Compare and contrast
May. 5th, 2006 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lederhosenIt pains me to say this, but after reading the full text of George Pell's speech to the Legatus Summit, I think the media coverage has been more than a little one-sided. Not on the global-warming bits that I mentioned earlier - those remarks aren't much improved by context - but on the main topic of the speech, Islam.
Pell offered this question:
Can Islam and the Western democracies live together peacefully? What of Islamic minorities in Western countries? Views on this question range from näive optimism to bleakest pessimism.
He then went on to present the arguments for both optimism and pessimism. Unfortunately, most of the reporting I've seen highlights the latter while ignoring the former; while IMHO he gave more weight to the pessimistic arguments, it's not to the extent that the coverage would suggest, and by my reading that wasn't the ultimate point of his speech - in fact, he went on to caution against "easy answers, whether of an optimistic or pessimistic bent".
I'm not defending the whole of the speech; the climate-change aspect is just one of several side points I disagree with*. But AFAICT, the overall point that he's aiming at would seem to be that productive dialogue with moderate, tolerant Islam requires acknowledging that extremist, intolerant Islam also exists. I don't think that's a particularly unreasonable position.
Some illustrative quotes:
In grappling with these problems we have to resist the temptation to reduce a complex and fluid situation to black and white photos. Much of the future remains radically unknown to us. It is hard work to keep the complexity of a particular phenomenon steadily in view and to refuse to accept easy answers, whether of an optimistic or pessimistic kind. Above all else we have to remember that like Christianity, Islam is a living religion, not just a set of theological or legislative propositions. It animates the lives of an estimated one billion people in very different political, social and cultural settings, in a wide range of devotional styles and doctrinal approaches. Human beings have an invincible genius for variation and innovation.
Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited. To stop at this proposition, however, is to neglect the way these facts are mitigated or exacerbated by the human factor. History has more than its share of surprises. Australia lives next door to Indonesia, the country with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world[19]. Indonesia has been a successful democracy, with limitations, since independence after World War II. Islam in Indonesia has been tempered significantly both by indigenous animism and by earlier Hinduism and Buddhism, and also by the influence of sufism. As a consequence, in most of the country (except in particular Aceh) Islam is syncretistic, moderate and with a strong mystical leaning. The moderate Islam of Indonesia is sustained and fostered in particular by organisations like Nahdatul Ulama, once led by former president Abdurrahman Wahid, which runs schools across the country, and which with 30-40 million members is one of the largest Muslim organisations in the world.
...there is a whole range of factors, some of them susceptible to influence or a change in direction, affecting the prospects for a successful Islamic engagement with democracy. Peace with respect for human rights are the most desirable end point, but the development of democracy will not necessarily achieve this or sustain it. This is an important question for the West as well as for the Muslim world. Adherence to what George Weigel has called “a thin, indeed anorexic, idea of procedural democracy” can be fatal here. It is not enough to assume that giving people the vote will automatically favour moderation, in the short term at least. Moderation and democracy have been regular partners in Western history, but have not entered permanent and exclusive matrimony and there is little reason for this to be better in the Muslim world, as the election results in Iran last June and the elections in Palestine in January reminded us. There are many ways in which President Bush’s ambition to export democracy to the Middle East is a risky business. In its influence on both religion and politics, the culture is crucial.
...
Most of this is a preliminary clearing of the ground for dialogue and interaction with our Muslim brothers and sisters based on the conviction that it is always useful to know accurately where you are before you start to decide what you should be doing. The war against terrorism is only one aspect of the challenge. Perhaps more important is the struggle in the Islamic world between moderate forces and extremists, especially when we set this against the enormous demographic shifts likely to occur across the world, the relative changes in population-size of the West, the Islamic and Asian worlds and the growth of Islam in a childless Europe.
Every great nation and religion has shadows and indeed crimes in their histories. This is certainly true of Catholicism and all Christian denominations. We should not airbrush these out of history, but confront them and then explain our present attitude to them. These are also legitimate requests for our Islamic partners in dialogue. Do they believe that the peaceful suras of the Koran are abrogated by the verses of the sword? Is the programme of military expansion (100 years after Muhammad’s death Muslim armies reached Spain and India) to be resumed when possible? Do they believe that democratic majorities of Muslims in Europe would impose Sharia law? Can we discuss Islamic history and even the hermeneutical problems around the origins of the Koran without threats of violence?
Obviously some of these questions about the future cannot be answered, but the issues should be discussed. Useful dialogue means that participants grapple with the truth and in this issue of Islam and the West the stakes are too high for fundamental misunderstandings. Both Muslims and Christians are helped by accurately identifying what are core and enduring doctrines, by identifying what issues can be discussed together usefully, by identifying those who are genuine friends, seekers after truth and cooperation and separating them from those who only appear to be friends.
(These quotes don't give the full picture either, BTW - if you want that, you'll have to actually read the speech for yourself. But I think they're a more accurate representation of Pell's focus than the coverage I've seen so far.)
*For others, see his discussion of secularism, and the rather puzzling interpretation that the West's declining birth rates indicate a "crisis of confidence"; AFAIK, people without faith in the future tend to have more children, not less. All in all, I think Pell is more strongly anti-secularism than anti-Islam.
Pell offered this question:
Can Islam and the Western democracies live together peacefully? What of Islamic minorities in Western countries? Views on this question range from näive optimism to bleakest pessimism.
He then went on to present the arguments for both optimism and pessimism. Unfortunately, most of the reporting I've seen highlights the latter while ignoring the former; while IMHO he gave more weight to the pessimistic arguments, it's not to the extent that the coverage would suggest, and by my reading that wasn't the ultimate point of his speech - in fact, he went on to caution against "easy answers, whether of an optimistic or pessimistic bent".
I'm not defending the whole of the speech; the climate-change aspect is just one of several side points I disagree with*. But AFAICT, the overall point that he's aiming at would seem to be that productive dialogue with moderate, tolerant Islam requires acknowledging that extremist, intolerant Islam also exists. I don't think that's a particularly unreasonable position.
Some illustrative quotes:
In grappling with these problems we have to resist the temptation to reduce a complex and fluid situation to black and white photos. Much of the future remains radically unknown to us. It is hard work to keep the complexity of a particular phenomenon steadily in view and to refuse to accept easy answers, whether of an optimistic or pessimistic kind. Above all else we have to remember that like Christianity, Islam is a living religion, not just a set of theological or legislative propositions. It animates the lives of an estimated one billion people in very different political, social and cultural settings, in a wide range of devotional styles and doctrinal approaches. Human beings have an invincible genius for variation and innovation.
Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited. To stop at this proposition, however, is to neglect the way these facts are mitigated or exacerbated by the human factor. History has more than its share of surprises. Australia lives next door to Indonesia, the country with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world[19]. Indonesia has been a successful democracy, with limitations, since independence after World War II. Islam in Indonesia has been tempered significantly both by indigenous animism and by earlier Hinduism and Buddhism, and also by the influence of sufism. As a consequence, in most of the country (except in particular Aceh) Islam is syncretistic, moderate and with a strong mystical leaning. The moderate Islam of Indonesia is sustained and fostered in particular by organisations like Nahdatul Ulama, once led by former president Abdurrahman Wahid, which runs schools across the country, and which with 30-40 million members is one of the largest Muslim organisations in the world.
...there is a whole range of factors, some of them susceptible to influence or a change in direction, affecting the prospects for a successful Islamic engagement with democracy. Peace with respect for human rights are the most desirable end point, but the development of democracy will not necessarily achieve this or sustain it. This is an important question for the West as well as for the Muslim world. Adherence to what George Weigel has called “a thin, indeed anorexic, idea of procedural democracy” can be fatal here. It is not enough to assume that giving people the vote will automatically favour moderation, in the short term at least. Moderation and democracy have been regular partners in Western history, but have not entered permanent and exclusive matrimony and there is little reason for this to be better in the Muslim world, as the election results in Iran last June and the elections in Palestine in January reminded us. There are many ways in which President Bush’s ambition to export democracy to the Middle East is a risky business. In its influence on both religion and politics, the culture is crucial.
...
Most of this is a preliminary clearing of the ground for dialogue and interaction with our Muslim brothers and sisters based on the conviction that it is always useful to know accurately where you are before you start to decide what you should be doing. The war against terrorism is only one aspect of the challenge. Perhaps more important is the struggle in the Islamic world between moderate forces and extremists, especially when we set this against the enormous demographic shifts likely to occur across the world, the relative changes in population-size of the West, the Islamic and Asian worlds and the growth of Islam in a childless Europe.
Every great nation and religion has shadows and indeed crimes in their histories. This is certainly true of Catholicism and all Christian denominations. We should not airbrush these out of history, but confront them and then explain our present attitude to them. These are also legitimate requests for our Islamic partners in dialogue. Do they believe that the peaceful suras of the Koran are abrogated by the verses of the sword? Is the programme of military expansion (100 years after Muhammad’s death Muslim armies reached Spain and India) to be resumed when possible? Do they believe that democratic majorities of Muslims in Europe would impose Sharia law? Can we discuss Islamic history and even the hermeneutical problems around the origins of the Koran without threats of violence?
Obviously some of these questions about the future cannot be answered, but the issues should be discussed. Useful dialogue means that participants grapple with the truth and in this issue of Islam and the West the stakes are too high for fundamental misunderstandings. Both Muslims and Christians are helped by accurately identifying what are core and enduring doctrines, by identifying what issues can be discussed together usefully, by identifying those who are genuine friends, seekers after truth and cooperation and separating them from those who only appear to be friends.
(These quotes don't give the full picture either, BTW - if you want that, you'll have to actually read the speech for yourself. But I think they're a more accurate representation of Pell's focus than the coverage I've seen so far.)
*For others, see his discussion of secularism, and the rather puzzling interpretation that the West's declining birth rates indicate a "crisis of confidence"; AFAIK, people without faith in the future tend to have more children, not less. All in all, I think Pell is more strongly anti-secularism than anti-Islam.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-05 09:21 am (UTC)Yes he is anti secular, like many of the christen conservatives who talk about Islam seem to fall into an idealized view of it, “well yes the stone women to death, but at least they have standards of modesty” hyperbole everywhere of course. Talking about how much better the world could be if only the western societies would adopt what to my mind are the worst traits of Islamic society.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-05 12:05 pm (UTC)"... The world is on its elbows & knees, it's forgotten the message & worships the creeds..."
no subject
Date: 2006-05-05 02:21 pm (UTC)But the phrase "Rush Limbaugh arrested", while technically true, isn't telling the whole of the situation, and the obvious glee in Left blogistan is rather infantile.
Edie
no subject
Date: 2006-05-06 03:45 am (UTC)