I found an interesting set of three essays at www.realclearpolitics.com this morning connected to international reaction to the Pope’s badly timed and unfortunately chosen words to a select assembly of Catholics in a Bavarian University where he had taught years ago. These essays (Times of London, The Guardian and LA Times) gave me a range of views about this contentious subject and this spectrum of thought was enhanced by comments from readers of the essays.
K Armstrong’s essay in the Guardian about the West’s “Islamophobia”, which evidently represented the European liberal/secular view, has generated some interesting views, as below by Fossil. The other day I said that the Pope’s words were disingenuous in timing and appearance. Yes, I agree with the words below and yes I believe that I too must pay attention to this struggle of values, Goodness, happening naturally in normally evolved people irrespective of their “faith”, on one side and Godness (interpreted by homo sapiens) on the other.
“Islamophobia” in the literal sense–fear of Islam–is a rational and well founded view of things. This is not because Islam is theologically more absurd than other faiths–absurdity is the common denominator of them all–nor because its history is comparitively more bloody–it isn’t. It is because Islam, from a contemporary social and geopolitical view, is, in fact, dangerous to western institutions and values.
Islam, in this sense, means the interlinked communities in various nations that consider themselves bound to Islamic doctrine, and the political currents, ambitions, and daydreams that infuse those communities, in large measure because they are bound up with a wave of increasingly devout and chauvinistic religious fervor whose endpoint is Islamist triumphalism. In theory, I suppose, another faith, new or old, could have spawned this phenomenon. But, in fact, it arises from the frustrations and resentments of hundreds of millions of people for whom Islam is a focal point of life.
We might be tempted to view these grievances with some sympathy. But, after all, the Germans, too, had real grievances in the 1920’s!! So, it would be wisest at this stage not to let our sympathies overpower a sober reckoning of the dangers of Islamism. We of the west now face a powerful enemy that is at least in its embryonic stage; we damned well better take it seriously, fully recognizing that it is indeed an enemy and does not wish us well.
Sam Harris’ view in the LA Times is clearly somewhere between Bush & Co and the center, probably represented by the third essay published in the London Times by one its editorialists. Sam H leaves me with little hope that Western political leaders will ever deal with and in facts. They are all to enamored with their own interpretation of events and prescription for what is to be done by the West vs. Islam’s dogmatic soldiers of terrorism. Islam is too committed to a culture of martyrdom as the only way to defend its honour. And the West, Bush, Blair, Harper and Co, are absolutely committed to the “war on terrorism”, so ne’er the twain shall meet, which is precisely Sam H’s point.
