From time to time life serves us a very clear wake-up call. I maintain that we have just been served such a wake-up call in the reaction to the remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI. I have actually read the text of his lecture which is entitled: “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections”. Indeed, I attach it for the readers of this blog-entry. 1) I doubt very seriously if most of the Muslims threatening and rioting and committing violence against churches have even read the text. 2) Liberals make light of religion all the time—especially Christianity. Why, many of very own colleagues seem to think that people who are religious have been shortchanged with respect to their mental faculties. But these very same liberals seem to think that we are not being sufficiently respectful of Islam.
The Vatican fears for the life of the Pope owing to a remark about the Prophet Mohammed. It seems to me that the very same liberals who do not think twice about mocking Christianity ought to be more than a little annoyed at the nonsense on the part of Muslims who seem to think that it is their natural right to engage in rampages of destruction and violence when something is said about Islam that they do not like. And it seems to me that liberals who tolerate this are not just misguided, but that they are waltzing with evil itself.
Cindy Sheehan thinks that President Bush is the world greatest terrorist. And liberals seem to agree. Well, there is no doubt that he is one of the most inarticulate presidents the United States has ever had. I would never want him as my lawyer. But when I compare Mr. Bush’s behavior to Muslims who go on a rampage of violence—attacking churches, no less—in the name of their prophet having been insulted, I think it too obvious for words that the worse threat to world peace comes, not from Mr. Bush, but from Islam.
For I keep wondering just how it is that we can have a peaceful and tolerant society and open society when faced with religious fanatics who, in the name of their religious sensibilities having been offended, think that it is their God-given right to destroy whatever is sacred to others.
In this regard, Pope Benedict’s infelicitous remarks are truly a wake-up call. But wait: I have a vision of a conspiracy. Surely Pope Benedict did not, of his own free will, utter those remarks about the Prophet Mohammed. No, no. It cannot be. Rather, the Pope was none other than a mouthpiece of Mr. Bush, himself.
Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But that has to be what way too many people think who hold that Bush is a greater threat to world peace than Muslims committing violence whenever they deem it appropriate. As I remarked in the previous blog-entry: No religion in the 21st Century has done more to turn violence into an art-form than Islam itself.
But if that were not enough, no religion has shown more disdain and hostility towards other religions than Islam itself.
Christians, who take ever so seriously the death and resurrection of Jesus, are ever so respectful of Jews. This was not always the case. But it most certainly has come to be the case, and increasingly so year after year, since Vatican II. No one thinks that respect for Jews is compatible with speaking about them in the most vituperative and hostile language imaginable.
But someway, somehow, it is supposed that it is perfectly acceptable for Muslims to be absolutely denigrating of Jews and Christians. Indeed, this flies under the banner of being tolerant. I think not.
I should be tolerant of you if and only if you are prepared to be tolerant of me. That is, in the absence of mutual self-restraint, I am a fool if I am tolerant of you, whilst you seize every opportunity to excoriate me in the name of your religious sensibilities.
I understand all too well the idea of being proud to be a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew. But there is no argument that shows that one is proud of one’s religious convictions only if one is violent at the slightest offense made against one’s religion.
I am more than a little perplexed that liberals who would not tolerate such an attitude from Christians bend over backwards not just to tolerate such an attitude from Muslims, but to justify it.
I teach a class of 400 students; and it is not uncommon for there to be a Muslim student in my class. Unless that student is reading my blog-entries, she or he will never know my thoughts about Muslims and their violent reactions to things, as I have a policy of not discussing politics in lecture.
I understand that there can be a context for holding one’s tongue. But guess what: My Muslim students do not fulminate about the evils of Judaism and Christianity in my classes, either. This, I suppose, is that mutual self-restraint point made above.
Indeed, that really is the point. No doubt it is a simple principle for a simple mind, such as my own: You want me to respect you, then you have to respect me. This used to be captured by that obviously silly saying that went like this: Respect is a two way street.
Now, the point of mentioning my teaching is this. I would like to think that I would never make the mistake that the Pope made. But then again, he was giving a public lecture—as opposed to holding forth in a classroom where students are being evaluated by him.
Though I should like to think that I would never make the mistake that Pope Benedict made, I am so glade that he made the mistake that he made. For we have seen more irreverence and disrespect and hostility than I would ever imagine over a single idea about Islam that any number of people might hold. I keep reading in one book or another that the Prophet Mohammed conquered Mecca. And I take that to be rather unlike mesmerizing Mecca by say eloquent speech or fancy music playing or mellifluous singing or whatever.
We who are not Muslims are not obligated to hold precisely the view of Mohammed that Muslims hold. And the point holds with respect to non-Jews vis à vis Christianity or non-Christians with respect to Jews. In a tolerant society, people can respectfully disagree or, as they say, agree to disagree. That is what I what I would have thought pluralism is about.
What is of significance here is that the very people who insist that we should be open-minded with respect to Islam seem to be ever so obtuse with respect to the close-mindedness of Islam itself and the problems that this is occasioning and will continue to occasion.
I will accept Islam as an equal when I am accepted by Islam as an equal. There are precious few signs that the Islam is prepared to do the latter. And insofar as liberals are closing their eyes to this, then they are effectively signing their own death warrant. Playing nice is a strategy only when others are responsive to it. Islam is not responsive to it.
In the meantime, it would appear that Bush got it right: We are indeed in the midst of the war of the century. The problem seems to be that we do not even have the guts to recognize it. If the senseless reaction to the Pope by Muslims around the world does not serve to open our eyes, then perhaps we should all just lay down and die for Islamic fanatics. For effectively that is what we are actually doing, in any case. Only fools fail to protect themselves. And we in the West are quickly proving ourselves to be fools in the name of being tolerant of the intolerant.
