The Vatican's New Realism about Islam
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By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 31, 2003
The semi-official Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica has done
nothing less than shock the world by publishing an absolutely scathing
criticism of the mistreatment that Christians suffer in Islamic
societies. Why so shocking? It's a sharp break with Pope John Paul
II's long-standing policy toward Islam, which some have characterized
as "dialogue to the point of extremism." Nothing is published in La
Civiltà Cattolica without the approval of the Vatican Secretary of
State — so this blistering article presumably corresponds to the views
of some very high placed Vatican officials, if not the ailing Pope
himself.
The Civiltà Cattolica piece represents the first indication that any
Catholic Church officials recognize the dimensions of the religious
conflict that jihadists are waging against Christians and others
around the world. Up to now the signals have all been in the other
direction: the Pope has been such a relentless proponent of dialogue
with Islam that Rome's criticism of the persecution of Christians in
Muslim countries has been muted. And in a paroxysm of enthusiasm for
peace and brotherhood, he actually kissed the Qur'an on May 14, 1999,
during an audience with several Muslim officials from Iraq and the
late Chaldean Catholic Patriarch, Raphael I Bidawid. Aghast attendees
preserved the moment in pictures, which now can be found on numerous
websites — mostly of the tinfoil-hat variety, which use the photos to
support their claims that the Pope has no legitimate claim to lead the
Church and may even be the Anti-Christ.
Certainly the Pope's Qur'an kiss was a moment that would have appalled
the saints and martyrs who encountered in Islam a relentless and
implacable enemy over many centuries of the Church's life. But perhaps
those great souls were mollified by this new Civiltà Cattolica
article, which is just the opposite of naïve and appeasement-minded
irenicism. The article brushes aside decades of misleading historical
revisionism about the Muslim conquests, daring to point out that "in
all the places where Islam imposed itself by military force, which has
few historical parallels for its rapidity and breadth, Christianity,
which had been extraordinarily vigorous and rooted for centuries,
practically disappeared or was reduced to tiny islands in an endless
Islamic sea."
Civiltà Cattolica also counters the dozens of misleadingly incomplete
analyses of jihad that Muslim advocacy groups have used to befuddle
the public over the last few years. Jihad, it points out, "has two
meanings, both of which are equally essential and must not be
dissociated, as if one could exist without the other. In its primary
meaning, jihad indicates the ‘effort' that the Muslim must undertake
to be faithful to the precepts of the Koran and so improve his
‘submission' (islam) to Allah; in the second, it indicates the
‘effort' that the Muslim must undertake to ‘fight in the way of
Allah,' which means fighting against the infidels and spreading Islam
throughout the world. Jihad is a precept of the highest importance, so
much so that it is sometimes counted among the fundamental precepts of
Islam, as its sixth ‘pillar.'" The only meaning of jihad you will get
from American Muslim spokesmen is the first. Is there some reason why
they don't want you to know that radicals are acting on the second all
over the world today?
Contrary to another prevailing myth, that Christian-Muslim enmity
began with the Christian Crusades, the article states: "All of Islamic
history is dominated by the idea of the conquest of the Christian
lands of Western Europe and of the Eastern Roman Empire, whose capital
was Constantinople." Warfare was initiated by the Muslim armies that
swept into Syria and other Christian areas of the Middle East within
just a few years of the death of Muhammad in 632. The first Crusade
wasn't called until 1095.
"In reality," says Civiltà Cattolica, "for almost a thousand years
Europe was under constant threat from Islam, which twice put its
survival in serious danger." Now, in its radical, terrorist form, it
is doing so again — but up until now no one at the Vatican, and
precious few elsewhere, have taken much notice.
The article also speaks forthrightly about the traditional Islamic
doctrines that radical Muslims exploit in order to subjugate
non-Muslims. Hindus, Buddhists, and others, classified as "idolaters"
because they are not listed as "People of the Book" (that is, people
with a revealed scripture) in the Qur'an, are given a harsh choice:
"convert to Islam, or be killed." Jews, Christians, and other "People
of the Book," however, have a third choice: "Muslims must ‘fight them
until their members pay tribute, one by one, humiliated' (Koran, Sura
9:29)." This is the foundation of dhimmitude, the inferior status that
traditional Islamic law mandates for Christians and Jews in Islamic
society, ensuring that they feel themselves "humiliated" in myriad
ways.
What about Islamic tolerance? Another myth. "According to Muslim law,"
Civiltà Cattolica notes correctly (and courageously), "Christians,
Jews, and the followers of other religions assimilated to Christianity
and Judaism (the ‘Sabeans') who live in a Muslim state belong to an
inferior social order, in spite of their eventually belonging to the
same race, language, and descent. . . . The ‘people of the Book' (Ahl
al-Kitab) becomes the ‘protected people' (Ahl al-dhimma). In exchange
for this ‘protection,' the ‘people of the Book' must pay a tax (jizya)
to the Islamic state." Dhimmis could avoid this tax by converting to
Islam, but often that way was blocked as well: "Muslims, especially in
the early centuries, did not look favorably upon such conversions,
because they represented a grave loss to the treasury, which
flourished in direct proportion to the number of the dhimmi, who paid
both the personal tax and the land tax."
The tax was accompanied by numerous humiliating regulations. "As for
the freedom of worship, the dhimmi are prohibited only from external
manifestations of worship, such as the ringing of bells, processions
with the cross, solemn funerals, and the public sale of religious
objects or other articles prohibited for Muslims. . . . The dhimmi may
maintain or repair the churches or synagogues they already have, but,
unless there is a treaty permitting them to own land, they may not
build new places of worship, because to do this they would need to
occupy Muslim land, which can never be ceded to anyone, having become,
through Muslim conquest, land ‘sacred' to Allah."
And if a dhimmi rejected this "protection"? "According to the gravity
of each case, the penalty could be the confiscation of goods,
reduction to slavery, or death – unless the person who had committed
the crimes converted to Islam. In that case, all penalties were
waived." How tolerant.
Although the laws of dhimmitude are not in force today except where
the Sharia is the law of the land, Civiltà Cattolica correctly notes
that they remain as cultural hangovers, making for discrimination,
harassment, and sometimes even persecution of Christians even in
ostensibly secular or semi-secular lands such as Egypt, Pakistan, and
Syria. Moreover, the institutionalized oppression and inequality of
dhimmitude, as I explain in my book Onward Muslim Soldiers, is still
part of the Sharia that radical Muslims are trying to impose
everywhere. "Radical Islam," says Civiltà Cattolica, "which proposes
that shari'a law be instituted in every Islamic state, is gaining
ground in many Muslim countries, in which groups of Christians are
also present. It is evident that the institution of shari'a would
render the lives of Christians rather difficult, and their very
existence would be constantly in danger. This is the cause of the mass
emigration of Christians from Islamic countries to Western countries:
Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia." The article also
details the sufferings, and sometimes the cold-blooded murder, of
Christians today in Pakistan, Sudan, and elsewhere — by Muslims who
saw their actions as just by virtue of the complex of dhimmi laws.
One of the most disheartening aspects of the post-9/11 world has been
the general unwillingness to acknowledge the true nature of the
conflict. Donald Rumsfeld just drew flack when he recently remarked:
"We are in a war of ideas, as well as a global war on terror." But
radical Muslims are waging a war of ideas, on behalf of their vision
of a society constituted according to Islamic law. If the West is
unable to counter this vision successfully with ideas of its own, no
amount of daisy cutters and high-tech weaponry will be able to
forestall its ultimate defeat. A key first step to fighting and
winning a war of ideas is having the courage to point out the
deficiencies of the competing ideas. Clearly someone at the Vatican
has gone from kissing the Qur'an to reading it, and has at last taken
this step.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of Onward
Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (new
from Regnery Publishing), and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions
About the World's Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter Books).