often.
The Pope’s take, however, meshes pretty well with my perception of the problem. American Muslims, by and large, are not rioting in the streets demanding an apology. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suppose that they support their foreign brethren about the same way American Jews feel about Israelis: their government makes choices that are sometimes hard to defend, and I have no interest in living there, but nonetheless I feel a connection to them and I support them. The reason is that we all are essentially Western. The problem we’re having is a cultural problem between West and, well, Arabia. This doesn’t make it a religious war between Christians (and Jews) versus Muslims, because most American and Turkish Muslims don’t tolerate the kind of behavior that’s common across the Middle East: honor killings, gratuitous martyrdom, and so forth.
So, my friend observed that because Islam glorifies G-d’s omnipotence over his reason, and the world at large basically glorifies power, the world is basically moving in the direction of Islam, to its detriment. My response was that, well, there are reforms taking place in Islam, particularly in Turkey, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a sort of unspoken reform going on here in America. He wanted to know about the religious foundation of these reforms. I say, that’s not our problem. Look at America. The philosophical foundations of the Constitution were eroded perhaps over a hundred years ago and yet our country marches on. I don’t care whether the foundation of another religion’s reform is sound, I only have to concern myself with mine.
I think ultimately we both agree with the Pope: this is a cultural problem. Indeed, going back to the Qur’an we find statements about the treatment of women and religious equality which are quite admirable and definitely not implemented in most Muslim nations. But they are implemented here and there are Muslims here who are happy (as much as any American is) with America. So cultural acclimation seems to be possible.
I think if we could just restrain the excesses of our culture a little bit, this problem would be greatly diminished.
