Not Peace but a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam (22 page)

The words:
we shall ascribe no partner unto Him
relate to the Unity of God, and the words:
worship none but God
, relate to being totally devoted to God. Hence they all relate to the
First and Greatest Commandment
. According to one of the oldest and most authoritative commentaries on the Holy Qur’an the words:
that none of us shall take others for lords beside God
, mean “that none of us should obey the other in disobedience to what God has commanded.” This relates to the Second Commandment because justice and freedom of religion are a crucial part of love of the neighbour.

“Being totally devoted to God” is a drastically inadequate summation of what Islam’s understanding of monotheism really is, and how it relates to Christianity. Islam may preach “total submission of the human will to the divine will,” to use Kreeft’s phrase,
²⁰³
but Jesus said, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). Catholics do indeed submit to God, but as a child does to a loving father, not as a slave does to a capricious and angry master. Christian submission is to a God who is good, and who—with no implied limitations on his power or freedom—is not the author of evil.

Christians who believe that they and Muslims share a common aspiration to be “totally devoted to God” are not guilty of deception. But they have been deceived.

The Common Word document suggests its true intentions in its Qur’anic epigraph: “
Call unto the way of thy Lord with wisdom and fair exhortation, and contend with them in the fairest way. Lo! thy Lord is Best Aware of him who strayeth from His way, and He is Best Aware of those who go aright.
” This verse (16:125) is a curious choice to head up a document that is ostensibly devoted to finding common ground for dialogue and mutual cooperation—unless the intention is actually only to proselytize.

The use of this epigraph recalls the words of the Egyptian Islamic supremacist writer Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the great theorist of the Muslim Brotherhood: “The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah [the society of unbelievers] is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the people on the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam.”
²⁰⁴
Muslims in the U.S. and Europe often term their outreach to non-Muslims “bridge-building,” but to Muslims this expression has a very different meaning.

A further explanation of the “common word” passage from the Qur’an makes it clear that building a bridge only so that Catholics may convert to Islam is indeed the objective of the “Common Word” document and initiative as a whole.

Clearly, the blessed words:
we shall ascribe no partner unto Him
relate to the Unity of God. Clearly also, worshipping
none but God
, relates to being totally devoted to God and hence to the
First and Greatest Commandment
. According to one of the oldest and most authoritative commentaries (
tafsir
) on the Holy Qur’an . . .
that none of us shall take others for lords beside God
means “that none of us should obey in disobedience to what God has commanded, nor glorify them by prostrating to them in the same way as they prostrate to God.” In other words, that Muslims, Christians, and Jews should be free to each follow what God commanded them, and not have “to prostrate before kings and the like”; for God says elsewhere in the Holy Qur’an:
Let there be no compulsion in religion
. . . . (
Al-Baqarah
, 2:256). This clearly relates to the Second Commandment and to love of the neighbour of which justice and freedom of religion are a crucial part.

In this there is nothing to which Christians could object, but the reference to prostrating before others besides God becomes more pointed when, immediately following it, the Muslim leaders “as Muslims invite Christians to remember Jesus’ words in the Gospel (Mark 12:29-31)”:

“The LORD our God, the LORD is one. /And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” This is the first commandment. / And the second, like it, is this: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.

The juxtaposition is striking. This passage from the Common Word document speaks not only of the two Great Commandments but of worshipping none but God alone. Then we have Jesus enunciating the two Great Commandments beginning with the affirmation that “the LORD our God, the LORD is one.” The framers of the Common Word document, undoubtedly familiar with the Qur’an’s anti-Trinitarian passages, here are subtly using Jesus’ words to argue against the doctrine of the Trinity even as they pretend to be seeking points of agreement.

In closing, the Common Word document adds another indictment of Christian theology veiled as an invitation to cooperation: “Finally, as Muslims, and in obedience to the Holy Qur’an, we ask Christians to come together with us on the common essentials of our two religions . . .
that we shall worship none but God, and that we shall ascribe no partner unto Him, and that none of us shall take others for lords beside God.
”

Anyone acquainted with Islam’s view of the Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ cannot fail to see this as a call to abandon orthodox Christianity. Nonetheless, in some quarters the response to the Common Word document was enthusiastic. Noting the Muslim scholars’ declaration that “the future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians,” the headline in the British newspaper the
Telegraph
depicted the document, in language that was typical of the international coverage, as “Muslim scholars’ olive branch to Christians.”
²⁰⁵
Reuters wrote excitedly about an “Unprecedented Muslim call for peace with Christians.”
²⁰⁶
Dinesh D’Souza praised the 138 authors of the document: “Certainly some relief was in order, because Muslims who seek common cause with the West, or at least with the Christian West, are far preferable to those who seek to destroy us.”
²⁰⁷

Rowan Williams, then the archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Communion worldwide, exulted: “The appearance of the
A Common Word
[Open Letter] of 2007 was a landmark in Muslim-Christian relations and it has a unique role in stimulating a discussion at the deepest level across the world.”
²⁰⁸
Even Pope Benedict XVI, during his May 2009 visit to Jordan, hailed such initiatives as having “achieved much good in furthering an alliance of civilizations between the West and the Muslim world, confounding the predictions of those who consider violence and conflict inevitable.”
²⁰⁹
However, his other statements made this appear more to be an expression of hope than a statement of fact. The next day he observed, during his visit to the King Hussein Mosque in Amman, Jordan, that the
Common Word
letter “echoed a theme consonant with my first encyclical: the unbreakable bond between love of God and love of neighbor, and the fundamental contradiction of resorting to violence or exclusion in the name of God (cf.
Deus Caritas Est
, 16).”
²¹⁰

In that same 2009 address, Pope Benedict also gingerly brought up the Muslim persecution of Christians in Iraq:

Before I leave you this morning I would like to acknowledge in a special way the presence among us of His Beatitude Emmanuel III Delly, Patriarch of Baghdad, whom I greet most warmly. His presence brings to mind the people of neighboring Iraq many of whom have found welcome refuge here in Jordan. The international community’s efforts to promote peace and reconciliation, together with those of the local leaders, must continue in order to bear fruit in the lives of Iraqis. I wish to express my appreciation for all those who are assisting in the endeavors to deepen trust and to rebuild the institutions and infrastructure essential to the well-being of that society. And once again, I urge diplomats and the international community they represent together with local political and religious leaders to do everything possible to ensure the ancient Christian community of that noble land its fundamental right to peaceful coexistence with their fellow citizens.
²¹¹

This was an extraordinarily important moment, for true dialogue and mutual respect do not advance by papering over or ignoring significant differences, and certainly not by slyly appealing for conversion under the guise of respectful discussion, but by frankly and honestly confronting serious issues and offering to discuss them in a respectful manner. Even if the Common Word appeal were entirely sincere, the escalating Muslim persecution of Christians in Muslim lands, perpetrated by Muslims acting in accord with mainstream understandings of Qur’anic teaching and Islamic law, indicates that all too many Muslims do not share the desire for peaceful and respectful coexistence professed by the authors and signers of the Common Word document.

The leaders of the Common Word initiative have never publicized any attempts to establish any kind of dialogue with their coreligionists, to try to bring them to a more positive view of Christians.

That is telling. And it is essentially all there is to go on. There are many friendly, non-violent Muslims in the world, and many have Christian friends. But although it is relatively easy to find Muslims who have no intention ever of acting upon the Islamic texts and teachings that jihadists use to justify violence, it is significantly harder to find Muslims who will actively repudiate those teachings and reinterpret those texts. Muslim spokesmen in the West generally deny that there are any violent teachings in Islam, or practice moral equivalence when confronted with them, claiming that Christianity is just as violent or even more so, as if that is a sufficient answer to the problem of Islam-inspired violence around the world today. Deception is not reform, although among Muslim spokesmen today there is considerable confusion between the two.

Conclusion

Not Peace but a Sword

“
They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying,
‘
Peace, peace,
’
when there is no peace.
”

— Jeremiah 6:14

It is hard for modern Westerners to believe that there could exist a group with which they could not reach some peaceful accord, some framework for friendly coexistence as equals on a sustainable basis. It seems inconceivable to many Catholics, looking for allies against secularism and the culture of death, to believe that their gestures of goodwill towards Islam would not be reciprocated and would even be regarded with contempt.

Yet, despite the peaceful overtures of Muslims such as those involved in the Common Ground initiative—even when sincere—that is exactly the attitude built into the heart of Islam. It teaches its followers to regard non-Muslims—especially those among the “People of the Book” who have rejected Muhammad, the Qur’an, and Islam—as “the worst of creatures” (Qur’an 98:6). They have no compelling interest to have good relations with them except so as to protect Muslim communities in non-Muslim countries. The Islamic imperative remains to make them Muslims or else make them “pay the tribute out of hand” and be “humbled” (Qur’an 9:29).

What, then, is to be done? Are we condemned to perpetual hostility between Catholicism and Islam, punctuated by attempts at “outreach” featuring smiling, disingenuous Muslims and credulous, well-meaning Catholics? Do there exist
any
true boundaries for peaceful coexistence, even cooperation?

Any attempt at legitimate and peaceful dialogue must proceed not by ignoring, denying, or glossing over differences but by confronting them honestly and charitably. And Catholics should be aware of Muhammad’s dictum that “war is deceit” and enter into such dialogue shrewdly aware of the fullness of Islam’s teachings about itself, about Christianity, and about warfare against unbelievers (as well as the role that deception plays in that warfare).

We can enter into dialogue, but we must do so with our eyes open. We can work together on ventures of common interest, but we must do so knowing that the Muslim party will never regard Catholics as equal partners or consider the partnership lastingly viable.

The title of this book is not a call to war any more than it was when the Lord Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34). It
is
a call to Catholics to take up a sword—not the sword of conquest and subjugation, but what St. Paul called the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17): To bear witness to Jesus Christ in word and deed, standing firm on the truth without compromise or dissembling in the interests of getting along with a group that will never—barring a massive transformation of Islamic doctrine—regard Catholics as anything but renegades from the true faith that the Muslim prophet Jesus taught. But such a massive transformation is extraordinarily unlikely.