#364: Do You Fear Islam?

Why Catholics should not share the growing popular fear of Islam.

Sometimes a cluster of apparently unconnected events can reveal a common thread.  Take last week’s stories: A gunman kills six at a Sikh temple.  Mitt Romney implies the inferiority of Palestinian culture.  Stephen Colbert jokes about a guest’s siblings.  A mural at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) sparks protests.  The Washington Post reports a “riot” in Marseilles.  A front-page photo depicts an Olympic runner wearing long sleeves, long pants, and headgear.

I cannot avoid feeling that an undertone of anxiety runs through all these things - - namely, a paranoid fear of Islam. 

Many readers assumed the Sikhs were Muslims - - or else assumed the killer thought they were.  Writers defended Romney by pointing to the violence of Hamas and Fatah, as if all Palestinians were Muslims.  Colbert joked that, if his guest was a Muslim with male siblings, that made him part of the “Muslim brotherhood.” The Marseilles “riot” erupted when French police stopped a woman wearing a face-veil.  That runner was Saudi Arabia’s first female Olympian, and ran showing only her face. The ICA mural, depicting a boy with a shirt wrapped trapped on its head, struck protesters as an ad promoting terrorism.

More and more, it seems, our current events are laced with images and actions portraying the growing presence and influence of Islam - -and also our increasingly alarmed reactions to it.

The trigger for this, of course, was 9/11, but anxiety about Islam has a longer history.  Generations of western schoolchildren learned the history of conflict between Christianity and Islam, mostly focusing on glorifying the Crusades to “liberate the holy land” (my own alma mater continues to compete athletically under the nickname “Crusaders”).  Behind the narrative lay the loss of Christian lands (especially in Africa in Spain) to Muslim expansion.  Students of “western civilization” learned that when Charles Martel turned back the Moors at the Battle of Tours he “saved” Christian Europe from Islamic domination.  The generally happy pluralism of Moorish Spain was ignored in favor of praising the often brutal Catholic “Reconquest” and its Inquisition.  In short, we were taught to see Christians as lion-hearted crusaders and Muslims as murderous infidels.

So apprehension about the modern resurgence of Islam is natural.  But does calling our anxiety “natural” validate it, or indict it?

Catholics would do well to remember that prejudice against Jews was also a natural outcome of centuries of Christian anti-Semitic discrimination - - but that does not excuse contemporary anti-Semitism.  Sometimes the past must be repudiated, as when Vatican Council II (1962-1965) apologized for the Church’s role in demonizing Jews and enabling their persecution.

It is easy for anti-Islamic commentators to talk of horrific acts by Muslim terrorists as proof of Islam’s perfidy.  But no religion matches its ideals even in its official practices, and moreover no religion can control the private actions of all its members.  If we measure Christianity by the evidence of religious wars, discrimination against Jews, the intolerance and torture of the Inquisition, and the performance of child-raping priests and their rape-enabling bishops, we might claim conclusive proof that Christianity is an unholy perversion of Jesus’ teachings.

Every religion has its strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures, virtues and flaws.  In fairness, the only balanced way to proceed is to grasp what a religion stands for, praise it for its good qualities, and criticize its failings.

I was lucky enough, in my theological studies, to learn how Muslim libraries and scholars preserved ancient texts such as Aristotle and Plato, and how Muslim thinkers such as Avicenna and Averroes thus influenced the theological development of Catholic thinkers like Thomas Aquinas.  Without that Islamic influence, I knew, we would’ve lost forever much of ancient wisdom.  But few Catholics have received that kind of positive portrayal of Islam.

Instead, I suspect that millions of U.S. Catholics have never achieved a balanced understanding of Islam.  I suspect those millions feel, even if only consciously, the undertone of anxiety woven into today’s news coverage.  I even suspect that millions of Catholics share that anxiety, if only by exposure to an infectious outlook.

So two timely questions arise: (1) Do you fear Islam?  (2) What does Islam really stand for?

Only you can answer the first question, but there are objective answers to the second question.  And as a simple matter of strengthening their Catholic identity, Catholics might want to begin with the official perspective on Islam that comes from their own Church.

The Catholic Catechism, for example has this to say:

The Church's relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."

The Catechism is quoting from Vatican II, which also said this:

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.

Notice the council’s practical advice when it “urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding.”

It may be surprising that our Church takes such a positive view of Islam, especially in light of past conflicts.  It may also surprise you that Vatican II had already addressed the question 50 years ago, well before Islam became headline news.

But these official documents offer a healthy antidote to the infectious anxiety around us.  Over the next generation, Catholics everywhere - - and especially Catholic leaders - -will need to absorb and communicate the reality that, in this day and age, “love your neighbor” means especially “love your fellow Muslims.”

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2011