“It’s regrettable that a pastor in Gainesville, Fla., with a church of no more than 50 people can make this outrageous and disgraceful plan and get the world’s attention,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “But that’s the world we live in right now.”
She’s right. Politics, religion and the media make for a potent brew nowadays, and whoever fails to come to grips with their complexity does so at his peril. So it is that an act Terry Jones didn’t even carry out led to deaths around the world.
As the Register went to press, the fury unleashed by news reports of the Quran desecrations carried out on Sept. 11 in imitation of Jones’ canceled plan to burn copies of the Muslim holy book on the grounds of his nondenominational Dove World Outreach Center had already caused at least 22 deaths, hundreds of injuries, the destruction of the oldest school in Kashmir, and attacks on still more Christian schools and a hospital. Massive protests had been organized in India, Iran and Afghanistan.
As usual, most of those who lost their lives were ordinary Muslims caught up in demonstrations that turned violent and were fired upon by security forces.
As usual, the voices of moderate Muslim imams who called for moderation were entirely drowned out.
As usual, the issue was exploited for political ends — by the Iranian regime, and by secessionists in the Indian province of Kashmir, who found it convenient to renew their summer-long violence in the name of protests against American “infidels.”
So did Terry Jones really think it would turn out any different this time? As Jones told CNN on Sept. 7, “We want to send a very clear message to the radical element of Islam: … That we are not interested in their sharia law; we do not tolerate their threats, their fear, their radicalness.”
He was sending a very different message: that Christians live in fear and that Christians hate their enemies.
That distortion of Christian teaching was grave enough to merit a once-in-a-blue-moon public intervention by the Vatican in a matter of American Protestantism:
“The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue received with great concern the news of the proposed ‘Koran Burning Day’ on the occasion of the Anniversary of the September 11th tragic terrorist attacks in 2001 which resulted in the loss of many innocent lives and considerable material damage.
“These deplorable acts of violence, in fact, cannot be counteracted by an outrageous and grave gesture against a book considered sacred by a religious community. Each religion, with its respective sacred books, places of worship and symbols, has the right to respect and protection. We are speaking about the respect to be accorded the dignity of the person who is an adherent of that religion and his/her free choice in religious matters. … Each religious leader and believer is also called to renew the firm condemnation of all forms of violence, in particular those committed in the name of religion.”
We can get an idea of the right attitude to take from Acts 19: 18-19, in which the people of Ephesus respond to St. Paul’s teaching: “Many of those who had become believers came forward and openly acknowledged their former practices. Moreover, a large number of those who had practiced magic collected their books and burned them in public. They calculated their value and found it to be fifty thousand silver pieces.”
St. Paul didn’t take the lead in burning books of sorcery. Those who did so were the books’ owners. For them, it was an act of repudiation. So let’s let former Muslims abandon their own Qurans as they embrace the truth of Christianity. We’ll never help them find the fullness of truth in Christ if we insist on burning their Qurans for them.
When Jones held a press conference on Sept. 16 to dismiss calls for him to apologize, he said instead, “We have no conviction from God to repent. We will not repent for standing up for the Gospel. … The church in America and worldwide have lost their guts to stand up for what is right. They have lost their guts to stand up for Christianity.”
The Gospel and the Christianity we choose to stand up for is this: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on (your) right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. … You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 6: 38-39, 43-45).
Neither Jones nor Islamic militants are the true extremists. They’re taking the easy path of blind hatred. We’re the true extremists if we live the radical kind of love that Christ invites us to, a love more radical than anyone could dream up. It’s the kind of love that changes hearts and souls and can convert the world to the truth of Christ.
We’re not called to do so because it’s easy. We’re called to do it because it’s the right thing to do. And it will go totally unnoticed in the news, as mass acts of common sense and virtue usually do.
Can we forgive those who fostered and exploited the riots in the Middle East? Can we forgive Terry Jones and those who followed his example?
We have to be able to. We can’t just complain about the world’s double standards. We can’t ask questions like “Why not respond to their flag burning with a Quran burning?”
We have to be able to because we are Christians, and we deeply desire to be worthy of that name. And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.
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How can you write something as confusing to non catholics as:“a pastor in Gainesville, Fla., with a church” when there is only One Church-The Catholic Church.
What happen in Kashmir is not because of the news of Quran burning as interpreted by Indian media. We kashmari want independence and on that day they killed 18 innocent kashmaries. Instead of blaming to their troops they blame the news. We want freedom from India and we need help from international community for this noble cause. We hate india and like to be independent but india uses force to crush our demand. Hope You all will help innocent kashmaries in getting the freedom by writing for us through you pen and other means which you have.
10,000 Korans, or bibles for that matter, are not worth a single life.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and with Islam that means keeping up on the daily global news of its war on the world. Do it the easy way with free article and op-ed links supplied by the Historyscoper at http://tinyurl.com/islamwatch
Many of the deeds of Islam may be bad, like the killing of christians in the name of blasphemy. But we christians are taught to suffer and even love the enemies. One thing you see ....is there any peace in any Muslim country ? Do they believe in tolerance, non violence and good neighbourliness ? Of course there are exemplary muslims who are tolerant but they too cannot open their mouth onaccount of the threat by these lumpen elements. Only some daring muslim intellectuals can change the attitude by working hard on the mindset of the people. But the words of Koran also seem to encourage some intolerance Let us pray
The *National Catholic Register* should keep publishing editorials in the same vein as the above reaction. Dissent from the Church’s authentic teaching on Catholic-Muslim relations is as much “cafeteria Catholicism” as is the refusal to accept the Magisterium’s teachings on abortion, war, or sexual ethics. Moreover, if we do or say anything that could lead our Muslim brothers and sisters to the conclusion that we hate them, then the fulfillment of our obligation of evangelizing them will be obstructed.
Messrs. O’Brien and Thomas, I would like you to consider the following passages from a piece I wrote for Front Page Magazine, “How Will Rome Face Mecca?” in which I quote Besancon (his comments are in bold italics):
However, Benedict and his bishops must confront what French historian Alain Besancon called the “indulgent ecumenicism”<b> that dominates the Christian response to Islam, whether through Martino’s superficial multiculturalism or through the wistful yearning for traditionalist transcendence that Besancon described in Commentary magazine:
<i><b>“Contributing to the partiality toward Islam is an underlying dissatisfaction with modernity, and with our liberal, capitalist individualistic arrangements…. Alarmed by the ebbing of religious faith in the Christian West, and particularly in Europe, these writers cannot but admire Muslim devoutness…. Surely, they reason, it is better to believe in something than in nothing, and since these Muslims believe in something, they must believe in the same thing we do.”
<i>Influencing that attitude was the work of European scholar Louis Massignon, who popularized the ideas of the Koran as a kind of biblical revelation and of Muslims as being among Abraham’s spiritual children.
<i>“An entire literature favorable to Islam has grown up in Europe,” Besancon wrote, “much of it the work of Catholic priests under the sway of Massignon’s ideas.”
<i>Europe is not the only place where such indulgent ecumenism holds sway. Cardinal Bernard Law, the disgraced former Archbishop of Boston, created controversy in November 2002 when he bowed toward Mecca and prayed to Allah in a suburban mosque during a Ramadan service. Afterward, he told the congregants:
<i>“I feel very much at home with my fellow fundamentalists here, who are convinced that God must be at the center of our lives (Boston Globe, Nov. 25, 2002).”
<i>Such sentimentality, however, ignores the irreconcilable differences between Christianity, Judaism and Islam that Besancon described in his Commentary article, “What Kind Of Religion is Islam?”
<i>Though all three faiths are monotheistic, Islam rejects the doctrines of atonement and redemption that define Christianity and Judaism. Moreover, no concept of a covenant between God and humanity exists in Islam. Instead, Allah decrees his law “by means of a unilateral pact, in an act of sublime condescension (that) precludes any notion of imitating God as is urged in the Bible,” Besancon wrote.
<i>Islam also rejects the Christian doctrines of original sin and the necessity of mediation between God and humanity. In the Koran, Jesus “appears… out of place and out of time, without reference to the landscape of Israel,” Besancon wrote.
<i>Most importantly, Judeo-Christian and Muslim concepts of divinity revolve around one irreconcilable difference:
<i>“Although Muslims like to enumerate the 99 names of God, missing from the list, but central to the Jewish and even more so to the Christian conception of God, is ‘Father’ - i.e., a personal god capable of a reciprocal and loving relation with men,” Besancon wrote. “The one God of the Koran, the God Who demands submission is a distant God; to call him ‘Father’ would be an anthropomorphic sacrilege.”
Read this carefully, fellow Catholics. The soul of the Church depends on it.
BTW, Mr. O’Brien, do you believe that either Charles Martel or San Juan Matamoros would be “cafeteria Catholics” if they “dissented” from the contemporary Church’s “teaching on Islam,” which doesn’t seem to reflect the “teaching” of their own day?
Anyone who contradicts the following words of Vatican II is dissenting from official Catholic teaching (as well as the Golden Rule, which the Church has taught in every century): “Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Muslims, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom” (*Nostra aetate*, section 3). Let’s listen to the Church in accordance with the principle that the new catechism enunciates in section 87.
I agree with you that the Qu’ran burning was a bad idea–it only inflames emotions. But I think too many Christians are naive in their attitude toward Islam. Christians often lack any real understanding of what Islam teaches. While we must always be loving, merciful, kind and truthful with particular Muslims and be a witness to them in our lived Christianity, at the same time we must vigorously oppose the religion of Islam because it intends to replace Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior of all mankind with Muhammad and teaches that the Old and New Testaments have been replaced with the Qu’ran. It is not loving to the Muslim people to deny them the truth that Christ died to give them. We are commanded by Christ to preach the Good News to all the nations. But we are denied the freedom to do this in Muslim countries, while Muslims are free to proselytize in Christian countries and are doing so aggressively.
We must remember that Islam is a territorial religion and is required not only to convert individuals but to take over land, law and politics for Islamic interests. They are actively working on this in North America. Da’wa (Islamic mission) has agencies in the U.S. established by Muslim professionals and also sponsored by Islamic nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Libya actively proselytizing through all possible means of communication, as well as establishing Islamic schools and influencing our universities.
We must realize we are engaged in an intense struggle for minds and hearts and Christians must not be weak or passive. I think the Florida pastor recognized this, and while he chose a poor method of addressing the challenge, he is perhaps less to be criticized than Christians who don’t even care. If we do truly care about Christ’s kingdom, we must fight for it assertively with all the weapons of truth, Scripture, courage and prayer. Pope Benedict has shown us the way in his pointing to the human gift of reason and its importance in avoiding violence. Christians need to be united in this and not back down in the face of Islamic pressures and protests. Christ was not “nice” to the enemies of truth and goodness who opposed His Father’s will but spoke sternly and clearly. The Scriptures tells us that if anyone repents of a wrong, we are to forgive them, but, while we are always to be ready in our hearts to forgive, we cannot actually forgive those who have no intention of repenting. Muslims will only respect us if we are strong and firm and assertive about our own belief and act as though we actually believe that Christ is God and Lord of all the universe, and has dominion over them as well as us.
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