On Ignorance of Islam…and the Bogey Man

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Mar 20, 2012

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran had this to say in a recent interview on the Al Jazeera television network:

We succeeded in avoiding the clash of civilizations; let us avoid the clash of ignorance'…. There is fear of Islam, but it is due to ignorance…. When you speak to these people—I have spoken to so many of these ‘right wing’ groups—you realize they have never opened a Koran and never met a Muslim.

Okay, I get it. Cardinal Tauran is the head of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue. It his job to give as much ground as he possibly can, in the hope of encouraging a similar conciliatory spirit on the other side. This, presumably, necessitates the denigration of those who can be most easily marginalized in the Western camp, namely the “right wing”. After all, somebody has to be thrown under the bus to prove one’s seriousness. It cannot be anybody on the Islamic side, and it cannot be the Church. This isn’t fair, but it is business as usual.

Still, one has to wonder how useful such pretenses really are. I can’t speak for the European ‘right wing’ any more than I can speak for the bogey man, but it seems to me self-evident worldwide that there is great fear of Islam in the West not so much from ignorance of Islamic beliefs as from observation of Islamic political behavior. Islam is a theocratic religion, and these theocracies more often than not marginalize and actively persecute those who refuse to say they are true believers. Moreover, Islam is currently inextricably linked to terrorism, something which Western morality, whether secular or Christian, condemns. Even a sadly broken and post-Christian West can see that this presents a problem, and they do not need to open a Koran to figure it out.

For their part, the Islamic peoples see the West as a sort of human cesspool which ardently desires the moral degradation of everyone with whom it comes in contact. Muslims may erroneously see this hedonism as a Christian thing, which is most unfortunate, but they certainly see it as a Western thing, and in their shrewder moments they may realize that the commitment to hedonism changes surprisingly little from the left to the right wings. But even if we focus exclusively on good Christians in the West, we find a strong theory of the separation of spiritual and political authority, and a reasonable openness to divergent viewpoints in the civil order within the limits of the natural law. Such a theory threatens Islamic polity as it is most often understood and, more importantly, as it is most often implemented.

Now when reasonable men of varying religious beliefs seek to explore peacefully their respective understandings of the dignity of the human person and the requirements of a just social order, this is always a good thing. Pope Benedict has himself challenged the Islamic world to engage in such a dialogue, though with only marginal success. But this does not mean that the general state of affairs is based on ignorance. It may be a greater ignorance, after all, to pretend that the respective worldviews of the two civilizational parties are not deeply at odds, preferring rather to focus on a handful of intellectuals who, as a rule, do not represent the more significant movements which drive policy.

It may also be, of course, that many Muslims who migrate to the West prefer to live in a secular (or, better, a natural law) state, and do not yearn for Muslim theocracy. Or it may be that in the end it will be only the dominant secular hedonists who cannot tolerate a significant Islamic presence, for the same reasons that they cannot tolerate a significant Christian presence. Time will tell, and Christian relations with Islam are obviously important. Indeed, I would explore every possibility in a spirit of Christian love and hope. But in the meantime it is disingenuous to pretend that our mutual fears are based on ignorance.

The point, of course, is that we have not avoided, and cannot avoid, the “clash of civilizations”. This being so, it is an even greater pity that there is no longer a reasonably Christian civilization to be involved in the clash, for then some progress might actually be made. Then it might not be necessary for the West to demand that Islam make itself acceptable by finding its inner hedonism. Meanwhile, even Cardinal Tauran must have trouble pretending the clash of civilizations has been avoided, as if ample grounds for concern are not everywhere apparent—even, doubtless, to the European ‘left wing’. One hopes, at least, that the Cardinal refuses to deviate from his script only because he is pretending. Ignorance of this magnitude would be difficult to imagine.