DAN writes:

I have a great deal of love and admiration for Pope Benedict XVI, and consider him an instrumental figure in my turn to Christianity after years in the spiritual wastelands of my youth. That being said, when it comes to the issue of Islam I regret that the Holy Father has retreated from his earlier positions which displayed a skeptical, if not critical, view of the religion and a seeming recognition that it did not belong in the West. In the past Pope Benedict has expressed, in private, his view that Islam likely cannot be reformed of its violent and intolerant elements and has refused to describe Islam as a “religion of peace” (unlike George W. Bush, the hero of movement conservatism). His current approach to Islam has changed from one of skepticism to one of a sort of rapprochement and dialogue. I suspect this shift in approaches has less to do with the Nostra Aetate and more with the violence against Christians in the Muslim world to take place in the wake of the Regensburg Address. In the wake of the Pope’s lecture Muslims attacked Christians and churches, including the martyrdom a nun doing humanitarian work in Somalia, and increased attacks on Assyrian Christians (a group in communion with Rome) in Iraq. I do think the widespread persecution of the Church in the Muslim world has left its mark on Benedict and he thinks that diplomacy, regrettably, is the only way to sooth Muslim hostilities. The Muslims, on the other hand, will only accept appeasement, never a just diplomacy between equals.

 The other issue is that the Holy Father sees what he calls the dictatorship of relativism (i.e. secularism, humanism, materialism, etc.) as being the biggest threat to the survival to the West and sees religious Muslims as possible allies in confronting the moral collapse of the West, something akin to Peter Kreeft’s “ecumenical jihad” nonsense. In his interview with journalist Peter Seewald, published in Light of the World (Ignatius Press, 2010), Pope Benedict was asked if the Vatican still saw it as its role to defend Europe from Islam, he responded that the real dividing line was between secularism and religion, and that the factions of the latter needed to understand each other and work together to confront the former. The problem is that Islam views the world through a very different dualism, i.e. between Dar al-Islam (the realm of belief) and Dar al-Harb (the realm of war), with dhimmitude being the only gesture made by Muslims for Christians not inclined to convert. They do not ultimately see religious Catholics as allies against the secular left, but as historical enemies and eternal spiritual rivals. In fact Muslims in the West have shown themselves more inclined to cooperate with the radical left than with the religious right. Muslims aren’t worried about restoring the traditional Christian moral order of the West, but, like the left, in overthrowing it and establishing their own. Unfortunately Pope Benedict does not recognize this or vainly hopes he can convince Muslims to change their focus. In the end Muslims serve their own agenda, and no one else’s (something for both the Vatican and the neoconservatives to recognize and remember).

It must be noted that such an indecisive approach to Islam leads to compromise and defeatism. In Malaysia, a leading Catholic bishop has endorsed the implementation of shariah in parts of that nation, provided Christians are exempted. Such things can only happen in an atmosphere of spiritual and intellectual confusion. Pope Benedict need remember that spiritual relativism can be just as destructive as moral relativism.

                                    — Comments —

David C. writes:

However much the behavior of our Pope Benedict XVI, whom I otherwise love very dearly, toward Islam signifies a dhimmitude of the sort described by Bat Ye’or, her description of the mental dhimmi corresponds even more tightly and accurately to the attitude of the modern Western man toward the modern Western woman. I do understand, of course, that dhimmitude refers specifically to the submission of a non-Muslim to Muslim rule, but apart from this distinction, Bat Ye’or has summarized perfectly the fawning, submissive posture of contemporary man to contemporary woman. I leave it to the reader to review her description and see the clear connection. As the Muslim exercises complete domination over the life of the dhimmi, so the modern woman has brought modern man totally to heel, and has utterly mastered him. And he, for his part, loves her for this. He loves her the more she mocks his obeisance.

As a secondary note, I do, even as a Catholic who loves his Church very much, feel a certain admiration for Islam. Believe me, it’s not that I want Islam to succeed. It is, rather, that the Muslim world appears to possess qualities our Western world gave up long ago, namely, a backbone, bravado, daring, confidence, courage, conviction, nerve, edge, valiance, elan, the will to fight, the will to power, the will to succeed — its testicles, if I may, its sheer manly virtuousness. As a man I long for these things because they are nowhere to be found in my own culture and are in fact openly and foolishly mocked by a people that has become too stupid, too weak, too cowardly, too loathsome to worship anything greater than its own slothful self-indulgence. Who today deserves the name ‘Westerner’ or ‘Christian’? I cannot stand up and claim these tall names for myself; I do not deserve them. Is there anyone else who can? If so, where is he? It seems the only one present to us today who is worthy of our admiration is in fact the Holy Spirit. Apart from Him we have only dead men to admire.

Islam, by contrast, has something to say and intends to do something about it. That is frightening because they are, of course, the long-standing enemies of Christendom, and I for one have no intention of yielding to Muslim law, whether at the edge of a sword or otherwise. On the other hand, I am utterly refreshed to see the sheer nerve of Islam, nerve that the West does not have any more. Islam is a distinctively manly religion. And it is almost more than I could hope for, to see as a man masculinity presenting itself anywhere in our world today unembarrassed, tall, proud — without apology, without shame, and wholly zealous to accomplish its ends. It’s doing this today in Islam and only in Islam. I look back at my Western brothers and see we all lie prostrate and worshipping in a mosque of our own, the Mosque of the Sacred Feminine. Islam means submission, and we men are already practicing that. Men, under Islam, would be no more ashamed, no more humiliated, no more defeated, and no more obsequious than we already are. Who knows? We might even find ourselves elevated a bit under the highly patriarchal Shar’ia law, even as dhimmis. We might have more dignity under dhimmitude than under our current regime which would appear to hate us even more. We are, in any case, well prepared to accept Muslim takeover, should it come to that. Today’s men will not fight back.

You could say manliness of a kind shows up in totalitarian liberalism, and I suppose that’s true if only in its unabashed and unapologetic domination of the West; but it leaves nothing in its wake but an oppressive fog of confusion and disorder, like the blanket of smoke that lies over a city just after an aerial bombing run. It is hardly a satisfying kind of domination. It is not one that brings order or peace. It is one that leaves everyone’s lives in ruins, that leaves us all alienated and afraid and full of despair. Islam, even Islam, would be better than this. The totalitarian liberal regime is even more hostile to Jesus than was Mohammad.

In any case, I do not want Islam to win. I want men to come back to the West as Westerners and as Christians. I want masculinity to show up on the scene again completely unashamed of itself and unwilling to back down in the face of feminist intimidation — that is, men prepared for a fight! Like Lawrence Auster, I am bitterly disappointed with, and totally exhausted by, the cowardice of the Larry Summers of this world who speak the truth daringly in one moment and back down in total submission the next. It is hard, I know, when the whole world is waiting to shame you; but God, where is there just one man in this world with the nerve and the audacity to do it? to be a man? to speak the truth? to stand by his words, whatever the personal cost, and thus embolden others to follow in his path? Without Christ my own heart would be so full of pain I would have to rip it out of my own chest, because it would be totally useless to me in a world like this.

Laura writes:

I don’t know why you speak of Islam as better than liberalism. I realize what you’re saying, but still I don’t know why we need to compare them, as if we had to choose. Is perishing by flood better than perishing by fire? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

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