The Vatican, Muslims and tomorrow

November 12, 10:23 AMIndependent ExaminerBrian Trent

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Photo credit: A Common Word

Yesterday, the Vatican opened a three-day meeting with Muslim clerics in response (after more than a year) to the October 11 2007 letter from the global Muslim community sent to numerous Christian leaders. This wasn’t simply a Hallmark greetings card; in-process for more than three years, it boasts 138 signatures from every branch of Islam in multiple countries. It’s titled, “A Common Word Between Us and You.“

"If Muslims and Christians are not at peace,” the letter observes, “then the world cannot be at peace.”

Very true.

One sentence later, we have this: “With the terrible weaponry of the modern world… no side can unilaterally win a conflict."

Also true, but that won’t stop the fanatics from wanting to try. But let’s return to this point in a moment; for now, let’s simply talk about the fact that a single letter, written as a single voice, was dispatched to the Christian community… with rumors that this same cabal is planning on writing letters to other groups as well. Whatever else it may be, this letter is certainly an invite to talk.

Will it do any good?

Quite simply, it depends on who gets together to do the talking. We’ve all had experiences with pathologically irrational people who are incapable of true discussion, and there isn’t a subject on Earth which brings these types to the surface more quickly than religion. It isn’t like ice cream, where an assorted crowd of sugarholics can feel comfortable ordering vanilla, chocolate, or Cherry Garcia without worrying that they’ll be put to death over a matter of taste.

Let’s not even talk about peace yet. There are people who define “peace” as “submission to Allah’s will,” or the “conversion of the world to Jesus by any means necessary” as the Requerimiento and papal bulls throughout history endorsed. Let’s just limit ourselves to open dialogue between religious crowds, something which "A Common Word," and the Vatican's three-day meeting, purports to spearhead. And the question must be posed, does everyone want that?

In a word, no.

The torches-and-pitchforks crowd of both religions want an excuse to destroy, pillage, covert by force, and exploit. In scientific terms, these are the reptilian-brainers, governed by fanatical ritual and the lowest human emotions of hate and fear. Yet these people don’t speak for the majority of the world. Global society is in mid-evolution, taking to heart Enlightenment ideals that first spawned the United States as the great modern example of

A nation founded not on monarchy or theocracy, but on a secular Constitution, and

A nation which values liberty protected by that Constitution.

Global society is outgrowing its medieval adolescence, and has come to accept progressive values of which freedom belongs, of which plurality is kin, of which an informed republic is possible. Information and knowledge, and the power both put in our hands, is the resource of a new enlightenment.

Honest dialogue, then, between Christian and Jew and Muslim is only possible if the fanatics are removed from the room. Forcibly. And if necessary, violently. You can’t talk peace with someone wearing a C-4 cummerbund. You don’t offer such a person an olive branch – you shoot him. And the same goes for the bloodthirsty apocalyptophiles who try systematically to remake America, and the Middle East, in the image of Biblical “prophecy.” Just as the Bible is no proper guide to morality, it is also no compass to the future.

Some in the Muslim world seek to engage in enlightened dialogue? Then they must condemn, root out, and destroy the fanatics in their midst.

The Christian world seeks to participate? Then it must condemn, root out, and destroy their own fanatics. Christian leaders who readily distance themselves from the Westboro Baptist Church must also put James Dobson, Jonathan Falwell, and other zealots in the same category.

Quite simply, humanity has always been able to choose, collectively, where it goes. We could have stayed in the trees and caves, but we ventured out and made ourselves masters of the world. We could have allowed ourselves to be prey to every whim of disease, and instead we ardently develop medicine.

Even as scientists churn out these cures, some people shun “secular” discoveries and demand we simply appeal to God. We read these stories in newspapers all the time: Another diabetic child killed by fanatic parents who chose prayer over insulin. Such people are “crazies,” we say. They don’t represent Christianity in general.

Muslims have told me, too, that suicide-bombers don’t represent Islam in general either. They are a grotesque minority, I’m told. Osama Bin Laden doesn’t speak for Islam.

Fine, I reply. Then as a majority, start doing some house-cleaning. They must begin to introduce the progressive values of individual liberty, pluralism, and a secular state that, while granting religious freedom, does not condemn people to die for blasphemy.

And that’s just it. In progressive civilization you have the freedom to believe what you will… just not always the freedom to practice those beliefs. If you believe in the End Times or Ragnarok, you’re free to believe that; you’re not free to push for war based on Biblical or Koranic upsells. You can believe in Adam and Eve or that the world is stacked on the backs of infinite turtles, but you are not free to impose this view on science classrooms. You are free to believe that women should cover themselves with a burqa, but you are not free to force a woman to do so.

Religious freedom offends fundamentalists. Freedom of any sort offends fundamentalists.

The Islamic world has largely been an immense affront to progressive civilization, but that wasn’t always the case. In the 1100s, it was the brightest point of intellectual inquiry since the fall of the classical world. What happened? The fundamentalists took over. They grabbed the reins of their society and derailed themselves into a violent, brutal, backwards era.

Quite simply, if the Vatican and other Christian leaders, together with Muslim clerics and leaders, wish to communicate in the 21st century, they must both step out of their sandboxes and grow up. "A Common Word" appears to be heartfelt and genuine, and if I don’t care for its “there’s only One God” tone, I certainly am willing to salute its single voice from the divisive Islamic crowd, and wonder if this is a first step for true dialogue. It's possible that a first letter rife with too many progressive values would have been rejected out of hand at this stage.

Speculation aside, the letter is here.

It should be answered by the rational, and should be the next step toward a new age of rationality.