PETER S. writes:

I find in practice that I rarely disagree with Laura on essential matters, and am rather pained to do so now.  With respect to the vigorous defense of traditional Christianity against Islam, this is perfectly in order and perfectly justified.  Christian civilization, to the degree that it can claim to be at all integral, has a right and necessity to defend its boundaries, both political and intellectual.  Further, as much as one might be attracted to the possibility of mutual respect and understanding, this is of little point if such requires either the dilution of theological positions or the unilateral letting down of guard. 

And yet, in light of the assertion that Islam is inherently false and evil, I am haunted by the thought of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi.  Considered for some years now the most popular poet in America, repackaged as a New Age guru for current consumption, he was, in fact, a Muslim saint.  In reading his remarkable poetry or learning of his life, it is perfectly impossible to consider either him or his views as evil, and difficult to consider them as false, although this latter point obviously hinges on specific theological perspectives.  If this observation is tentatively accepted, one might counter that he wasn’t truly a Muslim, didn’t truly represent Islam, was saintly in spite of being Muslim or was a wholly isolated and unique figure.  None of these responses bear close scrutiny.  He was, quite evidently, even normatively, saintly through Islam.  Here I might suggest, as one of many possible references, a perusal of Annemarie Schimmel’s very accessible book Rumi’s World. 

Within a Catholic purview, if one were to inquire whether St. Francis of Assisi or Torquemada were more faithful to the Christian ideal, the youngest catechumen would have not the least difficulty of reply.  Within Eastern Orthodoxy, a comparison between St. Seraphim of Sarov and Ivan the Terrible might form a suitable diptych for a similar judgment.  Why then, would one judge, say, bin Laden, to be a truer example of the Islamic ideal than Rumi?  The saints attract us through the profound love, virtue and overwhelming orientation to God embodied in their lives.  For all my great love of St. Francis and St. Seraphim, I find I can love Rumi – despite the civilizational gulf that separates us – no less. 

Having said this, should I have left it unsaid?  Have I helped or weakened Christian readers in their devotional lives by these words?  To return to where I began, a vigorous defense, even if in certain respects an abuse of truth, may nevertheless be both justified and necessary and to be respected as such.

Laura writes:

The nobility you perceive in Rumi does not contradict the assertion that Islam is inherently false and evil. Islam is a faith and ideology that governs the lives of billions of people. It contains elements of good and truth, especially in its recognition of one transcendent God and of a moral code that is not individualistic and is determined by God. It recognizes the centrality of family ties and compassion to the poor. However, Rumi is not definitive Islam. His poetry is not what all Muslims are commanded to obey and if Terry Jones threatened to burn a copy of Rumi’s poetry, no one would have noticed. Muslims are obliged to adhere to the Koran. At the very least, by their practice of the faith, they endorse what the Koran says. Islam means submission and the God of the Koran is a being of pure will who calls for unreasoning submission. Osama bin Laden, in killing infidels, is acting upon specific commands contained in the Koran, which incites believers to permanent war against non-believers and leaves no realm of life, even government, untouched by a perverse authoritarianism. Torquemada, in killing heretics, was not acting upon Biblical commands. The extremes of the Spanish Inquisition were an aberration from Christianity, while the bloody borders which are characteristic of Muslim lands are a constant throughout Islamic history and are consistent with the abiding beliefs of the faith.

Christianity is true and yet evil has been committed in its name. Islam is false and yet good has been committed in its name. Rumi may be a noble philosopher, just as there are magnificent art works and buildings created by Muslims. Many Muslims are good and decent people. But the central beliefs of Islam are false and dangerous. Evil rarely appears unalloyed by good and good rarely, if ever, appears unalloyed by something noticeably inferior. Take the case of Communism. Within the ideology of Marxism, one can find the ethic of brotherly love, a revulsion toward greed and luxury, and a compassion for those who live by hard toil and are not powerful. Many Communists were decent people and some were very noble. Communism had its painters and poets, who extolled the ideals of collectivism. Even in the Siberian labor camps, even among the imprisoned artists and intellectuals, one found those who fervently believed in Communism. Many were talented and dignified individuals. Similarly, modern liberalism is false and evil and yet there are elements of truth within it and there are millions of good people who adhere to its essential beliefs, as well as inspired artists who have worked within its boundaries.

It is not inconsistent to admire Rumi and to categorically reject Islam.

                                                               — Comments —

Brendan writes:

It seems to me that the issue of the “falsity” of other religious systems is closed to Christians — or, well, to Christians who accept the tradition of the Church and its traditional interpretation of its mission and the scriptures.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No-one comes to the Father, except through Me.” Jn 14:6.

The way Christians have understood this for a long, long time is that indeed there may be glimmers of the truth in other religious traditions, and even in secular traditions as well, but that the fulness of truth resides in Christianity alone and, importantly, whenever any seeker is genuinely seeking the truth with an open mind and an open heart, he/she will find themselves running headlong into the arms of Jesus Christ. It cannot be otherwise, because everything else, while it may contain glimmers of truth, or reflections of it “through a glass darkly”, does not and cannot contain the fullness of truth that Christianity professes and knows, because Jesus Christ exclusively provides access to the Father, unless Christ Himself is to be disbelieved.

Allah of the Koran is not, of course, God the Father of the New Testament, but is a moon god of Mohammed’s imagination. But even if we were to indulge in the fantasy that Allah is in fact the God of the Old Testament and New Testament, and that therefore the revelations “dictated” to Mohammed by the Angel “Gibreel” were, in fact, from the God and Father of Our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, then one must immediately say that so many fundamental aspects of the God of the Old Testament and New Testament are wrongly portrayed in the Koran (not least of which regarding God’s Word and Son), that this “revelation” must be seen as highly suspect and not worthy of esteem. And not because of God the Father, but rather because of Mohammed and his followers. That is, even if there was a glimmer of truth at the beginning of Islam (and I do not for a moment think there was any such thing), Mohammed got it so badly wrong that it doesn’t matter much, in the end.

As an Eastern Orthodox, I tend to see Islam as a hybrid of the following: (1) a heretical understanding of subsistent Arabic Judaism, (2) a heretical understanding of subsistent Arabic Eastern Christianity and (3) practices, beliefs and customs from pre-Islamic Arabic paganism. That cobbling together (plagiarizing, if we want to speak plainly) of the scriptures of the Old Testament  and the New Testament and mashing it together with Arabic paganism does not constitute a recipe for truth. Instead, it constitutes a recipe for madness, distortion, and untruth, wholly disconnected from the God of the Old Testament and New Testament and the traditions of Judaism and Christianity.

I understand the appeal of Islam, however. Islam makes absolute demands on the believer. Much of Christianity — whether Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox — has recoiled from its earlier, more comprehensive demands, to accommodate an increasingly militant secular empiricism and egalitarianism, neither of which is consistent with Christian Tradition. Islam makes no such compromises. It sticks to its guns, and it is growing as a result, because it provides a rock of certainty — even if that certainty is a falsehood — in the context of an increasingly chaotic, uncertain and nihilist world. Thankfully, there are still pockets of rigor in Christian belief in the West and elsewhere, but we have our hands full, frankly, because so much of Christianity has embraced contemporary nihilism and simply lost its nerve when it comes to preaching the truth of Jesus Christ, as we see plainly spoken in Jn 14:16.

Lawrence Auster writes: 

Rumi is a great spiritual thinker and writer. But, as Laura has pointed out, he does not represent authoritative Islam. He was a Sufi, a mystic who taught the way to oneness with God. Sufism was an offshoot of Islam but is not a part of Islam proper.

Andrea writes:

Imam Rauf, promoter of the Ground Zero mosque, claims to be a Sufi, which is rather problematic for a few reasons.  The first is that, as a Sufi, he doesn’t really represent mainstream Islam — either of the Sunni or Shi’ite variety.  Sufis are considered anything ranging from terribly eccentric to outright heretical by mainstream Muslims, and so pretty much anything Imam Rauf says is very suspect when he tries to paint in broad brush about Islam as a whole based on his own views as an American Sufi.  The second problem is that because Sufis are so syncretistic (one of the main criticisms of them from the Islamic mainstream), it’s very convenient for the American left to embrace him has a “model” for Islam consonant with their own hippy-dippy kumbaya version of ecumenical engagement which has, as its root, the pernicious and false idea that all religions are basically the same.  Imam Rauf has been banging this particular drum quite emphatically of late, and of course it’s finding resonance in an American leftist elite that prefers non-Western religion in general, and specifically abhors the idea that religious differences matter to anyone who is not a hopelessly ignorant fundamentalist bigot.  In other words, Imam Rauf is almost tailor-made to serve as a tool of the American left to attack conservative Christianity in the United States at its core — namely at its insistence that it, and it alone, contains the fullness of truth, and that Islam (and other religions or non-religious spiritual traditions like Hinduism or Buddhism or what have you) are simply not true.  The left sees that perspective as bigoted and fundamentalist, and actually prefers someone like Imam Rauf, who breezily claims that all Abrahamic religions are basically the same, and focuses on the need for everyone to

“drink deeply from that rich, nourishing current of spiritual traditions — those immutable principles of divine origin that have been given form in so many ways in human societies.  Religion must be more than mere custom or habit, more than the transient styles and cultural fashions of passing ages.”

What we see here is syncretism writ large.  Differences don’t matter, as they relate to custom and habit and come from the past.  What matters is understanding the fundamental unity of all traditions, and so on.  This is hostile both to orthodox Islam as well as to orthodox forms of Christianity, full stop, because it basically deligitimizes the very real differences between religions and spiritual traditions by relegating them to the level of relatively meaningless trivia.  Again, it’s not surprising that the left would embrace someone like Imam Rauf, because he represents a post-religion figure, someone who while claiming to stand within a religious tradition, simultaneously relativizes both it AND the mainstream religious tradition of his adopted country. 

One might immediately object that if Rauf is a syncretist, doesn’t that also mean he is less harmful?  The answer is that this is not at all the case.  Instead, by being such a Sufi syncretist, Rauf drastically misrepresents the reality of global Islam, creating pressures for Americans to accept his seemingly moderate form of syncretistic Sufism whilst ignoring what mainstream Muslims actually believe and do throughout the Islamic world.  That’s dangerous because it can create a broader degree of acceptance based on a false understanding of Islam as a whole.  In addition, someone like Rauf serves to deligitimize our own Christian traditions both by critiquing them from an Islamic perspective (which Muslims pretty much always do when they are speaking of Christianity, even when they are being relatively irenic in tone) as well as from a syncretistic tone — that is, accusing Focus on the Family as being the Christian equivalent of the Taliban, as the notorious leftist radical Markos Moulitsas has recently done.  When viewed from this perspective, we can clearly see the danger that someone like Rauf poses to Christians in particular (as the largest religion) in the United States, a danger that is amplified, and not mitigated, by his Sufi syncretism.

Claudia writes:

Annemarie Schimmel was and is one of the first-rate Islamapologists in the German-speaking world, and as such totally untrustworthy. Her academic career was presumably built on fraud and ideological networking during the Third Reich. There is a lot to be found about her in the German blogosphere and media. She possibly was even a secret convert to Islam.

Nonetheless – or, of course – she was rewarded with a lot of honors and public attention for her either naive and sentimental views about Islam and Islamic culture or her outright lies and manipulation. Especially outraging was her nomination in 1995 for an important literature/thinker’s prize in Germany, the “Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels”, although she had defended Muslim threats and violence against Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin in the years before rather strongly. For once she was widely criticised, a lot of well known authors protested, also publishing houses and big bookstores. But our liberal intelligentsia awarded her even though.    

Unfortunately, you won’t find much about the scandalous aspects of her life in English. In a German newspaper, she explained that the Koranic phrase “We want to wade in the blood of our enemies up to our knees,”  corresponds approximately with our  saying, “We will show them the ropes.” This woman can neither be trusted in her selection of poems and texts, nor her translation. She could make every jihadist sound like an apostle of peace. It is generally very difficult to find trustworthy translators of Muslim literature. Personally, I’d rather trust a native, than a Westerner, who often loses any distance to Islam whatsoever and is projecting his own cultural background into it. Talking about “orientalism” here!

Also, don’t forget, that the elite troops of the Ottoman Empire, the Janissarys, were generally followers of an Islamic Sufi sect. A fierce one, that’s for sure. Likewise, there could be darker sides of Rumis’ creed, but who would bring this critical topic up? Don’t fall for superficial similarities. In my experience, whenever one looks closer, when it comes to Islam, the differences to our Christian civilization become greater!

By the way, Spengler/David Goldmann published several articles regarding Sufism. He’s not a serious scholar himself, I know. But I think, he sensed something important, when he stressed the strong connections between Islamic Sufi poetry and narcissist and homosexual themes. Rumi serves as a great example.

Randy B. writes:

Other “religions” use smatterings of truth, love, forgiveness, and other moral laws as a vehicle by which to make palatable or distract the initial observer from the scary side of their actual message. 

Islam teaches these lessons, but then in its second period preaches violence. The important thing to remember about the Koran is the manner in which it deals with its own internal inconsistencies and Muhammad’s schizophrenia. He commanded that if there is conflict you have to obey the most current writings, and the most current writings are always violent.

Peter S. writes:

With respect to Brendan’s comments, I agree fully with his initial statement.  The matter of the comparative or relative “falsity” of other religions, in light of the “fullness of truth” of Christianity is a matter settled for Christians by theological tradition.  Such documents as Nostra Aetate, while complicating this view, do not fundamentally alter it.  This theological conclusion is, it should be remembered, in no way limited to Islam, but applies to all other religions, including Judaism.  I find a number of his following comments to be remarkably hypothetical, but I understand and sympathize fully with his motivation for them. 

Laura’s comparisons to Communism are intriguing and raise a point perhaps worthy of consideration.  In the twentieth century, the exemplars of Communism – those looked upon as representing the highest ideal and worthy of greatest respect – were Lenin, Stalin and Mao.  All three were effectively, and quite deliberately, “canonized” both during and after their lives: huge portraits – deliberately evoking traditional Orthodox icons – were hung prominently in all significant locations, while Lenin’s mausoleum – again, deliberately evoking that of an Orthodox saint – became a place of mass pilgrimage in Red Square, just as Mao’s mausoleum was to later become in Tiananmen Square.  Even the careful and ongoing chemical preservation of Lenin’s, and later Mao’s, body was a calculated evocation of the incorruptibility of the body as a mark of sanctity, as readers of Dostoyevsky will recall in the scandal of the putrefaction of Alyosha’s beloved and saintly staretz, Father Zossima, in The Brothers Karamazov.  Of course, to an Orthodox Christian, all this is, quite rightly, viewed as an abomination.  All three of these “exemplars” were to be counted as among the greatest mass murderers of the twentieth century. 

In the context of traditional Christianity, the exemplars are, quite evidently – and apart from Christ and the Blessed Virgin or Theotokos – the apostles and the saints.  Such are the loci of veneration, reverence and respect, the subjects of holy images and icons, the destination of pilgrims, the recipients of intercessory prayers.  A Communist atheist might make pilgrimage to Lenin’s tomb or Mao’s, but a medieval Christian, like Chaucer’s pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales, would, perhaps, make his way to Canterbury, to the shrine of the martyred St. Thomas à Becket, or to Santiago de Compostela to the shrine of St. James, as is still done by many even today. 

Comparatively, in the context of traditional Islam, the faithful journeyed to the shrines of such figures as Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi in Konya, Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi or Khwaja Abdullah Ansari in Heart – Muslim saints or “friends of God”, the local, human exemplars of their tradition.  To Lawrence Auster’s point, such figures would often be affiliated with Sufism, but to their co-religionists, they would be viewed, first and foremost, as eminently pious Muslims, worthy of respect, reverence and even veneration.  These figures would certainly not be viewed in this manner by relatively late extremist movements such as Wahhabism, Salafism or the Taliban, which are causing such current havoc on the world stage, and which I have no interest in defending.  As the most passing study will readily reveal, these Muslim exemplars bear infinitely closer resemblance to their Christian counterparts than to those “exemplars” of Communism discussed above.  Indeed, the phrase “Muslim saint” is perfectly parsible, while the only saints one might hazard to speak of in relation to Communism would be the Orthodox martyrs and those who suffered under its yoke, such as Father Arseny or even Solzhenitsyn. 

As to whether the example of Rumi and similar figures is something apart from Islam, the language of Rumi’s poetry is littered with Koranic metaphors and quotations, his poetic masterwork, the Masnavi, forming something of an extended, rambling commentary upon the Koran – as Schimmel and other scholars have observed – even having been traditionally and famously termed “the Koran in the Persian tongue”.  More generally, the noted French Catholic Islamicist Louis Massignon settled the question of the connection of Sufism to Islam almost ninety years ago in his work Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism [Essai sur les orignes du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane], in which he definitively established that Sufism was, at once, based upon the Koran and innate to Islam, a conclusion that has only been strengthened by more recent scholarship.  That the Koran can be read in such a manner as to inspire terrorists is evident, but that it may also be read in such a manner as to inspire a profound spiritual life is, it would appear, equally evident. 

Laura’s comment regarding beauty raises another intriguing point.  Those perusing a general historical survey of Russian architecture, such as William C. Brumfeld’s masterful work, A History of Russian Architecture, will experience what amounts to an aesthetic dislocation when passing from a consideration of such quintessentially beautiful Orthodox buildings as the Cathedral of the Assumption in the Kremlin (exterior, interior1, interior2) to the vysotniye zdaniye, or “high buildings” of the postwar Stalinist period, such as Moscow state University or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow: bombastic, titanesque structures – what Brumfeld contemptuously refers to as “totalitarian style” – that seem to be shaking their fists at God.  The transition from sacred beauty to secular ugliness is thorough and complete.  Such an observation is particularly painful, given the decisive role that the very perception of beauty played in the conversion of the Slavs: “For we cannot forget that beauty,” as the Primary Chronicle of Kievan Rus records, and as has been very sensitively discussed in Bishop Kallistos (Timothy) Ware’s classic work, The Orthodox Church. 

Passing to Islam and a comparative architectural survey, what is wholly remarkable is the sheer presence of beauty, so commonplace as to be not the exception, but the general rule.  Whether one examines (embedded slideshows) the Alhambra  in Granada, the Ali bin Yusuf Madrasa in Marrakech, the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne (Turkey), the Masjid i-Shah in Isfahan or the Taj Mahal in Agra, the story remains the same.  Further, this beauty is not confined to architectural productions, but is typical of the artistic and artisanal productions of classical Islamic civilization generally.  How is this possible for a civilization that is inherently false and evil?  I will leave the matter there.

Kristor writes:

Peter S. writes: 

How is [the pervasive sublimity of Muslim architecture – or, for that matter, poetry or spirituality] possible for a civilization that is inherently false and evil? 

Aquinas, and by extension the Christian religion, would respond that to the extent a thing exists, it is good; and the better it is, the greater is the intensity of its actuality. Thus even Satan possesses the very great beauties of seraphic existence, power, knowledge, and so forth, despite his having so utterly derogated them by his sin, error, and rebellion against God, who is the principle and origin of being as such. 

The evil of Satan, then, while inherent in his rebellion, is not essential to him, but accidental. In his essence, Satan is a seraph. If Satan were somehow to stop being a seraph, he would no longer be Satan at all. If Satan were somehow to destroy all the goodness that is in himself, he would destroy his own being altogether, and would no longer exist. The utter privation of goodness is the utter privation of being. Satan continues in being because God continues at every moment to grant him the privilege of existence. Therein is Satan’s punishment. 

As for Satan, so for Islam, and for Muslims. Likewise also for us. Thanks to Original Sin, we Muslims and Christians are inherently false and evil – not essentially, but accidentally. This does not at all entail that we are false and evil through and through; for if we were wholly wicked, we would be wholly inactual, ipso facto. We are good, but fallen. 

Now, if Christianity is true, then it follows straightforwardly that Christians by believing true doctrines are more likely to prosper, and to be morally good, than Muslims, who are saddled at every turn with false doctrines, that lead them astray and increase their sinfulness and error, thus impoverishing them. This does not mean that all Christians are better than any Muslim, or that there are not saintly Muslims who are better than most Christians; for because each new occasion of being is the creation of a perfectly good God, Muslims may each at any moment of their lives approximate more closely to the truth of God, which expresses itself in everything that happens. It means only that Christians are likely to have an easier time of being good than Muslims. 

If Islam is false, then Muslim saints, poets and architects who approach sublimity are all the more remarkable, for they have won through to the Good at the heart of all things despite their false religion. It should hardly surprise us that there are Muslims who have scaled such heights. The falsity of their religion does not annihilate their appreciation or capacity for beauty or goodness. Nothing can persist unless it has some good and truth in it. So even Islam expresses some truths. And everyone, no matter how many false beliefs he may hold, must if he is to live perforce confront and deal with the world as it really is: so that the truth of things must press upon him, and shape him. Anything that is, then, may by being the handiwork of God be also for some creature the occasion of a theophany. 

If on the other hand Islam is true, then everything whatsoever that happens is entirely the doing of God, and this whole discussion is pointless.

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