Search

Islam and Us

There was a time when Islam was an historical, literary, or cinematic curiosity with little or no purchase on the American imagination and no measurable impact on our lives.

Among other things, we learned a new word: jihad. Some experts warned us not to accept the Al Qaeda interpretation. Jihad is not the conquest or subjugation of non-believers to the rule of Islam, they argued, but the struggle of the individual Muslim to align his will with God's.

And we continue to read that Muslim anger against the West is justified, that Islamic violence has its wellspring in various American and European crimes and outrages: the ill-treatment of Palestinians by our Israeli "proxies;" the presence of American troops on holy ground (i.e. Saudi Arabia); the maltreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib; the prison at Guantanamo Bay; the publication in Denmark of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. Indeed, it has almost seemed as though Islam is everywhere a Grievance-of-the-Month Club. In any event, Western journalists insist that America in particular and Western civilization more generally are to blame (an enduring leftist meme), and they've certainly not been discouraged by President Obama's ongoing World Apology Tour.

Of course America is not sinless. Still, as Greatest Powers Upon Earth have gone throughout the ages, the international interventions of the United States have been benign. As Colin Powell's told the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in 2003:

We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years . . . and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home . . . to live our own lives in peace.

And lately the news shows Muslims on the attack in various places around the world—not just places where there are Americans—apparently because they object, often violently, to co-existing with Christians or Jews or Hindus.

Late last year in Gojra, a city in Pakistan's Punjab region, a rumor—false as it happens—spread among Muslims that a copy of the Qur'an had been defaced. A mob descended on a Christian neighborhood and set ablaze forty homes. Six people were immolated inside one house when armed rioters blocked their exit from the inferno. In all, eight died in Gojra.

The Hameed family hid in the bedroom of their house. "We could hear them smashing everything and dividing our belongings amongst themselves," Almass Hameed recalls. "Then they started beating on the door saying they would teach us a lesson and burn us alive."

More recently, Malaysia has witnessed a series of attacks on Catholic churches in the wake of a court decision that allowed the Church there to use the word "Allah" to mean "God." If I understand Islam correctly in this regard, that is what "Allah" means, yet many Malaysian Muslims are literally up in arms about it. Eight churches have been attacked, three of them firebombed.

Sad to say, the list is long and growing longer. Islam may lack a pluralism gene.

In Egypt, Coptic Christians are under attack. On Christmas Eve, seven kids near Nag Hamadi were murdered after midnight Mass by Muslim gunmen. According to some reports, local police were tipped off before the attack but refused to offer protection.

In Iran, Christian converts from Islam are often arrested and imprisoned if they refuse to apostatize. Christians are termed "anti-government activists."

In Saudi Arabia, it remains illegal to own a Bible. The Saudis fund construction of mosques in the West; no churches are allowed in Saudi Arabia.

Sad to say, the list is long and growing longer. Islam may lack a pluralism gene.

As the organization Aid to the Church in Need puts it its recent report, Persecuted & Forgotten, "Leading experts in the field agree that today 200 million Christians suffer for their faith, many of them facing murder and other forms of violence." One cannot help but recall the words of Archbishop Fulton Sheen:

If I were not a Catholic, and were looking for the true Church in the world today, I would look for the one Church which did not get along well with the world; in other words, I would look for the Church which the world hated. My reason for doing this would be, that if Christ is in any one of the churches of the world today. . . . Look for the Church which, in seasons of bigotry, men say must be destroyed in the name of God as men crucified Christ and thought they had done a service to God. . . . Look for the Church which amid the confusions of conflicting opinions, its members love as they love Christ, and respect its Voice as the very voice of its Founder, and the suspicion will grow, that if the Church is unpopular with the spirit of the world, then it is unworldly, and if it is unworldly it is other worldly. Since it is other-worldly, it is infinitely loved and infinitely hated as was Christ Himself.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Brad Miner. "Islam and Us." The Catholic Thing (January 20, 2010).

Reprinted with permission from The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@thecatholicthing.org.

The Catholic thing—the concrete historical reality of Catholicism—is the richest cultural tradition in the world. That is the deep background to The Catholic Thing which bring you an original column every day that provides fresh and penetrating insight into the current situation along with other commentary, news, analysis, and—yes—even humor. Our writers include some of the most seasoned and insightful Catholic minds in America: Michael Novak, Ralph McInerny, Hadley Arkes, Michael Uhlmann, Mary Eberstadt, Austin Ruse, George Marlin, William Saunders, and many others.

THE AUTHOR

Copyright © 2010 The Catholic Thing