Page 2 of 2 A Pyrrhic propaganda victory in Rome?
By Spengler
Human Rights does not in the least inhibit Muslim governments from persecuting
non-Muslims in their own countries; why should the affirmation of such rights
by a group of Muslim scholars have any additional impact?
Benedict has another concern. From the vantage point of enlightened Western
thinking, no form of violation of human rights is more onerous than the denial
of free thought, speech and worship, and the suppression of such rights in the
Muslim world constitutes the most egregious violation of human rights in the
world today. In Benedict's view, there is an even more terrible
violation of human rights, namely what he considers to be the mass murder of
the unborn through abortion.
As he told the Muslim delegation on November 6, "There is a great and vast
field in which we can act together in defending and promoting the moral values
which are part of our common heritage. Only by starting with the recognition of
the centrality of the person and the dignity of each human being, respecting
and defending life which is the gift of God, and is thus sacred for Christians
and for Muslims alike - only on the basis of this recognition, can we find a
common ground for building a more fraternal world, a world in which
confrontations and differences are peacefully settled, and the devastating
power of ideologies is neutralized."
The issue of abortion is the focal point of the argument within the Church that
Christians should make common cause with Muslims against Western secularism.
Islam and Catholicism agree on abortion, although the former position stems
from the fixed mores of traditional society, while the latter is founded on a
theological doctrine of God's love for every individual. The second point of
the Rome declaration reads, "Human life is a most precious gift of God to each
person. It should therefore be preserved and honored in all its stages."
For Western Christians to look for Muslim allies on the "life issues" would be
a calamitous error, I believe. Much as I sympathize with the Catholic position
on abortion, Christianity (like Judaism) is founded on the premise that God
offers grace to every human being. The offer of grace requires our freedom to
seek it or accept it. To fall back on the compulsions of traditional society in
order to contain the evil of abortion would unleash an even greater evil on the
world, the evil that Judaism and Christianity were formed to resist.
Christianity and Judaism are religions of love, and the relationship they
proclaim with God is one of espousal. God's love for His people as expressed in
the rapturous nuptial hymns of the Song of Songs is the core of both religions.
As a theologian, Benedict XVI has led the Church towards what some theologians
call "nuptial mysticism" (see
The inside story of the Western mind , Asia Times Online, November 6,
2007).
In this respect, the declaration issued by the Muslim and Catholic sides at the
November 4 meeting conflated Christian and Muslim concepts of love in a
misleading way. The document states, among other things;
God's love is
placed in the human heart through the Holy Spirit. It is God who first loves us
thereby enabling us to love Him in return. Love does not harm one's neighbor
but rather seeks to do to the other what one would want done to oneself. Love
is the foundation and sum of all the commandments (Cf. Gal 5, 14). Love of
neighbor cannot be separated from love of God, because it is an expression of
our love for God ... For Muslims, as set out in A Common Word, love is a
timeless transcendent power which guides and transforms human mutual regard.
This love, as indicated by the Holy and Beloved Prophet Muhammad, is prior to
the human love for the One True God ... So immense is this love and compassion
that God has intervened to guide and save humanity in a perfect way many times
and in many places, by sending prophets and scriptures.
The
great German-Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig showed that nothing resembling
the Judeo-Christian concept of divine love possibly can exist in Islam (see my
study of Rosenzweig in the October 2007 issue of
First Things). "The path of Allah requires the obedience of the will to
a commandment that has been given once and for all time. By contrast, in
[Judeo-Christian] brotherly love, the spore of human character erupts ever
anew, incited by the ever-surprising outbreak of the act of love," Rosenzweig
wrote.
Love is humble, and God's love is embodied in divine humility. The creator God
of the Universe suffers along with His creatures in the Hebrew Bible, and in
the Christian Bible takes human form to sacrifice Himself to take away the sins
of the world. An "absolutely transcendent" God - as Benedict qualified Allah in
his September 2006 Regensburg address - is incapable of divine humility. Again,
Rosenzweig: "Unlike the God of faith, Allah cannot go before his own [people]
and say to their face that he has chosen them above all others in all their
sinfulness, and in order to make them accountable for their sins. That the
failings of human beings arouse divine love more powerfully than their merits
is an impossible, indeed an absurd thought to Islam - but it is the thought
that stands at the heart of [Jewish and Christian] faith.”
The Sufi current in Islam places a considerable emphasis on love, to be sure,
but this finds expression in homoerotic pederasty, as I wrote in an August 12
essay on Sufism,
sodomy and satan for Asia Times Online.
Cobbling together an agreement between Islamic and Catholic scholars on the
presumption of a common view of divine love is the rough equivalent of an
agreement between Soviet and American constitutional lawyers on the subject of
human rights. Such declarations used to be issued by organizations friendly to
communism, to be sure, although history does not look at them kindly. At best
the conflation of the Islamic and Judeo-Christian concept of love is an
exercise in self-deception. For those who find the theological arguments
obscure, I suggest searching the word "love" in any of several online versions
of the Koran, and doing the same in the online Bible, and comparing its
frequency and context. Even more simply, try a Google search on the respect
terms, "God loves you" and "Allah loves you".
The dean of Vatican-watchers, Sandro Magister of www.chiesa.com, took note of
the unwelcome appearance of Professor Tariq Ramadan at the meeting. Magister
wrote:
In accounts of the forum, the media have given disproportionate
attention to Tariq Ramadan. He did not play any role in drafting the letter of
the 138, but added his signature forty days after its publication. His
inclusion among the delegates prompted a bit of surprise at the Vatican. He was
not among the most active participants over the two days of discussions, but he
stirred some interest with the article he published at the beginning of the
seminar in various European newspapers, like The Guardian in England, Le Monde
in France, and Il Riformista in Italy, for which he is a regular commentator.
In the article, Ramadan begins by maintaining that Benedict XVI's lecture in
Regensburg "had more positive than negative consequences".
Nonetheless,
Ramadan managed to turn up for a photo opportunity with the pope at the
November 6 reception. That is an unfortunate outcome, for Ramadan represents
the steel fist of Islam hiding under a velvet glove. Paul Berman's exhaustive
profile of Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood,
appeared in the June 4, 2007, issue of The New Republic; I summarized Berman's
arguments here in The
faith that dare not speak its name on June 12, 2007. Berman portrayed
Ramadan as a purveyor of barely veiled totalitarian sympathies, adulated by
Western journalists fearful of physical reprisal should they criticize him.
Ramadan, as Sandro Magister observed, portrayed the November 4-7 meeting as a
rollback of Benedict's Regensburg speech. I hope the pope proves him wrong.
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