Islam and the West

Here are some more thoughts on Islam and its relations with Western culture courtesy of my father.

“I have not come to send peace, but a sword.” -Matt. 10:34

Much has been reported this last week of the outrage of the Muslim world over the work of a European cartoonist. It is a tragic story of hatred and violence in which many innocent people have paid an awful price. These are perilous times in which a great drama is being played out on the world stage and no one knows for certain where these events will take us. We are not immune from the events of the world. Fifteen African churches burned this week because of a Danish cartoon. That is why the Psalmist reminds us to ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem.’ As Jerusalem goes, so go we.

What I find interesting is that in this whole Muslim World vs. the West controversy is that each side seems to be challenging the other at their weakest point. Surely the intolerance of the Muslim world as expressed in placards reading “Butcher those who mock Islam” is a total embarrassment to moderate Muslims everywhere or confirmation that Islam is a dangerous threat to world peace. No one would concern themselves with the Muslim religion if it were not for this propensity for violence on the part of those that claim to hold the fundamentals of the faith most dearly, these who dare to openly proclaim, “Europe, your 9/11 is coming.”

The weakness of the West is embodied in Europe’s cold and empty cathedrals, its lack of any interest in matters of faith, and its callous secularism that is quickly morphing into intolerance towards all religion. It truly cannot understand how anyone would take matters of faith seriously. It piously defends the right of expression and the freedom of the press. And yet these rights and freedoms are but hollow instruments of a hollow people who believe in nothing and have nothing to say. Mockery is the only thing which excites them to creativity and action.

What we are witnessing is a grand tilt of religion in its most extreme and absolutist form going up against old and intractable atheism. But this is not a militant atheism that believes in a higher Utopia such as Marxism. This is your old, tired, garden-variety version of secularism that aims at nothing and hits it square. It is the same secularism that would wrap its comfortable arms around our families declaring that the “good life” is all that matters. Under its spell, comfort and affluence, peace and prosperity, personal fulfillment become the chief end of man. Justice becomes the hobby of the more intellectually acute (‘equal rights for the disenfranchised’) or ecology a religion for those demanding purpose (‘save the whales’), but truth is discarded as just so much historical flotsam of a more primitive and combative age.

The enemy of our families lies not only in some religious extremists who would bring everyone in submission to its bondage but also in the siren call of ‘life at the mall’: a never ending circle of vacuous entertainment, materialism, consumption, and lives of comfort and ease that never question the why and where of anything. Christ came not to bring peace but a sword. And that sword is the sword of truth that cuts our lives in so many ways. It causes us to bleed in many different forms of self-sacrifice, dedication, self-denial, moral purity, care for our brother, mission, and belief in ideas that are real and have consequence. Truth is our only real defense against those who our world has given the neutral and sanitary label of ‘terrorists.’ Secularism will crumble and cower before their onslaught. May you lift God’s Truth high every day and instill in young minds the part they must play in this great world drama.

Mercy and Truth,
Mr. Moe

(February 23, 2006)