Frankly, I’ve grown tired of the whole ISIS
issue. Not that I think it unimportant, but rather the same set of answers are
being thrown around - answers that deeply misunderstand the very nature of the
Islamic faith, and religious belief in general. We cannot bomb ISIS into
submission, at least not for long. You cannot just “nuke” the middle east.
Becoming monsters in order to defeat monsters seems like a Pyrrhic victory at
best. You can, of course, limit immigration from these countries as well as
interaction with them, but even these are not long term solutions. In any case,
the ideas being thrown around were largely one of two things: naïve, or burning
with little more than raw hatred.
This morning, however, I came across a
refreshing and inspiring post by Marc Barnes. You can find it here. He tackles
the issue from a Roman Catholic perspective. It is an example of that
combination of unapologetic honesty and hope that first attracted me to the
Catholic intellectual life (though what has kept me interested despite my vacillating beliefs over the years has been the work of intellectuals like Edward
Feser). Barnes points out what we often overlook – you cannot truly defeat a
belief system through conventional warfare. You can defeat an army in this way,
but not a theology. (Practicing) Catholics, Marc states, are in a unique place
to enter into dialogue with Islamic extremists:
“The Catholic is in an odd position
in relation to ISIS. Reading their magazine — a simultaneously horrendous and
boring exercise — I find myself in moments of agreement. Their narrative of
“strangeness” resonates with the Catholic living in the post-Christian West:
“Strangeness is a condition that the Muslim living in the West cannot
escape as long as he remains amongst the crusaders. He is a stranger amongst
Christians and liberals. He is a stranger amongst fornicators and sodomites. He
is a stranger amongst drunkards and druggies. He is a stranger in his faith and
deeds, as his sincerity and submission is towards Allah alone.”
Replace “Muslim” with “Catholic,” and
“Allah” with “Christ” and you’ve the rough content of a sermon of a grumpy
Jesuit preaching detachment from the world — the choice of Christ’s standard
over and against the standard of the Devil. Of course, there is something less
of an obsession with human purity, something more of mercy, but nevertheless,
the committed Catholic can, like it or not, sympathize with the ISIS-member’s
primary spiritual frustrations.
The Catholic, like the ISIS-member,
holds The Divine Will as an absolute value, one worth sacrificing the worldly
values of peace, security, pleasure, and life over. The Catholic, like the
ISIS-member, cannot adhere to the basic tenets of liberalism. He lives as a
stranger in the age, believing in a Truth that is not one option among many, a
Truth that is not merely “tolerated” by the State, a Truth which orders all things – not simply his
private, individual existence. The Catholic, furthermore, is increasingly aware
of the incompatibility of Catholicism with a liberalism which (increasingly)
limits what the Catholic is allowed to do (or not do) when the teachings of the
Church conflict with the more primordial doctrines of “tolerance” and
“individualism.”
Thus, where secular government has
nothing to say, the Catholic has a lot to say. My disagreement with ISIS
is not a mute head-bash between watery liberalism and medieval Islam — it is a
disagreement over content. I do
not disagree that the divine is an absolute value, I disagree with the nature
of that divinity. I do not disagree that the Divine Will demands
obedience, only that the content of the Divine Will is radically different. I
do not disagree, even, that the Secular Age is bankrupt. I disagree on what to
do about it.
The Catholic is in a position to
meet, online and otherwise, a false vision of Jesus Christ (a warrior who will
save Islam from the anti-Messiah, killing him in Jerusalem and leading the
Muslim army to victory) with a true vision of Jesus Christ (the Son of God,
whose kingdom is not of this world and whose victory lies not in dealing death,
but in dying for the salvation of all). The Catholic, before the process of
radicalization has taken hold, can introduce a concept of God who is Love, and
not simply Law; Father, and not simply Dictator; a God who desires
communion with his creatures in freedom
– not in force and fear.”
Barnes writes
exceedingly well for someone his age. This post is particularly insightful. Read
the whole thing, even if you aren’t Catholic or don’t care for religion. It
might help you to gain a better understanding of where the differences and
similarities really lie between the two major faiths in our world. And if you
are like me, it might just remind you to keep hope alive in this sometimes dark
and desperate life.
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