In Order To Meet Islam, We Must Go Back To Christ
By Piero Gheddo
10 Feb, 2015
In the past few months, Islamic terrorism has become
front-page news as a serious danger for Europe and Italy. Many are wondering
what to do. Others focus on laws to cope with the serious situation. Yet, calls
for greater vigilance and firmness have led nowhere. Our rich and secularised
democratic world is ill prepared to deal with it. Western and Islamic peoples
do not understand each other. There is a gulf between our desire to live in
peace and terrorists' violence.
Following the Twin Towers on 9/11 (2001) in New York,
recent history showed that the wars against Islamic extremism (in Afghanistan
and Iraq, and today against the Caliphate) not only have not solved the problem
of terrorism, but have worsened the situation. "Holy war" and
"martyrdom for Islam" have become popular in many countries. We
cannot wage war to defeat 1.4 billion people who live with conviction their
religion and religious culture. So, what are we to do?
Speaking in January before the Pontifical Institute of
Arab and Islamic Studies (PISAI), Pope Francis stressed the significance of
dialogue with Muslims. in fact, "Perhaps there has never been a greater
need" for this, he said, among other things, "since the most
effective antidote to violence is teaching the discovery and acceptance of
difference as richness and fruitfulness."
This requires an attitude of "listening"
that helps understand the values of others, as well as an "adequate
education so that, secure in one's identity, we can grow in mutual
understanding." However, this also means "not falling into the trap
of a conciliatory and ultimately empty syncretism that is the harbinger of a
totalitarianism without values". The clash of two civilisations that do
not understand each other does not have as its fundamental motivation politics
or economics, but religion. This is why.
First, in the West, the ideal is the
"freedom" of man, even from the laws of God who created the world and
humanity. We live in a virtually atheistic society and Islamic peoples see the
Christian West as an enemy, a danger to their faith! They are drawn to the modern world, but they
also fear it! Our life offends them. They do not want to live in an
increasingly inhumane world like ours, rich but arid and empty inside, about
which we complain too.
This is the refrain heard in mosques and in the Muslim
press. Believers in the Qur'an have the mission to bring God to the atheist and
emasculated West. Such ideas, which are inculcated from an early age in
schools, are part of their faith and their culture. It is true that only a
minority practices Islamic terrorism, but millions of Muslims share that
ideology.
Speaking to the European Parliament after the Twin
Towers, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "The West must defend our
values . . . We have created a soulless civilization. Where can we find this
soul unless we return to the Gospel which made the West great?"
In the current situation, which makes our society
increasingly devoid of ideals, pessimistic and selfish, in crisis because we
lack children (How many millions of abortions in the last thirty years?), we
see Islam provoking us by every means, from population growth to terrorism, but
also with "holy war" and "martyrdom for Islam", to lead us
back to the stated purpose of faith in God, even if it is the God of the
Qur'an, and not the God of the Gospel!
Typically, we in the West live as if God did not
exist. However, to meet and engage in dialogue with Islam, we must return to
God and the Ten Commandments, Jesus Christ and his Gospel, not only in our
personal lives, but also in that of the family, society, education, mass media,
etc. We must in other words rediscover our Christian identity. The alternative
is war against Muslim peoples, which we would certainly lose in the long term
for the simple reason that Muslims are young people, whereas we in the West are
old people!
We have to have a more realistic view of Muslims and
understand the huge responsibility we Western Christians have (now and in the
past) in the rise and expansion of Islamic "terrorism". In a 1990
speech ("We and Islam"), Card Carlo M. Martini said, "What
should we Christians think about Islam? What meaning can the rise of this
religion have in God's plan, one that is close to Christianity and yet so
combative, so capable of conquest, of making many converts in a weak Europe? In
a Western world that is losing its sense of absolute values and is no longer
able of attaching them to an overarching God, the witness of the primacy of God
on all things, and of his need for justice, makes us understand the historic
values that Islam has brought with itself and that it can still bear witness to
our society."
The second point is that Islam does not define itself
in terms of "human freedom" but in terms of "submission to
God". Let me repeat: the God of the Qur'an is not that of the Gospel! It
lives and proclaims the presence of God (Allah) in the life of every man,
family and society. Faith is the greatest gift that God has given to man, which
we have to preserve through prayer and respect for the commandments. Faith is
not just a personal choice (as exasperated secularism and secularisation
proclaim and impose); it is a sense of belonging to a community of believers
and to all of humanity created by the same God.
Islam is a religion that comes, at least in part, from
the same roots as Christianity, the God of Abraham, so that in its early days
some Church Fathers called it "a Christian heresy." However, today it
is certainly not a humanising religion. Islamic realities (violations of human
and women's rights) offer a negative image. That is another matter even if states
and each of us have a duty to defend ourselves and our people against external
aggressions and invasions.
Let me repeat what I heard from many Christian bishops
living in Islamic countries: even today, in God's plan, Islam has a role in
human history, one that we do not know, but one that deserves respect and
attention. For us Christians today, the challenge is meeting, not clashing with
Muslim peoples; dialogue, not war; return to faith and life in Christ, not
theoretical and practical atheism.
Source:
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/In-order-to-meet-Islam,-we-must-go-back-to-Christ-33422.html
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