The Truth, Finally Written

Hugh Hewitt spoke and wrote yesterday about an article and a speech by Australian Cardinal George Pell, of the Archdiocese of Sydney.

First, I would recommend you go here to read the speech.

Cardinal Pell has written some remarkably truthful, daring and yet pessimistic things about the religion of Islam. I will highlight those points momentarily.

My view has always been this post 9/11: "Ah Islam, the religion of peace and tolerance." I will drop a hint perhaps uncaught by no one reading by blog: this is dripping sarcasm.

My true thoughts run this way: "Ah Islam, the religion. . ."

Of the oppressed;

Of the Borg;

Of the sexists (clitorectomies, anyone?);

Of the Moonbats (OBL, Ahmadinejad, etc, etc, etc.);

Of the remarkably violent;

Of the remarkably antiquated;

Of the UNCIVILIZED;

Of those who would rather you be dead than not be a Muslim.

"Ah yes, Islam, the religion of peace and tolerance."

And folks, I don't just mean the "Islamists" or the "fanatics" or "Militant Islam," though those are good descriptors I commonly utilize; I mean Islam itself -- for I see no one in a position of Islamic authority, in any venue, coming into the open world and decrying loudly for all to hear:

"This is not us, this is not the true religion of Islam. We are peaceful members. We disavow ourselves from those who would hijack the good religion of Islam for their own heinous and evil purposes, spilling the blood of innocents, of civilians, of those non-Islamics who mean us no harm. We condemn, in the most powerful terms and fashion, the actions of those Islamic infidels who claim to speak for Islam but who, in truth, condemn the entire religion and those cultures supporting it, to backwater and primitive status, diminishing the status of an entire religion and its believers in the eyes of an entire planet."

Have you heard that or similar proclamations proffered at any time since 9/11?

No, you have not, for one very sharp and clear reason: those rational persons are afraid! Afraid of the consequences should they do so! Afraid of what their own people, those who believe in their own religion, will do to themselves or their families!

And I say: if this is how those who espouse peace may feel and cannot express it, and fear for themselves, then how can we in the West be tolerant of Islam if it appears that these violent tendencies and beliefs are not just the holding of fanatics, Islamists or militants but of the entire religion? Moreover, perhaps these words are not being expressed because it is the majority of Islam that believes in the Islamist/militant ways, and those who do think or express tolerance, perhaps to themselves, are in fact the minority of Muslims, are not in the mainstream, and are held in such a way that they are the non-believers?

Cardinal Pell said, in selected highlights:

September 11 was a wake-up call for me personally. I recognised that I had to know more about Islam.

In the aftermath of the attack one thing was perplexing. Many commentators and apparently the governments of the “Coalition of the Willing” were claiming that Islam was essentially peaceful, and that the terrorist attacks were an aberration. On the other hand one or two people I met, who had lived in Pakistan and suffered there, claimed to me that the Koran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims.

I suspect one example of the secular incomprehension of religion is the blithe encouragement of large scale Islamic migration into Western nations, particularly in Europe. Of course they were invited to meet the need for labour and in some cases to assuage guilt for a colonial past.

If religion rarely influences personal behaviour in a significant way then the religious identity of migrants is irrelevant. I suspect that some anti-Christians, for example, the Spanish Socialists, might have seen Muslims as a useful counterweight to Catholicism, another factor to bring religion into public disrepute. Probably too they had been very confident that Western advertising forces would be too strong for such a primitive religious viewpoint, which would melt down like much of European Christianity. This could prove to be a spectacular misjudgement.

So the current situation is very different from what the West confronted in the twentieth century Cold War, when secularists, especially those who were repentant communists, were well equipped to generate and sustain resistance to an anti-religious and totalitarian enemy. In the present challenge it is religious people who are better equipped, at least initially, to understand the situation with Islam. Radicalism, whether of religious or non-religious inspiration, has always had a way of filling emptiness. But if we are going to help the moderate forces within Islam defeat the extreme variants it has thrown up, we need to take seriously the personal consequences of religious faith. We also need to understand the secular sources of emptiness and despair and how to meet them, so that people will choose life over death. This is another place where religious people have an edge. Western secularists regularly have trouble understanding religious faith in their own societies, and are often at sea when it comes to addressing the meaninglessness that secularism spawns. An anorexic vision of democracy and the human person is no match for Islam.

It is easy for us to tell Muslims that they must look to themselves and find ways of reinterpreting their beliefs and remaking their societies. Exactly the same thing can and needs to be said to us. If democracy is a belief in procedures alone then the West is in deep trouble. The most telling sign that Western democracy suffers a crisis of confidence lies in the disastrous fall in fertility rates, a fact remarked on by more and more commentators. In 2000, Europe from Iceland to Russia west of the Ural Mountains recorded a fertility rate of only 1.37. This means that fertility is only at 65 per cent of the level needed to keep the population stable. In 17 European nations that year deaths outnumbered births. Some regions in Germany, Italy and Spain already have fertility rates below 1.0.

Faith ensures a future. As an illustration of the literal truth of this, consider Russia and Yemen. Look also at the different birth rates in the red and blue states in the last presidential election in the U.S.A. In 1950 Russia, which suffered one of the most extreme forms of forced secularisation under the Communists, had about 103 million people. Despite the devastation of wars and revolution the population was still young and growing. Yemen, a Muslim country, had only 4.3 million people. By 2000 fertility was in radical decline in Russia, but because of past momentum the population stood at 145 million. Yemen had maintained a fertility rate of 7.6 over the previous 50 years and now had 18.3 million people. Median level United Nations forecasts suggest that even with fertility rates increasing by 50 per cent in Russia over the next fifty years, its population will be about 104 million in 2050—a loss of 40 million people. It will also be an elderly population. The same forecasts suggest that even if Yemen’s fertility rate falls 50 per cent to 3.35, by 2050 it will be about the same size as Russia — 102 million — and overwhelmingly young[24].

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Now, please read Cardinal Pell's complete article. And re-examine, if you will, your own thoughts and feelings about Islam vs., essentially, everyone else.

BZ