Can Orthodox and Muslims Get Along?

The inane complaint that “religion causes conflict and wars” is not produced by the wars themselves. The wars of the twentieth century were not produced by religion. They are the fault of radically secularist and totalitarian ideologies. This theory – if it can be called that – is produced by anti-religious rhetoric, and is shared by both those who oppose the occupation of Iraq and those who support it (e.g., Christopher Hitchens).

There is a valid critique here which should be raised in the context of war. The Middle East is ablaze with turmoil mostly because of the corrupt dismantling of the Ottoman Empire – the region was redesigned with little respect for native custom, but mostly with regard for the economic advantage of a few interests. That there are conflicts, wars and “clashes” there can be no doubt. But it should be very clear that the popular idea that the strife is due to religion is vile propaganda.

The problem in the Middle East is not due to a clash of civilizations or to a conflict between religions. It is due mainly to a conflict between two political ideologies: a radical secularism that denies natural law, and a just as radical jihadism that cynically denies its own koranic humanism. Both ideologies have gone to war and have resorted to genocide for oil, and will continue to do so.

I mention this because the issue of Middle East turmoil distorts the whole issue of “Muslim/Christian relations.” It is a suspiciously useful platitude to say that the conflict is rooted in the relationship of the two religions: those who utilize this platitude are doing so to mask the real culprit. It is also useful to say that the conflict is between the West and resurgent Islam. Once again, while everyone is blaming truly religious folk on both sides, and true conservatives in the West and in the Islamic world, the real culprits are waging old fashioned war for old fashioned resources.

Imagine what it would be like if the subject of “Muslim/Christian relations” could be explored without the violent mass of opinions that have aggregated upon the Middle East. It is likely that the subject would become less difficult. The Orthodox Church would affirm love and forgiveness to Muslims in other nations and in our neighborhoods. It would affirm their civil rights in a pluralistic society. It would affirm the traditions of natural law which it shares with the Islamic world. It would affirm the rich cultural traditions of beauty, goodness and truth that are liberally strewn throughout Muslim society. Without a doubt, it would certainly affirm the indubitable fact that every Muslim is made in the image of God.

However, the Orthodox Church would also affirm that the predestination for every Muslim (as it is for all humankind) is theosis, particularly in the image of Jesus Christ. In that regard, the Orthodox Church not only does not affirm, but it crucially denies that Allah is the same as the Trinitarian God. It denies that Mohammad is any prophet at all, but instead is a heretic at best. It denies that Islam is a religion of peace, but is instead a religion of surrender to a god whose nature is not love. If there is any prayer in the Muslim world, it is prayer that is accepted by Jesus Christ, in spite of the fact that it is conditioned by a false prophet.

Talk of this sort usually invokes howls of protest, and accusations of vilification and even "demonization" from the more positive-thinking crew. But this sequence of denials regarding Islam is not at all a vilification or demonization. Demonization is appropriate only for demons, and they have surely been at work – often quite outside the expected precincts of religious conflict. Vilification occurs when my enemy has something that I want, and consequently I render my enemy less than human to make it easier to murder him and take his goods.

I am doing neither thing. I call a Muslim a heretic, but I love him as I ought to love all my fellow man. I am quite willing to converse with him, even convivially, about the rich banquet of natural law and especially Rumi, Omar Khayyam and even Orhan Pamuk (you have to give points to a Turk who publicly mentions a certain genocide).

The Muslim has, however, nothing to say to me theologically, as “theology” is particularly understood in the Orthodox Church.

While I am pleased that Mohammed was willing to categorize Christians along with the Jews as “People of the Book,” I am not at all inclined to return the favor. Both Jews and Christians posit a God Whose nature is love. The same should not be said of Islam. Christians and Jews want peace, and the peace they want is “shalom” – which connotes wholeness, freedom and servanthood. The peace of Islam is significantly conflated with “surrender” (the real meaning of “Islam”). Muslim “peace” is politically expressed as an imposed totalitarianism called sharia, established by the sword, which can now be previewed in Nigeria, other African and Indonesian regions, and in the wahhabist doctrines of al-Qaeda.

The history of those who have enjoyed “People of the Book” status is not a happy one. I mention this because we may work diligently at dialogue with our Muslim counterparts, and engage in what I think would be profitable discussions (along the lines described above). But all the while, the parties who are making the issue so violent are not talking to each other, and they probably will never talk to us. I am not speaking here of the nice imams who go out of their way to affirm the peaceableness of Islam and the humanism of Muhammad. I am speaking here, rather, of jihadists who are exploiting the decadence of the West for their own material gain. I am speaking also of Muslim clergy who pursue a well-defined koranic hermeneutic that impels the establishment of sharia in all human society.

I am speaking here, too, of so-called “neo-cons” who assume that the post-Christendom (if not anti-Christian) Western society is any better than that envisioned by the radical imam. Our problem with the Iraq War is not that our nation went to war against an enemy, but that it went to war to preserve a libertine way of life that may not have been worth the cost of blood.

There is no clash of civilizations in Western Europe or in the Middle East. Such a clash assumes the existence of civilization: there is very little of that on either side. Civility is stifled by totalitarianism and libertinism. A society built on sharia law is horrifying, and is so inhumane that “civilization” – a word whose cognate is civitas – cannot be used to describe it.  But Islam is succeeding in Europe mainly because there is so little to succeed. The reason why the concept of “clash of civilizations” is so bankrupt a concept is that Islam is simply establishing itself in a wasteland. The libertine materialism that is the aspiration of the West nowadays is impotent in the face of radical Islam. One of the reasons why Islam succeeded in its first few centuries is because much of the Byzantine population was oppressed by rife taxation and debt. It will succeed in Europe because it gives hope to an oppressed population, and it offers a meaningful worldview to significant societal segments who will not join a Europe that rejects natural law.

A fraternal, accommodating Orthodoxy that dialogues with liberal Muslim scholars will do nothing to save the West. Liberal Islam – if such a thing is possible – will be dismissed by other imams as a transient Western phenomenon.

But an Orthodoxy that calls for peace instead of “neo-con” war will save. An Orthodoxy that complains about environment-destroying economic structures, and that protests against inhumane jihadists and the demonism of sharia law, will establish justice. An Orthodoxy that identifies a science of natural law shared in common with the Muslim world will help preserve culture. An Orthodoxy that insists on the exclusive meaning of theology as Trinitarian and Christological will reaffirm truth, which is what every Muslim needs the most.

And an Orthodoxy that calls for repentance in Europe, and a return to Nicene Christianity from the miasma of transgressive materialism is the only response to the looming array of Islam, which is soon to become the principal religious culture there – the others (Orthodoxy included) are passing into virtual dhimmitude above the fortieth parallel.

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[fox river reader]

The current Christianity Today (Oct.) has a Fuller survey given Moslems who became Christians. But it's not online. :(