On ignorance of Islam…and the bogey man -

On ignorance of Islam…and the bogey man

Monday, March 26th, 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. Read more

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