Is Assimilation Possible?
What initially piqued your interest in Islam?
RS: My grandparents, who were Christians, grew up in the last great Muslim empire, the Ottoman Empire. They were exiled from there and emigrated to the United States in 1919. When I was a child they would tell me stories of their life there, which I found fascinating. Then when I went to college, I met Palestinian and Saudi Muslims who encouraged me to read the Qur’an. I first did so in 1980 and have read it countless times since. I found it a fascinating book, but thought it contained more questions than answers. In order to try to answer some of those questions I began reading extensively in Islamic tradition, theology, history, and law, and have continued to this day.
Given that the United States “melting pot” has been doing business for a couple of centuries, integrating successive waves of immigrants, isn’t it fair to assume that Muslim communities in the U.S. will become just another religious group in our pluralistic society?
RS: Many Muslims no doubt have already assimilated into American society and will continue to do so. Many of them are grateful to be here and would prefer to live in a secular society rather than an Islamic one. However, Muslims coming to the United States also bring with them an element that no other immigrant group has ever brought: Islam is and always has been a political and social system as well as an individual faith. It offers a comprehensive prescription for the ordering of society that many Muslims regard as coming directly from God. As such, their religion has a political character, and Muslims who adhere to this aspect of it will find it difficult, if not impossible, to accept the secular constitution of American society. They will not be content with the coexistence of Islam on an equal basis with other religions in America, but will work to make it dominant politically and culturally. Ultimately this has implications for the future of the republic itself — but only, of course, if Muslims with allegiance to Islamic law, the Sharia, become a significant group in this country.
In your book, Onward Muslim Soldiers, you document the failure of academics and the media in the West to warn about dangerous developments in the Islamic world that led to the devastation of September 11, 2001. What are some of the causes of that “intelligentsia” failure?
RS: Since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in the 1970s, “mainstream” academics have generally come to consider any criticism of Islamic radicalism as “racist.” Anyone who did not downplay the threat of violent jihadism was denounced as an incorrigible Western chauvinist. The anti-Americanism and anti-Christianity that came to dominate in the universities generally during the same period led to a muting of critical appraisals of Islam, historically one of the Church’s most tenacious foes.
Is the typical Muslim academic as open-minded as his Western counterpart?
RS: It is difficult, if not impossible, to generalize about either one of these large groups. Suffice it to say that Islam has been generally less open to self-criticism, even on an academic level. It is generally taken for granted in the Islamic world [that] to question its manifest truth would be in many cases to take one’s life in one’s hands.
Why is there so little protest in the Western world against human rights violations in Muslim countries?
RS: The Western human rights establishment has generally found it difficult to grasp the concept of non-Western human rights violators. It tends to operate according to the curiously paternalistic assumption that only Westerners can commit human rights violations, and non-Westerners can only be victims (cf. colonialism, American slavery, etc.).
Doesn’t the Qur’an forbid compulsory conversion and regard Jews and Christians as “protected people”?
RS: Indeed it does, as Muslim spokesmen remind us as often as possible. However, this is only part of the story. Compulsory conversion is indeed forbidden by Islamic law, but the “protection” that that same law offers to Jews and Christians in Islamic states bears no resemblance to Western notions of tolerance or equality of rights under the law. Dhimmis, “protected people,” are free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made subject to a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qur’an’s command that they “feel themselves subdued” (Sura 9:29). These ranged from the trivial (a requirement that dhimmis dress differently from Muslims) to the all-important (dhimmis were forbidden to build new houses of worship or repair old ones). If they complained about their inferior status, institutionalized humiliation, or poverty, their masters voided their contract and regarded them as enemies of Islam, fair game as objects of violence. For this, untold millions have died. Tens of millions have been uprooted from their homes. Tens of millions have been stripped of their cultural identity.
In their zeal not to suggest that “all Muslims are terrorists,” many North American scholars and commentators act as though it is bigotry or “racial profiling” to point out that many if not most terrorists in recent conflicts have been radical Muslims. Are there reliable statistics about this phenomenon?
RS: That’s very simple. All the September 11 terrorists were Muslims. There is a global network of terrorist groups who forthrightly avow that they are motivated by Islamic principles; there is no comparable group of terrorists operating in the name of any other religion or belief system. I document this network extensively in my book Onward Muslim Soldiers and at www.jihadwatch.org.
The Political Aspirations of Islam
What are the grievances of radical Islamic terrorists against the United States in particular? What do they hope to accomplish by violence?
RS: Islamic terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, have been quite clear: they want to reestablish the caliphate and institute Sharia everywhere they can. The caliph was the successor of the Prophet Muhammad as the political and religious leader of the Islamic community; Kemal Ataturk’s secular Turkish government abolished the caliphate in 1924. They hope the restored caliphate will become the occasion for the political unification of the Islamic world and the reinstitution of the Sharia throughout its domains. As such, they are fighting for a developed idea of a society. The United States, with its republican government and global culture, is the chief competitor to this idea. Why violence? Because Islam is unique among world religions in having a doctrine, theology and law mandating violence against unbelievers. The Prophet Muhammad himself directed: “Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war…. When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them…. If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them.” (Sahih Muslim, book 19, no. 4294).
What makes the war of the Coalition Forces against radical Islamic terrorism different from the twentieth-century battle of democracy against communism?
RS: There are more similarities than differences. Both are struggles for freedom against tenacious, unscrupulous foes who hold to a totalitarian ideology that is immune to self-criticism. The chief difference is that this is not a battle between states. It is a conflict with ideologues who could be found in any state.
Isn’t suicide condemned by the Qur’an? Do terrorists misuse the holy book of Islam in order to justify suicide bombing?
RS: Suicide is indeed condemned by the Qur’an: “be not cast by your own hands to ruin” (Sura 2:195). However, other Muslims defend suicide bombing on the basis of other verses of the Qur’an: “Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth” (Sura 9:111). They point out that this is the only guarantee of Paradise given anywhere in the Qur’an: to those who “slay and are slain” in Allah’s cause.
Since the early 1980s Fr. Paul Marx, founder of Human Life International, has been warning about a demographic crisis in Western Europe, where the native populations do not even replace themselves, while guest workers from Turkey or Northern Africa have large families. Do you think that the burgeoning Muslim minorities in France and Germany had anything to do with the reluctance of those nations to enforce U.N. sanctions against Iraq?
RS: Certainly. Europe has encouraged Muslim immigration for decades, and now the fastest-growing elements of many Western European nations are their Islamic populations. These populations are generally restive and perceive themselves as the victims of discrimination. Consequently, Western European governments have tried not to antagonize them unduly — with the notable exception of France’s recent ban on the wearing of the hijab [head scarf] in schools. Also, these governments have pursued a comprehensive strategy of political and economic alliances with the Islamic world since the 1970s.
It has been reported that eight translators at one Iraqi university are now at work preparing Arabic editions of Western books on democracy. In your opinion, what are the prospects of establishing democratic government in post-Saddam Iraq?
RS: Historically, democracy has had a hard time in Muslim countries. There is no reason to think that any secular democracy established in an Islamic country will escape pressure from Muslims who want to restore Sharia. None has so far. Even Muslim reformers have recognized that an Islamic democracy would be quite different from the polity designed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The great Muslim thinker Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935), for example, began his career as a disciple of the modernist Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905), who attempted to redefine traditional Islamic concepts to make them compatible with secular Western ideas. But after World War I even Rida grew progressively more disenchanted with the West. Ultimately, he insisted that “the affairs of the Islamic state must be conducted within the framework of a constitution that is inspired by the Koran, the Hadith [sayings of the prophet Muhammad] and the experiences of the Rightly Guided Caliphs [the four leaders of the Islamic community after Muhammad].” This is not a democracy: you don’t vote about the law of God.
Based on your analysis of contemporary Islamic jihad, what practical steps should the United States and other Western democracies take to defend themselves?
RS: Tighter immigration controls and monitoring of American mosques. We have abundant evidence that sedition takes place in many of those mosques. Having someone there paying attention to what is being preached will violate no one’s civil rights or freedom of religion.
The Reduction of Divine Revelation
In his pre-Millennial reflections, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), Pope John Paul II remarked, “Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran, clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation.” Could you explain this seemingly severe comment about the third great monotheistic religion?
RS: It is severe, but of course the Holy Father is correct. The Qur’an rejects the splendor, grandeur, and richness of the Incarnation and God’s self-revelation in Christ. It rejects the mystery of the Trinity, the paradox of the Cross, the fellowship of the saints, and the hope of Christ’s Resurrection. In the place of all this richness it posits the model of a God who sends a succession of prophets to the world, all with the same dictated message (which is perfected and completed in the Qur’an): that of the oneness of God, the horror of idolatry, and the necessity of obedience. These things are, of course, not false (although there are elements of Islam that Christians must consider false), but they show that the pope’s words are well chosen: Islam “completely reduces Divine Revelation.”
In his book, Religions For Peace (Doubleday 2002), Cardinal Francis Arinze devotes a chapter to “Some Interreligious Initiatives for Peace” and mentions The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children in the United Kingdom, in which Muslims join Christians to fight against abortion. Furthermore, Islamic countries are just about the only allies that the Vatican has in defending human life and the traditional family in the halls of the United Nations. Do you see this common cause as a way of fostering moderate Islam worldwide?
RS: No. I applaud these initiatives, but Christians would be naïve to assume that making common cause with Muslims on matters upon which we agree will have any impact whatsoever in the ways Muslims understand themselves and Islam. From their perspective, ours is an inferior religion full of corrupt elements; if we see the truth on some things, that’s all to the good, but it doesn’t mean in the least that they will be open to other kinds of influence from the Christian world.
What advice would you give to a Catholic who has a Muslim neighbor or co-worker about witnessing to the Christian faith?
RS: Successful evangelization of others is mostly a witness to the treasure we hold in “earthen vessels.” Thus we have to prepare ourselves inwardly to bear witness to the Christian life outwardly. Daily living for God, consciously and continually choosing to live for God, and rejecting evil in all its forms is the necessary foundation for any successful evangelization effort.
Study the Church’s Tradition and what the Church actually teaches. Frequent the Sacraments, pray a great deal, and read and study the Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers of the Church. Digest the wisdom of the Scriptures and the light that the Fathers bring to them, until you know intimately the riches they contain. If you have an active spiritual life, you will have much to share with non-Christians about the power of the Resurrected Christ in your own life.
Be sure to be as good a person as the people with whom you are speaking! Human nature is the same all over the earth; after all, the one true God did make all human beings, and He is love. Muslims thus, whatever the official tenets of their faith, are just as likely to be kind and loving as anyone else.
Learn enough about Islamic theology to be able to recognize insincere or incomplete statements of Muslim belief, of which there are many offered by Muslims today. What you bring up will be disputed immediately if it casts the Qur’an, Muhammad, or Allah in a bad light, so avoid speaking about what is wrong with Islam; instead, concentrate on what is positive about Christianity. Realize that much of what you may receive in return is distorted propaganda, although the Muslim will be offering [it] sincerely as a defense of his faith.
Be aware that many Muslims are not well versed in their faith, and many, particularly in the United States, have been influenced by Western secular ideas. Many have not even read the Qur’an, since they may not read Arabic, and yet believe that only the Arabic Qur’an is the true Qur’an. They may known only the “spoken version” of Islam, which is subject to varying cultural influences and may or may not include all of the major doctrines in Islam.
And ask yourself: do you have as much zeal for the truth of Christ as the devout Muslim does for Islam?
Michael J. Miller translated the books entitled New Saints and Blesseds of the Catholic Church Vols. 1, 2, 3, and Married Saints and Blesseds for Ignatius Press.
This article originally appeared in Catholic World Report and is used by permission of the author.
