Der Spiegel Reports on Christian Martyrdom
Spiegel Online reports that the Religion of Peace has actually been busy martyring Christians for some time now, wherever it can get its hands on them. Check it out here.
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
An Unlikely Alliance to Overthrow the West: More Signs of the Times
CNSNews.com has two pieces that struck me.
Oh, wait. My mistake. It's the Catholic Church that does those things for AIDS patients.
I am concluding that the powers that be hate Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church, and the West they built up so much that any enemy of His will suffice as an ally. It does not matter to them what lies they tell or whom they invite to come be their new caliph. This whole democracy thing is passe, anyway, right? Time to progress to something better.
More on the Church Persecuted
This story, from InsideCatholic, is an excellent and well-written account of the martyrdom of three Pentecostal pastors in Iran during the last decade of the last century. Just keep saying it over and over again, secularist pundits: Islam is a religion of peace... Islam is a religion of peace... Islam is a religion of peace... Islam is a religion of peace...
Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom Speaks Out Against Secular Sterility
Lord Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, must have caused a stir with his speech just a few days after taking his seat in the House of Lords of the UK last week. He said that Europeans are too busy shopping to have children. I wonder how that went over. His speech also does a good job of pointing out succinctly why secularism and moral relativism can never win an argument about civilization or culture.
Soraya and the West
Last night I went to see The Stoning of Soraya M. with a number of friends, and I have a lot that I want to share about it. First off, as a friend pointed out, the movie is not entitled The Almost-Stoning of Soraya M. That's important. So is the plot, though the plot has no amazing twists and turns. You know how it ends from the outset, especially if you've read the book upon which it is based. A man (Navid Negahban) accuses his wife, Soraya (Mozhan Marn), of adultery because he wants to be rid of her so he can marry another woman. Sharia law as interpreted under the Ayatollah apparently prohibits divorce without the wife's consent, which Soraya will not give because she hasn't any independent means of supporting their children. So her husband, Ali, accuses her of adultery and demands justice - stoning. The entire village, where they live and where she has spent her whole life, knows that she is innocent, but nonetheless go along with the charade for their various reasons. Only her aunt Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo, Exorcism of Emily Rose, House of Sand and Fog) comes to her defense. The town has a closed-door sham trial after which she is taken to the town square, buried to her waist, and pelted with stones until dead. The next day a French-Iranian journalist (Jim Caviezel, The Passion of the Christ, Frequency) is stranded in town by car trouble. Zahra meets him and tells him her story of Soraya with the hope that he will deliver her message to the outside world. The story is true, and the movie apparently hews close to the book and to reality.
I haven't wrecked anything by telling you the plot, dear reader, because the plot, while the point, isn't the principal power of the movie. The same plot might have been delivered lamely and wrecked everything. Instead, the cast and crew have delivered the viewer a masterpiece: gripping cinematography, powerful visuals, powerful score, and heart- and gut-wrenching acting that develops all characters involved immensely in a remarkably short period of time. The characters all feel real enough that if I met the actors on the street, I would have difficulty remembering that the man who played the Ali, Soraya's husband, isn't actually lustful and malicious, that the actor who played the mullah isn't actually a brazen hypocrite and opportunistic toady. Yet the movie laudably avoids generalizations or flattening characters out with self-righteous portrayals. The central characters, with the exception of Ali and Zahra, are complex creatures, and even these two can hardly be called superficial or false. Their roles and motivations are simple, and the actors' delivery makes them real and human.
The violence inflicted upon Soraya is gripping, but the violence imposed upon her is hardly the worst horror. And it would have come across as just another violent movie except for the humanity of the characters so manifest through the actors' artistry. Soraya's sham trial, at which she is not even permitted to be present or to face her accusers, will leave any Westerner open-mouthed with disbelief. The malice of her husband is astounding. The tension that builds in the one's heart and stomach is almost overwhelming as one watches the plot move inexorably forward toward the merciless murder of a perfectly decent and innocent woman.
I heartily recommend the movie to every adult with the stomach for it on two bases: (1) its artistry and craft, which are superb; (2) the lessons, both general and specific, that it contains and transmits without preaching. Still the caveat must be given that women in the theater were openly weeping; the movie is both extremely graphic and emotional, especially at the end.
Soraya's story has to teach us about a number of general lessons about which reviewers have commented. Mob mentality can block out reason and go to extremes. Check. Evil lurks in the human heart. Right. Fine. True.
I have seen one more specific lesson mentioned by reviewers, that Sharia law is hopelessly inadequate and that we in the West must be careful about embracing or tolerating it. There should be no talk of finding a niche for it in civil society, in the way that society allows corporations and churches to have their own internal by-laws. True there, too.
What I have not heard a lot about is the fact that the action depicted in the movie still persists in Middle Eastern countries today. Feminist groups like NOW should be up in arms but are oddly still. Intellectuals and the universities should be railing against draconian laws and irrational concepts of justice but haven't stirred. As pro-reform demonstrators were gunned down in Tehran a couple weeks ago, our President, just back from a trip to schmooze with the mullahs, was oddly silent. In fact, there is a deafening silence from our establishment. The movie is inconvenient for these groups in our civil society.
Most feminist groups in the US have gradually become flattened in their composition and purpose, from a diverse group of radicals for a range of legitimate rights, to a lobby of largely upper-middle and middle-class white women rationalizing abortion. This President is committed to helping them, so they leave him alone. He's better than George W., after all, they say. Barack Hussein Obama, for his part, is committed to detente with the Muslim world (appeasement?) as a path to peace and probably to keep oil affordable for a few more years. So he says nothing, not so much as "boo" to sheiks and mullahs considering their treatment of human rights. And the Islamist world continues merrily plotting the destruction of the West. The media and intellectual establishments say nothing because they are enamored of the President, too busy reminding us that Islam is a religion of peace, and have their hands full rationalizing abortion to an increasingly pro-life populace.
And poor Soraya will fall out of our minds almost soundlessly, like, well, a stone in soft sand. That is, if we ever bother in the first place to think about her and those others toiling under Sharia law with her. We forget her at our own peril though, because she was immolated by the same enemy that wants to grind us up as well. While I agree with Islam that adultery is immoral, I don't agree that folks (let alone only women) should be stoned for it. That makes me lax in Sharia's mind. The fact that the West tolerates things like women's hair makes us lewd, in their mind. While there is a great deal of lewdness here in the West, women's hair is hardly the issue. They seriously believe that justice is serve when an accused has no opportunity for a defense. There is an irreconcilable clash of worldview here, and those who oppose our view hate us for holding it. We'd best remember that when getting chummy with them.
The Path from Mecca to Rome
This past week, Magdi Cristiano Allam spoke with students at the Roman university students. In case you've forgotten, the former Muslim is one of the chief editors at Italy's most important daily newspaper and was baptized in St. Peter's this past Easter Vigil by the Holy Father. Highlights from his talk can be found by clicking here.
His insight is pretty poignant. He links his path to conversion to a variety of other factors: his education in Catholic schools in Egypt, the witness provided by some practicing Christian friends and of our Holy Father, his philosophical maturation, and his desire for integrity of ideas and living. He also sees a genuine return to a genuine practice of the genuine Christian faith as key to the survival of Europe as a socio-cultural entity, to the survival of Europe as Europe. The same might really be said of the entire Western Civilization that has had Europe as its seedbed and mother.
Our Lady of the Rosary, Ever Victorious
I originally wrote this piece for print in a parish newsletter for the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary two years ago. I have revised it slightly, and added a bit to the end.
After 800 years of nearly constant defense, Constantinople, the Rome of the East, fell to attacking Muslim armies. From the year of its fall, 1453, Muslim Turks poured into Europe. By 1571, not only were all the Balkans under brutal Turkish Muslim rule, but the Protestant Reformation had been racking Europe and destroying Christian unity in the West for two generations. Catholic Europe was disintegrating on the inside and being overrun from the outside. In 1571, a great Muslim fleet sailed from Lepanto, in Turkish-ruled Greece, in a bid to dominate the entire Mediterranean. If the Mediterranean fell, there would be nothing to protect Europe from another invasion from the South. Don Juan of Austria, a Spaniard by birth and a devout Catholic, commanded the only Christian fleet that stood in the way. It was considerably smaller than the Turkish fleet. The enemies of holy Christian Faith had, to all appearances, great cause to rejoice. Pope St. Pius V called on all Christians to pray the rosary and to beg Mother Mary to save the West.
On the morning of October 7, 1571, which happened to be the Feast of Our Lady of Victory, with practically every Catholic in Europe fervently praying their rosaries, the massive naval battle was joined. In an amazing upset, the Christian fleet not only won, but won in just five hours, virtually destroying the Turkish fleet. Don Juan captured over half of the Turkish ships, and his fleet suffered only a little harm. Tens of thousands of Christian galley-slaves were set free, and Europe’s southern coast was secured. Nobody doubted that Our Lady of Victory, answering the call of the rosary, had come to Christendom's defense. In honor of her devotion, the feast was renamed to be Our Lady of the Rosary.
In our times we witness not only the Christian faith dividing and even apparently dissolving. In places where crowds once packed into cathedrals, now only a few tourists wander into them. At the same time, militant Islamists are fighting the West with ferocious new vigor. Those who hate our Christian Faith again seem to have ample reason to rejoice.
But we have a cause of hope that is greater than they understand. That’s what the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is about. What Don Juan had no hope of accomplishing on his own, Our Lady brought about for him. He barely had to break a sweat! It is as if each rosary bead were a cannonball. On that October morning, hundreds of millions of cannonballs were fired from all across Europe at the enemies of Christian Faith. The rosary is a nice devotion to Mary, yes; but we must not forget that it is a weapon. There is no question of hating secularizing atheists or Islamist terrorists; we Christians are not permitted to hate, “for we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against… this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness,” (Eph 6:12). Again St. Paul writes, “We are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds,” (2 Cor 10:3-4). Spiritual warfare is fought with spiritual weapons. Among them, second only to the Holy Mass, is Our Lady’s rosary. Do you fear for your faith, or for the faith of your children and grandchildren? Then cling to your Rosary! From whatever quarters holy Christian Faith comes under attack, we only delude ourselves if we do not know who our true enemy is. And he is already beaten by Jesus Christ. The enemy of souls, however impressive his battle fleet may seem, is always and everywhere turned back at the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.
On a personal note, the Rosary is a perfect prayer for the laity. For me it has been a source of great consolation, a useful help in discernment, and a nice way to while away time with our Lord and Lady, rather than waste it with headphones. It does not require difficult training or the purchase of expensive, rare, or really any books at all. The verbal prayers are simply enough for a small child and the mental meditations are profound enough for a very advanced mystic. The verbal prayers, said silently or aloud, communally or privately, serve as a platform for reflection on the life of Jesus and Mary, and that reflection serves as the medium for entering into their heart and giving them access to yours. It isn't a "technique" as if communion with God were a skill; it is simple and intimate, like we'd expect of time spent sitting on Mama Mary's lap, next to the Baby Jesus. Since it was first promoted by St. Dominic in the 12th century, its usefulness for every spiritual purpose has been endorsed by the word and example of virtually every pontiff and saint. If you don't know how to pray it, check out the website for Rosary Army.
Mary, Behind Enemy Lines
The Count of Ourem, when he had driven the Moors from Abdegas, took one of their daughters to be his bride in about 1158. She was converted by his love, and in her honor he renamed the town for her: Fatima, a name beloved to her former coreligionists because it was borne by the daughter of Mohammed. Almost eight centuries would pass before the name of Mohammed's daughter would become beloved to Christians as well as Muslims. We still await the day when the name of God's mother will be as beloved to them as it is to us. Fatima holds the key, the Servant of God Fulton Sheen insisted, because the place named for Mohammed's daughter, or at least for one named for her, is the place that God's mother has made her own.
On May 13, 1917, when Mary first appeared there, though the little seers who saw her did not know it, all hell was breaking loose. Russia wasn't settled down from its democratic March Revolution and was already poised for the coming communist October Revolution. Mexico had just ratified its rabidly anti-Catholic and anticlerical Constitution of 1917, aiming all its government's powers toward the destruction of Holy Church. The forces of godless communism began to ravage the East and the Americas. At the same time, Europe, the heartland of Christianity, suffered under the Great War's slaughter so enormous that soon the entire continent would be scandalized from the Faith, and this under its hypocritically "Christian" leadership. It was in this context that the Blessed Virgin, the Holy Mother of God, brought a message to three little shepherds.
The Blessed Virgin taught the little children what Holy Church has always taught her children: pray and fast for the conversion of sinners. She encouraged them to do penances in reparation for the many insults to our Lord's Sacred Heart and to her Immaculate Heart. The forces of Satan, threatening then to overwhelm the world, could not be turned back by tanks and planes, for "For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places," (Eph 6:12).
This basic message was taken seriously even before our Lady gave it to the children. It was by praying the Rosary that Don Juan of Austria and Pope St. Pius V turned the Muslim armies out of Christianity's heartland in 1571. Though that battle was fought with fire and iron, it was won with wooden beads.
Some generations later, in 1984, the bishop of that place gave a speech in Vienna in which he said, "The Secret of Fatima speaks not about atomic bombs, nor about nuclear warheads, nor about SS-20 missiles. Its contents concern but our faith. To identify the Secret with catastrophic announcements or with a nuclear holocaust is to distort the meaning of the message. The loss of faith of a continent is worse than the annihilation of a nation; and it is true that Faith is continually diminishing in Europe."
Europe, it seems, has suffered a spiritual nuclear holocaust. We must wonder if the Faith in the US has not also been gutted, for all our churchgoing piety, when our divorce rate is so high and so many pregnancies end in abortion, when pornography has become a staple in our spiritual diet, and violence is such a popular form of entertainment that children now post on the internet videos of themselves beating each other up. Around the world the power of our Western practical, if not proclaimed, atheism struggles to legitimize every form of immorality conceivable. And it is not only the forces of godlessness that threaten to overwhelm humanity, but, as in 1158, Islam itself wages war on Christ, or at least those who used nominally to call themselves Christian.
The world now, as in 1917, very much needs the message of Fatima. We are surrounded on all sides - godless atheism and anti-Christian Islam. In a world awash in war and rumors of war, we have the same hope that accompanied the Count of Ourem, the little seers of Fatima, the martyrs of Mexico and Russia and China. Against their swords and terror, threats of bodily harm and spiritual nihilism, we have the Great and Holy Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, who charges into battle firing not shells but beads. Whether we are on the front lines against the devil, or living well within his conquered territory, we can be sure that she hears the clicking of our beads and the murmur of our prayers. She hears and transmits the distress signal to the Commander-in-Chief. Her Son, the Just Judge of the Living and the Dead, responds.
Pray, fast, do penance.
Images of the Invisible God
St. John Damascene, priest and doctor (Dec 4)St. John Damascene (b. 676) is considered the last of the Church Fathers, a priest, monk, scholar, and he heavily influenced the last (Seventh) Ecumenical Council recognized by all Christians, the Second Council of Nicaea (787). That council was convened to settle a great controversy and threat that had arisen in the East.
The controversy was regarding the use of sacred images (icons, but also statues and other depictions) in worship. The Jews had generally resisted such things holding that one could not depict the Invisible and Living God - no image could capture his essence, and any attempt at an image of God was merely an idol. Christians had generally always tolerated images as a matter of course.
Now Arabic raiders and hordes fueled pressed in against Christendom. They were fueled by passionate conviction in their new religion - Islam. It had only two essential tenants - that God is One, and the Mohammed is His prophet. Yet, part and parcel with those convictions was a third - depicting God was to be forbidden. Everywhere the Muslim Arabs struck, they conquered: Christian Palestine, Christian Egypt, Christian North Africa, Christian Spain, Christian Syria, Christian Persia all fell to the Arabs by the mid-700s. Many Christians became suspicious that they had been mistaken to allow the use of icons. They became fearful that God was punishing Christianity for heresy, heresies that may have even spread by the use of icons. They pointed out that Islam - so crystal clear and simple - forbad icons. The Jews forbad icons. Why should Christianity permit them?
It was in this turmoil that John grew up, as his native Syria was being overrun and taken over by the Arabic hordes. The Muslim Arabs had a modicum of respect for Christianity and Judaism, and what wasn't destroyed in initial conquests and sackings was generally left alone - including the interiors of churches and homes. So it was the Christians continued to have their icons. But in fear was rife in Constantinople, the capital of the Christian East, where the remainder of the Eastern Roman Empire still held on by a fingernail. Several times the Muslim Arabs struck and were repelled, but a seige mentality of fear settled upon that great city.
It was then, in 726, that Emperor Leo the Isaurian of Constantinople began his war against icons. He began passing laws to forbid their use in worship, and even to have them removed from public places. The Christian Patriarch of the city objected, and the emperor responded by ordering an ancient image of the Mother of God, hanging in the cathedral, to be taken down and smashed in the town square. He and his followers became know as the Icon-Smashers (iconoclasts).
At the time, John Damascene was the chief councillor of Damascus and served on the court of the Muslim Caliph who ruled that city and much of the Islamic world of the day. John was a Christian laymen serving the Muslim ruler of his city because he had a very important skill necessary for civil administration and lacking among the Arabs of the day - John could read. Not only that, but John had received the very best classical education available in his time - he read and wrote Greek, Latin, Syrian, studied philosophy, the natural sciences, theology, history, and music. He was a diligent worker, and served the Caliph well, helping to protect Christians from unnecessary difficulties.
While serving on the court of an icon-hating Muslim, John began to write letters to the icon-smashing Emperor, and to the Christian Patriarch helpless to resist the smashing. John, though far away, was anything but helpless. His letters were a brilliant defense of icons. He argued that in the Person of Jesus Christ, God has fully revealed Himself, and thus removed the danger of idolatry formerly attached to images. He quoted scripture, "He is the image of the invisible God," (Col 1:15). "Since God had begun to use images, mightn't we?" John asked. Before our senses could not take in God. Now, because of the Incarnation of the Word of God, the Enfleshment of God, our lowly flesh could take in God - we can eat His Body and drink His Blood. When he walked among us, we could shake His Hand and see His Face. To extend those experiences to later generations by means of images is surely not contradicting God's generous gift of Himself to us. John Damascene argued that denying the use of images was to deny the Incarnation of the Son of God.
The Emperor was embittered by John's scholarly resistance. He ordered that within the Empire, John be refered to only as The Bastard. But he went further. The Emperor had forged in handwriting very much like John's a letter offering to betray the city of Damascus to the Emperor. He then sent the letter to the Caliph. The Caliph had John's hand lopped off for writing
the note, and dismissed John from his court. This sentence was lightened, compared to how most "traitors" were treated, because of the Caliph's great love and esteem of John for his virtue. When John's hand was miraculously restored, the Caliph offered John his old job back.
the note, and dismissed John from his court. This sentence was lightened, compared to how most "traitors" were treated, because of the Caliph's great love and esteem of John for his virtue. When John's hand was miraculously restored, the Caliph offered John his old job back.Understandably, John was hesistant, and decided to seek ordination rather that returning to the court of the Caliph. The Bishop of Damascus ordained him a priest. He continued his defense of icons, and wrote several beautiful sermons about the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He made an encyclopedic compilation of all the philosophy of his day called The Fount of Wisdom. The Arabic philosophers who would later influence St. Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics relied heavily on this book. His writings, and perhaps he personally, greatly influenced the Second Council of Ephesus, at which his doctrine of icons won out. He died sometime before or during the council (787), living to be perhaps as old as 111 (!), but exactly when is unclear.
Notably, as the Protestant Reformation (starting 1517) took its Calvinist turn (in the 1540s), Protestants began removing and destroying sacred images from their homes and from places of worship. While there isn't any argument made at the time connecting this new iconoclastic movement to Islam, one has to wonder. That was the same time period in which Muslim finally smashed through Constantinople and began overrunning Eastern Europe. By the time of Calvin, the Muslims were well on their way toward Vienna and Germany. Perhaps Protestants feared, like the Iconoclast Heretics of the ancient past, that the Muslim's success was due to their rejection of icons.
In our own day, we are grateful to see a renewed interest in traditional parts of Christian worship. The use of incense, consecration bells, icons, rosaries, statuary, and more in our liturgy and churches had shown a tremendous decline since the mid-1900s. Many of those responsible for removing and even smashing beautiful marble altars, replacing them wooden tables, throwing beautiful Stations of the Cross into dumpsters, and replacing them with abstractions entirely unrecognizable as artistry, have done so in the name of "updating" or "modernizing." That is, they were eager to aid and abet the great enemy of our time - the opinion of the "rest of the world," also known as secularism. For a generation or two, Catholics starting trying to fit in with their Protestant and secular neighbors who seemed so successful and powerful, just as Christians in St. John Damascene's day were so worried about their Muslim neighbor's plans. In the last decade or two, thanks be to God, we have seen a dramatic reversal in this trend. Can we doubt for a second that St. John Damascene has been pleading our case in the Heavenly Courts?
St. John Damascene, pray for us.
Islam, Reformation, and Philosophy
I don't really follow blogs - creating an irony in that I have decided to start writing one. But I do periodically check in on the Washington Post's comments boards for interesting tidbits. Here's one I'ld like to share:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/samuel_rodriguez/2007/07/the_muslim_reformation_time_fo.html
In it, the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, and a Protestant, argues briefly that what Islam needs is a Protestant Reformation of its own. One Mr. Chase makes a briefer argument against him, in effect saying (1) there is no superstructure or hierarchy to reform against; and (2) the Islamic equivalent to a Reformation has already happened.
I decided to chime in and expand upon Mr. Chase's second point by looking at the philosophical underpinnings of the Reformation, and how those underpinnings are already in place in Islam, but have played out in a way that makes the Middle East a sort of photographic-negative from Europe. I have copied my argument below.
One of Martin Luther's fundamental gripes against the Catholic Church was its use of Greek 
philosophy to structure its understanding of the Christian Gospel. That is at the heart of his idea of "Sola Scriptura" demand: don't try to 'figure out' all this stuff - just read the Bible and do what it says, he insisted. The corollary was that religion did not "fit in" with the rest of reality as an integrated whole, but rather was a separate thing, a separate reality. Thus Luther's interpretation of the command to render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. The secular sphere and the religious had, in Luther's thinking, no real interaction (let alone integration). This disconnection is why Protestantism and secularism get along so nicely - each is content to let the other do its own thing without trying to connect between the two.
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has always insisted that there is just one reality, one universe, and that its different facets have ordered relationships with each other. The most important facets of reality are those that pertain to eternal destiny, it argues, which are the same facets about which the Church speaks. Thus the Church takes for itself a sort of overarching supervisory position: not in charge of anything in particular, except religious life, but with a certain oversight of everything in general, even things like politics and scientific research. Naturally, politicians and scientists chafe at this ordering, and prefer a separation. A secularization, made possible by the Protestant Reformation, is what they looked for.
The problem with a Muslim Reformation is that it has already happened, and failed. In the 11th and 12th centuries AD, Islam saw its philosophical hayday. Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and Ibn Farabi among a host of others labored to integrate their Koranic religious convictions with systematic thought in a way that could give a "big picture" of the whole world, sustain scientific discoveries, and help address questions not obviously answered in the Koran. They were in pursuit of the same project that the Catholic Scholastic philosophers (Thomas Aquinas, et al.) undertook about a century later (and mostly in light of the progress made by the Muslim philosophers first!). It was the same project that Martin Luther rejected in Catholic Europe. In Muslim Persia the project was torn down by Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, a theologian and cleric, like Luther, who was convinced that thinking about religion and faith somehow undid them. He wrote oodles of volumes, but his most significant is also one of his latest. It is most significant because it is a reversal of the earlier. "The Incoherence of the Philosophers" is a proposal of epistemological skepticism that would make Descartes or Hume blush. It denies any real ability to know anything outside of one's own mind, cutting off the subjective from the objective, the religious from the material universe.
So if this division of religious from secular has occured in both the Western world (in the 16-17th centuries) and in the Muslim world (in the 12th-13th centuries), why they both look so different from each other?
Simply put, the West has tended toward interest in the material and thus become more secular, while the Muslim world has tended toward interest in the religious and thus become more 'fundamentalist'. It was the same basic philosophical thrust to separate religion and the secular from each other that has allowed each to become unbalanced. If we separate the two so completely, we are left to chose between (on the one hand) a secularized scientism with no room for human values and transcendence, without wonder and awe; and (on the other hand) a detached religiosity with no room for inquiry or reasonability, nothing to prevent it from becoming unhinged in its own little mental universe, nothing to prevent it from becoming fanatical.
The two worlds we have thus face face each other in gaping incomprehension, each thinking of the other, "How can you be so obtuse?"
What is needed in both the Western world and in the Muslim world is a philosophical understanding in which there is one reality, and each thing has its proper place and can be understood analytically (in its parts and in itself) and comprehensively (as part of the bigger picture) - so that science is not closed to the transcendent and religion is not hostile to reason and thought. What is emphatically NOT needed in either the Western world or the Muslim world is a new Reformation, a new division of this-world from that-world. We've had quite enough of that already. Maybe, what is really needed is a new scholasticism.
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