Not Peace but a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam (26 page)

(Reading aloud:) “The Fear of the Lord: that is the beginning of wisdom and therefore it belongs to the beginnings and is felt in the first cold hours before the dawn of civilization; the power that comes out of the wilderness and rides on the whirlwind and breaks the gods of stone, the power before which the Eastern nations are prostrate like the pavement, the power before which the primitive prophets run naked and shouting, at once proclaiming and escaping from their God. The fear that is rightly rooted in the beginning of every religion true or false, the fear of the Lord: that is the beginning of wisdom. But it is not the end.”

Now, religion is an organic thing, like a tree, and if this primitive fear of God is its roots, and if we have detached from our own roots, and if a religion like Islam is clearer and stronger about those roots even though it has corrupt branches, we can learn to our own use some things from Islam about those roots. We can learn the same thing from primitive Africans.

Mr. Spencer: There are certainly things we can learn from any given individual. There are certainly wise people in all religious traditions. That’s really, I think, not at issue here; the question before us is, “Is the only good Muslim a bad Muslim?” and you mentioned earlier that you know that there are good Muslims who are good Muslims because you’ve met them. And I think, “Well, sure, I know good Catholics who contracept,” and yet they will tell you that they are perfectly good Catholics and they’re completely observant. This is, of course, in defiance of Catholic Church teaching, and there are other people who would say, “Well, no, you’re not actually good Catholics.” And how is one to determine that? You go to the sources; you go to the teaching of the Church. And so I would submit that you only know whether a Muslim is a good Muslim or not by Islamic standards, and we have to look at what their own texts and teachings say.

And so, for example, that very charming story you told about the crucifix and the pictures and the Muslim student—there are several very notable things that I think ought to be added for our edification tonight. One is that, in Islamic tradition, Jesus will indeed come back at the end of the world, not Muhammad. But Jesus will return at the end of the world and he will break all the crosses: that’s Islamic tradition. In other words, he will destroy Christianity, which is believed to be a perversion of the true teachings of Jesus. And so he will break all the crosses, kill the pigs—because of course the Christians are the ones who eat the pork—and abolish the
jizya
, the tax that I mentioned before. In other words, He will destroy Christianity and Islamize the world; that’s obviously one of those people St. Paul mentions in Corinthians when somebody comes to you with another Jesus, “other than the One we have preached to you,” you receive him readily enough, but it is not remotely the Jesus of the New Testament. And further, in regard to the pictures, while I applaud and appreciate this gentleman saying that he would protect a picture of who he terms as the Prophet Jesus and would revere in other words these religious figures, actually, unfortunately, his co-religionists in the Balkans in particular, in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, there are videotapes—you can find the tapes on YouTube—of them going into churches, going into Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches and kicking down the icons of Jesus and of his Mother and burning the church, pulling down the cross off the top, destroying any representational art. Now, which one of these is really the good Muslim? Well, Islam does teach that representational art, particularly of prophets and religious figures, is a blasphemy and ought rightly be destroyed. And thus, the people who are actually being the pious, good Muslims were the ones who were destroying the icons of Jesus and his Mother in the churches in the Balkans.

Professor Kreeft: This is true, this is true. But my Muslim student would not deny that, but he said, “
If
we had pictures, which we don’t because they are blasphemous and idolatrous,
if
we had pictures we would defend them to the death.” Now, here’s my question for you: What do you think of this? This same student once asked to go to Mass with me. I was surprised, and he said, “Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely no intention of becoming a Catholic or anything or that I’m even interested in this—it’s pure curiosity, but I promise to be respectful.” So we went to Mass together and he just sat there like a stone, he wouldn’t move, he wouldn’t rise, or kneel, or in any way cooperate, but he was very quiet and respectful and afterwards I said to him, “What did you think?”

And he said two things that impressed me. The first was—this was in St. Mary’s Chapel, which was a beautiful little stone Gothic chapel on B.C. [Boston College] campus—he said, “How old is this building?” I said, “Well, it’s over a hundred years old, it’s the oldest building on the B.C. campus back in nineteenth century.” And he said, “How old are the words that the priest uttered?” And I said, “Well, half of those were his own interpolations—

(Laughter)

Professor Kreeft: “—and half of them were a sort of revision of the Church’s liturgy which was translated a couple of years ago. But the structure of the Mass goes back to the beginning, while the actual words are fairly modern words.” He said, “I thought so.” I said, “Why?” I knew he knew nothing about Catholic tradition. He said, “Well, when I looked at the building, the stones brought my spirit closer to Heaven, but when I listened to the words, they were rather like shallow, babbling brooks moving on the surface of the Earth.” I thought that was rather perceptive.

And then, then he said, “Do you Christians really believe that Jesus is literally the Son of God?” I said, “Yes, the orthodox ones do, the modernists don’t, the liberals don’t, but both Protestants and Catholics believe that.” And he said, “And the difference between Protestants and Catholics is you Catholics also believe that when that priest holds up that little round piece of bread, that really turns into Jesus, literally?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “And that’s why everybody got very quiet then?” I said, “Yes, that was worship; that was adoration.” And I said, “I know you think that’s blasphemous and ridiculous, and Protestants do, too, except for Anglicans and Lutherans, who believe in the Real Presence.”

(By the way, one of the things that made me a Catholic—I was born and brought up as a Calvinist—was reading the Church Fathers and how they never questioned the Real Presence for a thousand years. I said, “How could God allow such an error to exist in the Church for a thousand years? I mean, bowing down and worshipping bread and wine thinking it’s God? That’s really bad!”)

So he said, “So you Catholics believe that that is really Jesus and that Jesus is really Allah, fully divine?” I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Oh, I don’t think so.”

And I said, “Well, I don’t expect you to believe it, it’s a difficult thing to believe, but of course you’re a Muslim, you don’t believe that.” He said, “That’s not what I mean. I—I—I don’t want to tell you what I mean, it’s too embarrassing.” So I tried to be nice and said, “Well, I suppose you mean you can’t ever imagine doing what the other people did, the other Catholics, namely, getting down on your knees before what merely seemed to be a piece of bread.”

He said, “No, that’s not what I mean.” He said, “I try to imagine myself believing that—which I of course never would, it’s blasphemous—but I don’t really think that you believe it.” “Why not?” “Well—” And he stopped again, saying, “I don’t want to insult you.” I said, “I have thick skin, try.” So I said, “You can’t imagine yourself ever getting down on your knees?” And he said, “No, I can’t imagine myself, if I believed that, ever getting up off my knees again.”

Now there’s seriousness there. There’s something there, directed to a wrong object and a wrong religion, which I think we can learn some profound lessons from.

Mr. Spencer: Well, that’s actually the question before us, then. The question is not really, “Are there pious Muslims?” or “Are there pious people who are Muslims?” That’s manifest, that’s obvious, that’s easy. The question before us, as far as I understand it, is whether Islamic piety really is something in accord with the best elements of the human spirit and whether it exalts it or whether it degrades it ultimately, if somebody follows it out.

Professor Kreeft: Wouldn’t you agree that the answer to that question has to be neither a simple yes nor a simple no, because there are obviously ingredients in Muslim piety which no Christian can rightly agree with, and other ingredients in Muslim piety, equally important and equally orthodox, which every Christian must agree with?

Mr. Spencer: Well, I guess what I would say to that is—

Professor Kreeft: That’s the heart and soul of Islam itself: total surrender and submission to God, which is the formula for a saint.

Mr. Spencer: Yes, absolutely, and as you very ably pointed out in your book, that’s something that is common to Judaism and Christianity. It’s not something that was originated in Islam, and so I find myself agreeing, I must say, with the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Palaiologos, who was quoted so famously by Pope Benedict XVI a few years back, touching off worldwide riots and murders of innocent people when he quoted him saying: “There was nothing that was new or original that Muhammad brought that was not evil and inhuman.” There’s plenty of good in the Qur’an that’s taken from Judaism and Christianity. Where it becomes problematic is where it departs from that. Now, we can see that, because we’re standing outside it and we understand—probably most of the people in this room know a great deal about Christianity and some of you about Judaism as well, and of course Judaism and Christianity come from the same wellsprings and are very similar in many important ways. Now, that is something we know then when we see these elements of Islam: that they are separable conceptually from the rest, but for Muslims these things are all a whole. Like you mentioned for an example the Sufis, that the Sufis have a wonderful spirituality. They do have a wonderful spirituality and in my first book,
Islam Unveiled
, I quote in its entirety a poem written by the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was very deeply influenced by Sufism. Now, the Ayatollah Khomeini also said, “I spit on the foolish souls” who believe that Islam is a religion of peace. He didn’t have any trouble having these mystical flights that exalted his soul and also thinking that it was part of the Muslim’s responsibility to take up arms against unbelievers. And there was no separation: It was all considered to be part of the devoutness of his observance. The Sufis for several hundred years have been at the forefront of the armed jihad warfare in Chechnya against the Russians. Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who I mentioned before, was very influenced by the Sufis, and as he was establishing this violent arm of political Islam he prescribed various Sufi exercises for members of the Brotherhood. Also al-Ghazali, one of the foremost Sufis in history, is very, very clear that Jews and Christians must be fought against and subjugated. He had no trouble seeing these two things together. So once again I have to come back to the topic: The only good Muslim is a bad Muslim. It’s perhaps a little coarse and insulting way to put it, as I explained before—but nonetheless, it contains a truth, that there are elements of Islamic piety that are not separable from the rest, that are deeply embedded within the religion itself, within the core teachings of the Qur’an and of Muhammad, that lead one not toward God nor any authentic spirituality but toward absolute evil.

Professor Kreeft: Would you agree, though, at least that there are things in Islam that they have learned from Jews and Christians—not new things, the Emperor is perfectly right—that we have forgotten and that therefore we can relearn from them?

Mr. Spencer: Insofar as they are the Jewish and Christian traditions, then certainly, we should look to any pious people and say that piety is a good thing and ought to be fostered; I’m not sure we need to go to them to rediscover that kind of thing. There’s plenty within our own traditions that would do that for us if we would simply recover those.

Professor Kreeft: Yes, okay. I don’t think we disagree about very much.

Professor Zmirak: Mr. Spencer, you say that the only good Muslim is a bad Muslim. Presumably you mean “good” for us as Christians living in the West—in other words, “good,” as to our benefit, to our safety, promoting our freedom, our ability to worship, evangelize, live in peace. But if you hope that Muslims are not true to their own religion and are not true to their own conscience, then aren’t you hoping that they are disobeying the voice of conscience and therefore damning their own souls? Isn’t that a perverse thing for us to hope for, and isn’t it a little crass to hope that Muslims go to hell just because it makes them less likely to kill us?

(Laughter)

Mr. Spencer: It’s a wonderful question, but I think there’s a bit of sophistry there. I don’t think that God, that the true, living, existing God who is God of all creation, would ever condemn someone to hell for doing evil that he thought was the right thing or doing the right thing that he thought was evil. There is absolute good and absolute evil. These things are clear; these things are actually relatively universal across religious traditions, with the notable exception of Islam. In
The Abolition of Man
, C. S. Lewis’s book, he has an appendix, a listing of various quotations establishing what he calls the Tao, the Way. What he is explaining are universally held moral principles among Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. Very notably absent are quotations from the Qur’an and from the teachings of Muhammad that would support these otherwise universal moral principles: “Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal,” and so on and so on. Islam does uphold those things, but for Muslims only. Pretty much, all the [positive] things the media says about Islam are true if you add “for Muslims” at the end. “Islam is a religion of peace ‘for Muslims.’” “Islam is a religion of tolerance ‘for Muslims,’” and so on. So the point is that when we’re talking about people following their conscience, there’s a great danger, I think, the great danger of hellfire for anyone, the great danger is to become convinced that to do evil is good. And thus we should do everything we can to show them that that is a demonic deception.