Expendable lives

Ok, we are not at war with Islam, but it just happens that Islam is at war with us.

Not from now, but since fourteen centuries. Here again it would suffice some knowledge of history. First half of the Byzantine empire was lost to the conquering onslaught of the Arabs; centuries later the remaining part of the empire collapsed under the Turkish pressure; still in the eighteenth century the Turks were besieging Vienna. Do I need to continue?

Does this authorize us to want to burn the Qur'an. Well, no. Why to provoke in vain? But that is not the question. What I ask is whether we can criticize the Qur'an. Here is at stake one of the basic tenets of our civilization. And I am afraid that the answer come close to a blunt no!

Burning the Qur'an would be a drastic show of criticism. But even milder signs of it arise angry masses in the Muslim world. Think of what happened after the Pope's Regensburg address.

Spontaneous uprisings? Allow me to doubt it strongly. I don't think that the average Pakistani or Indian Muslim attacking Christian churches follow the western press, or television or internet. But there is a planned war run by way of the media, to provoke terror and psychological subjugation. So Europe to a large extent, and to a lesser extent the USA, already live in a state of semi dhimmitude, because of the fear to speak out.

The trouble is that while here we are concerned with not rubbing Muslims the wrong way (if we don't want to endanger our or other Christians' lives), Christian lives are considered expendable in large parts of the Muslim world. Any non Muslim life is considered expendable.

Ok, this is the best I can do for now.

HP

On War, and Words, and Wars of Words, cont'd

The conversation into which I interjected myself has continued fruitfully in the combox below the post by which I accomplished my interjection.

Indeed, my absence this weekend has allowed the HP to elaborate the main thrust of the argument clearly and succinctly.

I would like to elaborate on the points he has raised, taking as my starting point his invocation of St. Thomas Aquinas.

I am fairly certain the HP, in invoking the Angelic Doctor, had in mind the following text from the opening paragraphs of the Summa contra gentes:

To proceed against individual errors, however, is a difficult business, and this for two reasons. In the first place, it is difficult because the sacrilegious remarks of individual men who have erred are not so well known to us so that we may use what they say as the basis of proceeding to a refutation of their errors. This is, indeed, the method that the ancient Doctors of the Church used in the refutation of the errors of the Gentiles. For they could know the positions taken by the Gentiles since they themselves had been Gentiles, or at least had lived among the Gentiles and had been instructed in their teaching. In the second place, it is difficult because some of them, such as the Mohammedans and the pagans, do not agree with us in accepting the authority of any Scripture, by which they may be convinced of their error. Thus, against the Jews we are able to argue by means of the Old Testament, while against heretics we are able to argue by means of the New Testament. But the Muslims and the pagans accept neither the one nor the other. We must, therefore, have recourse to the natural reason, to which all men are forced to give their assent. However, it is true, in divine matters the natural reason has its failings. SCG I.2.iii (quoting from the Pegis translation of Book I, available in its entirety here)

The reason for which the Old and New Testaments are useless for the purposes of proving the erroneous nature of pagan theology, should be clear: the OT and NT are not their sacred texts - which is to say they are not recognized as authoritative. An appeal to their contents canot, therefore, serve as proof of a disputed question.

The Old and New Testaments are similarly useless for the purposes of theological disputation with Muslims. The reason for this is the supersessionist presupposition of Islam: the Qur'an is God's final reveleation, and it replaces His earlier revelations. Importantly, the principle is applied to interpretation of the Qur'an itself, as well - later verses (surrahs) control earlier ones, so the question of a surrah's composition (the question as to when a verse was "handed down" to use the Muslims' own technical terminology) becomes essential (and we will see why this matters later on, when we consider a specific case).

If, therefore, we are to convince a Muslim interlocutor of the truth of Christianity, we have no choice but to begin by proving that the Qur'an is not plausible as the definitive statement of God's revelation to humanity, and so on the grounds that it directly and irreconcilably contradicts at least one of the ultimate truths, which human beings may know by the working of reason without an appeal to the authority of the data of faith.

On this reading, the science of philosophy provides the only space for dialogue among Christians and Muslims.

That Christians can practice philosophy without compromising their faith commitments is a long-established fact in the Catholic tradition.

Muslims, however, are necessarily embarrassed by philosophical dialogue, and so for two reasons, one "doctrinal" and the other historical, though closely and perceptably linked to the doctrinal reason.

Basically, one becomes a Muslim by making an act of islam - of submission - to the will of the One God. The will of the One God is manifest in al-Qur'an, literally the prounouncement, or promulgation (or declamation or recitation) of God's prophet, a merchant named Muhammad.

According to this al-Qur'an, this pronouncement, God is perfectly One, absolutely transcendent, and utterly ineffable. Even His one-ness is known only and entirely through submission to His manifest will. To make any attempt to penetrate, by means of human reason, the inner life of the Divine, were to risk impiety.

The end of philosophy is precisely the knoweldge of God.

So, the Muslim finds himself under a sort of crisis whenever he attempts to think God's thoughts, as it were.

This, on its own, were not enough to exclude the Muslims from philosophy a priori. Indeed, there were, during the first few centuries of Islamic ascendancy, thriving schools of speculative theology, and the thought of the principal exponents of those schools greatly influenced Western intellectual history.

The problem is, the schools were suppressed, and most of the teachers executed, banished, forced to recant or otherwise silenced - and this was not an accident.

The Arabic word for speculative conversation is kalaam, which ideally renders the Greek dia-logos, from which we have the English, "dialogue". The question in the first few Islamic centuries was which would be the chief science: would it be kalaam, or rather the positive legal science known as Shari'a, roughly, "the way" or "the path"? The Muslim world, through its leaders, opted for that, which is admittedly the more internally coherent alternative: the primacy of positive legal science.

Now the problem comes fully into view: speculative reason cannot submit to positive law, and remain properly speculative. To insist on the primacy of positive legal science entails not merely the demotion of speculative reason, but the dismissal of speculation as basically irrelevant to the human community.

Said shortly, the current state of Islamic self-understanding is such that dialogue among speculative thinkers is not so much impossible, as it is irrelevant.

What must be found is a way to enter conversation with Muslim legal scholars, who alone speak authoritatively within their communities.

More on this next time...

LD

A Reply to Maureen Dowd

The New York Times has published an Op-Ed piece by Maureen Dowd.

Usually, when I peruse the pages of the Gray Lady, and cross an item with her by-line over it, I say a prayer for her soul and move on.

Her latest effort is filled with the usual vitriol, loathing and low spirit.

This, on its own, would place it in the company of her usual efforts, and would not qualify it as worthy of the response of any person used to civilized discourse.

Her latest piece is also profoundly and pitiably narcissistic, though this, alone, were not sufficient to merit the attention, let alone the response, of an intelligent reader.

Ms. Dowd's most recent contribution is, however, so deliberately and hatefully tendentious, so appallingly false in its claims and insinuations against the good name of the world's greatest moral leader, that its appearance in the pages of the Gray Lady impugns the very profession of journalistic opinion, and sullies the name of those who profess it.

This calls for a reply.

I make this a matter of journalistic integrity because the man Ms. Dowd has so unfairly, so uselessly and withal how spitefully attacked, has neither need nor desire of defense from this or any other quarter.

I must say that I am embarrassed by the number and variety of statements, claims, insinuations and suggestions that present themselves for cavil.

Ought I to take issue with her use of the term, "inquisition" to refer to the Apostolic visitation?

Her patently false assertion that "the Vatican" is looking to "herd [the women religious] (whom she inaccurately groups together under the technically specific "nuns" thus further betraying her appalling ignorance of the faith into which she was baptized as a child and against which she rails so violently now) back into their old-fashioned habits and convents and curb any speck of modernity or independence."

Surely this last ought not to be mentioned before the infinitely more serious claim, according to which the Holy See would like to punish Catholic women religious for working with ailing gays.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

For the record, the Church has nothing but praise for religious sisters who work for ailing gays, Ms. Dowd. She is concerned, however, when those women religious are helping those ailing gays find dates for Saturday evening.

For the record, the Church is not overly concerned even with the transformation of community life in certain communities. Sisters living in apartments is not an issue: sisters living in apartments and sacrificing to the triple goddess is.

I will not stoop so low as to answer her assertion that the recent announced dispositions for former Anglican communities to enter full communion are really an attempt to pad the ranks of the Church's gay-hating, mysogynistic right wing.

We are all familiar with Sister X's claim to the effect that the visitation amounts to bullying.

Bull is right.

Shall I pause to consider Ms. Dowd's hackneyed caricature of the Pope as "God's rottweiler" and her discussion of his office as prefect of the CDF? She said Cardinal Ratzinger was “The Enforcer” and backed this up with his investigation and and discipline of two American women religious.

Two thousand?

Two hundred?

No.

Two.

That's right: in nearly a quarter century as the Pope's "Doctrinal Enforcer", the man who now sits on Peter's throne investigated two whole sisters.

One of the sisters was involved in active and contumacious opposition to the Church's teaching on sexuality.

The other, a Sister of Mercy, was making sure that state money was going to help poor women safely and legally rip the living flesh of their offspring from their wombs.

This almost makes one wonder what the Pope's watchdog was watching.

At the end, her claims become so hysterical, her accusations so preposterous, and her arguments so specious, that the only proper response is pity, and prayer for Ms. Dowd's mental healing and spiritual conversion.

We are left wondering, however, why the New York Times would have published such implausible, such lunatic screed.

The paper's almost apologetic tag-line to Dowd's piece says it all. It reads: "Nicholas D. Kristof is off today."

LD