A reader writes from…

…apparently, Somewhere in the UK:

About this:

• First, isn’t it interesting how things that appear to be “elementary” moral teaching (“Don’t lie”) suddenly get complex when it’s Us and not Them who are pondering the problem. Case in point, not long ago we were all being told how peculiarly immoral Muslims were for their concept of Taqiyya or lying in defense of some sacred truth and how almost inhumanly different these barbarians are from us good Christian folk. ….Remember this discussion that next time you are tempted to harshly judge some Muslim who thinks you can lie in a good cause. We’re not so very different after all.

Very true – it’s nice to see that point about taqqiya made. And best of all to see that last sentence. There is so much demonising of others on the Net (I’ve done it too, so I’m blaming no one), that seeing that is very refreshing.

From this other side of the Pond, I’m very struck by the similarity between much anti-Muslim talk, and much 1960s anti-Catholicism. Taqqiya seems to be the Muslim counterpart to mental reservation: both practices function as proofs of the unreliability & general nefariousness of the body attacked. Read Loraine Boettner’s 1962 famous book “Islam” – he could have been describing Roman Catholicism, if words here and there are changed. He complains of Taqqiya, persecution by Muslims, of how they have a divided allegiance between America OTOH & the teaching of the Hadith & the Koran OTO. He speaks of they are good neighbours in parts of the world, which to the more foolish Christians in the West gives the impression that they are not as tyrannical as their Koran & their religion require them to be. This good impression is of course strongly emphasised by their imams & mullahs in the US, who fail to point out that any decent & human & democrats attitudes among Muslims, far from being the fruit of Islam, are due to contact with US, which is well known to be the most Protestant, & therefore most Christian, nation upon earth. Real Americans will rally round, and expose the deceitfulness of Islam, & show it up as the corrupt thing it is.

It’s just as well Boettner did not write a book called “Roman Catholicism” …

Joking apart, ISTM very curious, & very striking, that so many of the accusations against Islam echo those made against CCism only two generations ago. I know of the USA *only* what I’ve read – but from here, it looks very much as though there is a set menu of accusations against alien bodies, & that once the alien bodies became part of US life, two things happen: they join in the chorus of dislike for the next alien body, and that alien body is described in much the same terms as its predecessor.

Does it make sense to ask “What makes Christians in the US think as they do ?” ?

On taqqiya – might it have its roots in the teaching of some Greek Fathers ? It would be interesting to know what would be left of Islam, if (1) all the Christian element were removed; (2) all the Muslim element were removed.

It certainly makes sense to ask it, particularly from Across the Pond since I often get the sense that we are as mysterious to Brits, as the popularity of cricket is to us. There is, I think, a certain pattern to our waves of hostility to Newcomers and our peculiar genius for absorbing those newcomers. And you are right: there is an eerie similarity between Protestant anti-Catholic nativism.

Of course, at the same time, it should be noted that no Catholic committed acts of mass terrorism that killed 3,000 innocent Americans and bid fair to completely decapitate the state by either crashing a plane into the White House or the Capitol. Also, not a lot of videos of barbaric Catholics decapitating helpless civilian hostages while shouting, “Hail Mary!” So there are some differences in this clash of civilizations: the primary one being that Islam has not received the chastening lesson both Catholics and Protestants received from the religious wars of the 17th century. Islam experienced immediate and vast worldly success. Mohammed was, as the saying goes, his own Constantine. Islam learned early to be gracious to subject peoples, so long as Islam ruled the roost. Learning how to cope with being an underling has not been such a successful lesson. In short, Islam is a sullen bully that beats people up and complains about being a victim.

Americans are not immune from this, of course. But it is striking how often Radical Muslim terrorist slaughter innocent people and call themselves “martyrs”. Also, a culture that forms its children this way:

Does seem rather different than, say, Catholic immigrants who were taught to revere saints who allowed themselves to be killed for the Faith rather than going around slaughtering innocents for the Faith.

To be sure, the pathetic kids in that video are not living in the US and are responding to stuff in their neck of the woods (just as Irish members of the IRA were not cut from the same cloth as Hofficer Stacy J. O’Casey Shea walking the beat in Brooklyn circa 1920). So I’m skeptical that legions of young American Muslims are tunneling under my house in preparation for the Great Intifada. Indeed, my guess is that Muslim parents are worrying about a lot of the stuff Catholic parents worry about: MTV, sex, drug, rock ‘n roll, crass consumerism, and the dulling effect American culture has on one’s concern for spiritual matters. Some of them will be radicalized, just as some Christians get radicalized (and often this is the young, who react violently to something in their youth and make some eternal vow of consecration to radicalism). But Islamic radicalization does tend to be deadlier than Christian radicalization, since radical Christians have lots in their tradition driving them toward radical vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, while Radical Islam tends to direct its radicalism outward in violence toward the enemies of Islam in the Dar el Harb. And Islam doesn’t seem to have any checks on radicalization internally. When some Christian shoots an abortionist, the condemnation is almost universal. When some radical Muslim kills a Christian, the condemnation is typically muted in the Islam world while there are lots and lots of people high fiving each other all over the Islamosphere.

In short, Islam doesn’t need a Reformation. Islam needs a Pope, because there’s no particular way of controlling the crazies and the crazies make up a much bigger percentage of the population than the crazies in the Church.

I wish I knew what to do. Happily, that’s not my job. Running history is God’s problem.

Thanks for a thought-provoking letter.