Necessary Distinctions and Conversations
by Fr. Roger Landry - September 17, 2010
Around the anniversary of September 11, the subject of Islam in America was very much in the news. There has been the on-going controversy surrounding the planned construction of the Cordoba Center, a Muslim community center that Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf is seeking to build a couple of blocks from the ruins of the World Trade Center. There were also the much-hyped plans of Rev. Terry Jones, pastor of a 50-member Church in Gainesville, Florida, to burn the Koran as a means to protest the "Ground Zero mosque" construction and draw attention to what he called a "very dangerous and very radical" element of Islam; even though Rev. Jones decided not to carry out his plan, Korans were burned on September 11 by two pastors in Springfield, Tennessee as well as by a Cordoba Center protester in lower Manhattan.
Catholic readers of a diocesan newspaper certainly do not need a lengthy analysis of why burning the Koran is, in the words of a communiqué from the Vatican's Council for Interreligious Dialogue, an "outrageous and grave gesture." There are many legitimate ways to protest the building of the Cordoba Center and to express anger at the radical Muslims who promote and carry out terrorist acts. To desecrate the Muslim holy book is not one of them. Such an action serves only to affront, wound, scandalize, and horrify all Muslims as well as, in their opinion, attack and offend the God whom they believe dictated the work. With regard to Muslim terrorists, such an action will serve not to convert them, but to enrage them, and doubtless to facilitate their recruitment efforts and propaganda. The fact that the Koran burning was promoted by those purporting to be Christian ministers — disciples of the one who instructed his followers to love even their enemies, pray for their persecutors, do good to those who hate them and bless those who curse them — makes it all the more disgraceful.
It was good to see how universal and univocal the condemnations of the Koran burning were. At the same time, however, there was something important missing in all the censorious commentary.
It was totally legitimate to note that Koran burning will hurt the reputation of the United States abroad by making all Americans seem like people who tolerate the desecration of others' sacred books. It was accurate to emphasize that igniting Islam's sacred text will make the work of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan more difficult, because American soldiers and diplomats risk being painted with a broad brush as Islam-hating Koran-burners. But it's something altogether of another order when General David Petraeus, for example, says that it will endanger the lives of American troops, when security experts say that it will dramatically raise the risk of terrorist attacks, and when Rev. Jones ended up calling off his sacrilegious stunt because, reportedly, the FBI showed him over 100 credible threats to end his life. As abominable as the burning of Islam's holy book is, the possible murder of a Koran-burner, or the wanton destruction of groups of innocent people through terrorist retaliation, is worse.
If an atheist had been threatening to burn a Bible in Gainesville or an anarchist the American flag, it's highly unlikely that such a publicity stunt would have garnered the near constant attention of media outlets, not to mention statements from the President, the Secretary of State, the head of U.S. military forces overseas, and so many international governments. When more than ten thousand people assembled outside the U.S. embassy in Tehran on Saturday to burn the American flag, and when Muslim mobs in 2006 assembled in various places around the world to desecrate the Bible and burn in effigy photos of Pope Benedict (not to mention raze five churches in the West Bank and murder an Italian nun in Somalia), it got some attention, but didn't evoke anywhere near the same types of condemnations as Rev. Jones elicited. The principal reason for the divergence is something that shouldn't be overlooked: there's no movement of excessively-patriotic Americans or fanatically-fundamentalist Christians that thinks that the appropriate response to outrageous acts such as the desecration of national symbols or sacred texts is to murder those responsible or kill their fellow citizens or believers.
The mostly unmentioned subtext to the frenzy around Rev. Jones' proposed action is that President Obama, General Petraeus, Vatican officials, parents of soldiers, parents of school children, and ordinary citizens recognized that they, their loved ones, and those they have a duty to protect might be killed by those who believe killing innocent people is a legitimate response to such desecration. Even though the proposed destruction of an innocent human being made in God's image and likeness — like that called for by two Iranian grand ayatollahs earlier this week in a fatwa against those who insult the Koran — is infinitely worse than the proposed destruction of a sacred text, few leaders have condemned this homicidal retaliatory tendency in segments of the Islamic world, possibly because they believe that even making such a point might escalate that barbarism even further.
This brings us to the controversy over the construction of the Cordoba Center near Ground Zero. The main issue does not seem to be freedom of religion, since everyone recognizes that Muslims have an ability to build mosques or cultural centers in the United States, as they have in several locations in New York City. It doesn't seem to involve even the fitness of having an Islamic center, whether cultural or religious, close to the former World Trade Center. Rather, the Park 51 property has become for many non-Muslim Americans a proxy battleground for the way they feel about the connection between Islam and terrorism. Those who think that the 9/11 terrorists were observant Muslims attacking what they believed was the Great Satan, who assert that Muslims in general and the financial backers of the Cordoba Center in particular are bent on creating a world-wide Ummah through violent jihad or other means, and who are seeking to have the Ground Zero cultural center stand as a symbol of past and future triumph, are among those most vehemently opposed to it. Those who look at Islam as a peaceful religion — and the terrorists as unfaithful Muslims who manipulate the meaning of jihad to satisfy their unholy ends — view the construction of the Cordoba Center at Park 51 as a sign of our country's respect for Muslims and a conspicuous sign of American reverence for religious freedom.
Which group is right?
The answer is, basically, that both groups are. There are peaceful Muslims and there are homicidal Muslims, both of whom claim to find their justification in the Koran. Just as it is wrong to treat all Muslims as terrorists, so it is likewise naive to treat all Muslims as peaceful. Most Muslims are peaceful, prayerful and pious, but a sizeable minority — fueled by certain belligerent nation states and many violence-inciting imams, ayotallahs and mullahs — is not. The Cordoba Center controversy is really a question about what type of Muslims is seeking to build a community center, which is why the question of its funding is highly relevant.
Because there is no central doctrinal authority in Islam, there are essentially many schools of Muslim interpretation. Many hermeneutical schools — the ones that often don't get the attention — help people practice faithfully the five pillars of Islam and live according to the teachings of the Koran, which, like Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, also features the command to love Allah with all one's being and to love one's neighbor as oneself. There are other schools of interpretation, however, like that of Imam Anwar al-Awlaki in Falls Church, Virginia — who helped to incite Major Nadal Hasan to murder 12 and wound 31 at Fort Hood, Texas and afterward praised him for his heroism — that preach hate and destruction. Such incendiary interpretation of the Koran is unfortunately not isolated. Six Muslim countries decree the death penalty for those converting from Islam. Other interpretative schools not only permit but promote honor killings as well as the execution of women who have been raped (and not their rapists) because these women have violated the prohibition of sex outside of marriage. To call such Muslims peaceful is equivalent to calling Judas Iscariot faithful.
The conflict between peace-loving Muslims and murderous Muslims is something that has long plagued peaceful Muslims in the Islamic world. In several Muslim countries, the homicidal Muslims have made it life-threatening to have that conversation publicly. This is a conversation, however, that — as recent events have made clear — needs to take place, and take place soon, in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
