{"id":6566,"date":"2016-03-24T05:48:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T05:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/03\/24\/prospects-for-catholic-muslim-dialogue-and-the-foolishness-of-the-catholic-bishops\/"},"modified":"2016-03-24T05:48:38","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T05:48:38","slug":"prospects-for-catholic-muslim-dialogue-and-the-foolishness-of-the-catholic-bishops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/03\/24\/prospects-for-catholic-muslim-dialogue-and-the-foolishness-of-the-catholic-bishops\/","title":{"rendered":"Prospects for Catholic-Muslim ‘Dialogue’ and the Foolishness of the Catholic Bishops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Reilly is too politic<\/a> to refer to the Catholic bishops as fools, so I'll do it for him.  Not all of them are fools, of course, but many if not most, and not just on the topic of Islam, but on other topics as well, such as capital punishment.  Reilly's recent Catholic Thing<\/em> piece<\/a> is essential reading if you care about hard truth as opposed to liberal-left feel-good pablum.  I'll pull a few quotations.  <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

. . . like most Americans, the bishops know almost nothing about Islam. Therefore, they don\u2019t understand the context in which their Muslim interlocutors are speaking. As a result, they engage in mirror imaging, i.e., understanding the Muslims as the good bishops understand themselves. A big mistake.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A big mistake indeed.  See the detailed discussion in my Islam and the Perils of Psychological Projection<\/a>.  Reilly continues:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

San Diego Bishop Robert W. McElroy recently provided an example at the University of San Diego\u2019s Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. The Catholic News Service headlined the event<\/a>: \u201cBishop challenges Catholics to combat \u2018ugly tide of anti-Islamic bigotry.\u2019\u201d The bishop said Catholics must speak out against \u201cdistortions of Muslim theology and teaching on society and the state.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What might these distortions be? Apparently, that we should view with repugnance the \u201crepeated falsehoods\u201d that Islam is inherently violent, that Muslims seek to supplant the U.S. Constitution with sharia law, and that Muslim immigration threatens \u201cthe cultural identity of the American people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bishop McElroy\u2019s dialogue partner for the evening was Sayyid Syeed, a leader of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), whose name was familiar to me because he has been a fixture in the Midwest Catholic-Muslim dialogues. Perhaps the bishop was unacquainted with the pedigree of ISNA, which was spawned by the Muslim Brotherhood, the premier world organization for the reestablishment of the caliphate \u2013 whose purpose is the establishment of sharia.<\/span><\/p>\n

But you don\u2019t have to take my word for it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, also a frequent dialogue partner with the bishops and past president of ISNA, had this to say in the newspaper Pakistan Link<\/em>: \u201cWe must not forget that Allah\u2019s rules have to be established in all lands, and all our efforts should lead to that direction.\u201d In 2001, he wrote, \u201cOnce more people accept Islam, insha\u2019allah, this will lead to the implementation of Sharia in all areas.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

While acknowledging the terrible situation of Christians in the Middle East, Bishop McElroy apparently praised Islam\u2019s respect for \u201cthe peoples of the Book.\u201d In this, he was eagerly seconded by his dialogue partner, Mr. Syeed, who, according to CNS, said that the first millennium was marked by positive relations between Christianity and Islam, but that all changed in the millennium that followed, which included the Crusades.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is an interesting perspective on history.<\/span><\/p>\n

By A.D. 650, Muslims ruled Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt \u2013 all of which had been Christian lands whose inhabitants were demoted to the subject status of dhimmis<\/em>. Less than a century later, Islam had spread to North Africa and Spain \u2013 all within the first millennium of \u201cpositive relations.\u201d In none of these places did Muslims arrive peacefully.<\/span><\/p>\n

I suggest that the bishops put Bat Ye\u2019or\u2019s book, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude<\/a><\/em>, on their reading list so they can speak accurately about Islam\u2019s respect for \u201cthe peoples of the Book\u201d in the first millennium and afterwards. From this history, is it unreasonable to consider that there is something \u201cinherently violent\u201d in Islam?<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Syeed went on to say that, in the second millennium, \u201cthe two faiths divided the world into a \u2018house of Islam\u2019 and a \u2018house of Christianity.\u2019\u201d Actually, the division was made well before that by Islam, which created the distinction between between the dar al-islam <\/em>and dar al-harb<\/em>, with the Christian world being described as the \u201chouse of war.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But perhaps this distinction is superannuated? Somewhat around the time of Bishop McElroy\u2019s speech, in a Friday sermon<\/a> in Edmonton, Alberta, Imam Shaban Sherif Mady declared, \u201cLook forward to it, because the Prophet Muhammad said that Rome would be conquered! It will be conquered. Constantinople was conquered. Rome is the Vatican, the very heart of the Christian state.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Now who is misunderstanding Islam here, the imam or the bishop? (I leave out Mr. Syeed because he could hardly deny that Mohammed said this.)<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, the San Diego Peace Institute event provides a microcosm for what generally goes wrong in Catholic-Muslim dialogue as conducted by the bishops\u2019 conferences. None of the many Muslim intellectual reformers with whom I have worked over the years has ever been invited to such a dialogue. For the most part, only Islamist organizations need apply.<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nRelated articles<\/span><\/legend>\n
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\"\"<\/a>The No True Scotsman or No True Muslim Fallacy<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Free Speech and Islamic Terror: Locating the Bone of Contention<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Diplomad on Drawing Mohammed<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Bernard Lewis, "Jihad versus Crusade"<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>The Danger of Appeasing the Intolerant<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Obama: "ISIL is not Islamic"<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
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\"\"<\/a>On Legal and Illegal Immigration<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>What ISIS Really Wants<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>The Crusades Were Defensive Wars<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Reilly is too politic to refer to the Catholic bishops as fools, so I'll do it for him.  Not all of them are fools, of course, but many if not most, and not just on the topic of Islam, but on other topics as well, such as capital punishment.  Reilly's recent Catholic Thing piece … Continue reading “Prospects for Catholic-Muslim ‘Dialogue’ and the Foolishness of the Catholic Bishops”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-corner","category-islamism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}