Jesuit Writes Anti-Islamic Screed - 10 April 2006

American Papist

The important points in the article if you don't have time to read it (Magister introduces it first):

• An article by one of the Jesuits of “La Civiltà Cattolica” makes an extremely critical analysis of Islam...
• One of the four topics considered by Benedict XVI and the cardinals during their day “of reflection and prayer” at the last consistory, on March 23, was Islam.
• Rahman (an Afghan citizen condemned to death for converting to Christianity) was in fact freed and transferred to Italy under protective custody. And he has Benedict XVI to thank for that.
• But can this more energetic approach to the question of Islam also be found in the analysis the Church makes of the phenomenon? The answer is yes. The essay is entitled “The Islamic Question,” and occupies 30 pages of the journal Studium. It is accompanied by extensive footnotes, and is featured prominently beginning with the cover, which depicts a minaret standing out among the skyscrapers of a Western city.
• But the really interesting thing about the article is its authors, Roberto A.M. Bertacchini and Piersandro Vanzan, and in particular the latter of these. Vanzan is a Jesuit, a professor of pastoral theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and above all he is part of the college of writers for “La Civiltà Cattolica,” the magazine of the Rome Jesuits that is printed with the inspection and authorization of the Vatican authorities. Because of its explosive contents, it was unthinkable that the essay by Bertacchini and Vanzan would be published in a magazine strictly connected to the Holy See by statute, and representative of its official stance.
• The only substantial point that separates Oriana Fallaci’s analysis from that of Bertacchini and Vanzan is that, while she maintains that Islam is incapable of reform and incompatible with the Christian West, the other two acknowledge that an integration of the two civilizations is possible, albeit extremely difficult. And Benedict XVI is also known to acknowledge this last possibility.

My highlights from the article itself (here's where it gets good):

• The pervasiveness of the global village is such that there is only one way to escape its grasp: destroy it. And this is Al-Zawahiri’s ideological program, which he pursues with a complex strategy. For the formula of “modernizing Islam,” he substitutes another: “Islamizing modernity,” and therefore the West.

• This pan-Islamist program might make some smirk, just as many smirked at Hitler before his political ascent. But this is a real program, which is being carried out according to a clear plan, and although it is working slowly, it is producing results. That this is a real program can be seen in many ways.
  
  
• The first piece of macroscopic data is that from Afghanistan to Kashmir to Chechnya to Ossetia to the Philippines to Saudi Arabia to Bosnia to Kosovo to Palestine to Egypt to Algeria to Morocco, sizeable groups have unleashed a war against the West. It is impossible to think that these attacks are completely independent from each other.
  
  
• The second piece of macroscopic data is terrorism, especially if one has the patience to follow the thread that extends from July 7, 2005 to 1969, and the airplane from the Rome Fiumicino airport that Leila Khaled hijacked and blew up in Damascus.
  
  
• The third piece of evidence is anti-Zionism...
  
  
• The fourth indication is missionary activity...
  
  
• and the fifth is immigration. Aisha Farina, an Italian woman from Milan who converted to Islam and has publicly expressed her veneration for Bin Laden as for a reliable guide, said this: “Maybe all the Italians will end up converting. In any case, we will conquer you peacefully, because our numbers double every generation, but you are at zero growth.”
  
  
• But Islam is advancing in other ways, too...
  
  
• But there is an obstacle to this strategy: the American troops on Islamic soil...
  
  
• The sixth and final piece of evidence is the feelings of joy expressed by the Islamic population in the public squares, on websites, and even in the press after September 11, 2001, and also after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which the Kuwait daily “Al’Siyassa” called “a soldier sent by God.” If one comes to the point of rejoicing at horrible things, this joy breaks off natural human solidarity and sharpens the meaning of the expression “infidel dogs.” A massacre of dogs doesn’t affect me; they are not human. This is racism, and one must begin with calling it by its name, and then arrive at the appropriate consequences.
  
  
• In short, the Islamization of the West is neither a phantasm nor merely something feared: it is an intention and a fact that emerges from an objective examination of the evidence.
  
  
• Moderate Islam, properly so called, does not exist because there is no institutional and moderate form of Islamic theology. There are moderate Muslims, and some of them see things with a clear and long-term perspective. But Islam itself, or rather the institutional religious culture of the Muslims, has reacted in its encounter with modernity by entrenching itself in fundamentalist positions...
  
  
• The necessity for extensive self-criticism on relations with Islam, one that would finally emerge from a blind and suicidal “niceness,” is therefore unavoidable.
  
  
• Dialoguing with those who have, in the back of their minds, the idea of Islamizing us and reducing us to dhimmi status, as subjects of an inferior order, simply makes no sense...

As you can see, there is a GREAT DEAL of information in this article, so I encourage reading the rest.

What is particularly important about this article (besides its excellent and insightful points about the Muslim world), is who is saying this. Though these sentiments are not yet being published in mainline Vatican-affiliated publications (such as La Civiltà Cattolica), they are being published by the regular contributors to these publications... Magister explains the situation more comprehensively of course.

Anyway, there is a clear path here towards this type of honest evaluation of the situation receiving press attention in more "mainstream" publications and from more prominant sources...

Oriana Fallaci Has Enrolled in the Society of Jesus
An article by one of the Jesuits of “La Civiltà Cattolica” makes an extremely critical analysis of Islam, one very similar to that of the famous author – whose work Benedict XVI reads with admiration

by Sandro Magister

ROMA, April 10, 2006 – One of the four topics considered by Benedict XVI and the cardinals during their day “of reflection and prayer” at the last consistory, on March 23, was Islam.

Or, more precisely: “the position of the Catholic Church, and of the Holy See, in the face of Islam today.”

The discussion was held in private, but some of the cardinals afterward remarked that much more concern was shown than in the past over the challenge that Islam presents to Christianity and the West, and that there was general agreement with Benedict XVI’s energetic opposition to terrorism and the violation of religious liberty.

One month earlier, on February 20, pope Joseph Ratzinger received Morocco’s new ambassador to the Holy See, Ali Achour, and made a vigorous appeal for the rejection of violence and for full respect for religious liberty, “in a reciprocal manner in all societies.”

And on March 22, on the eve of the consistory, the pope, acting through his secretary of state Angelo Sodano, had sent to the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, an urgent request for the liberation of Abdul Rahman, an Afghan citizen condemned to death for converting to Christianity.

Rahman was in fact freed and transferred to Italy under protective custody. And he has Benedict XVI to thank for that.

But can this more energetic approach to the question of Islam also be found in the analysis the Church makes of the phenomenon?

The answer is yes. One outstanding proof of this is an essay that appeared in the most recent edition of “Studium,” an authoritative Italian bimonthly journal on Catholic culture founded in 1906, which is printed by the publishing house of the same name and directed by two scholars of great prestige: Vincenzo Cappelletti, a philosopher of science and director of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia, and Francesco Paolo Casavola, a jurist and former president of the constitutional court. The dedicated collaborators of “Studium” have included Giovanni Battista Montini, who became pope under the name of Paul VI.

The essay is entitled “The Islamic Question,” and occupies 30 pages of the journal. It is accompanied by extensive footnotes, and is featured prominently beginning with the cover, which depicts a minaret standing out among the skyscrapers of a Western city.

But the really interesting thing about the article is its authors, Roberto A.M. Bertacchini and Piersandro Vanzan, and in particular the latter of these. Vanzan is a Jesuit, a professor of pastoral theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and above all he is part of the college of writers for “La Civiltà Cattolica,” the magazine of the Rome Jesuits that is printed with the inspection and authorization of the Vatican authorities.

Because of its explosive contents, it was unthinkable that the essay by Bertacchini and Vanzan would be published in a magazine strictly connected to the Holy See by statute, and representative of its official stance.

But the fact that the essay’s principal author is a Jesuit from “La Civiltà Cattolica,” and that it was published by an authoritative Catholic journal like “Studium,” are still important indications.

Those who have read “La rabbia e l’orgoglio [Rage and Pride]” and other writings on Islam by Oriana Fallaci – an author of worldwide fame who has lived in New York for many years – will find many points in common with hers in the essay by Bertacchini and Vanzan.

Oriana Fallaci is an extremely harsh critic of the religious and cultural factors that, in her view, feed into the Muslim world’s challenge against the West and Christianity, which she fiercely defends in spite of being a declared atheist.

She is a great admirer of Benedict XVI, who has read a number of her books and received her in a private audience last August 1 at Castel Gandolfo.

The only substantial point that separates Oriana Fallaci’s analysis from that of Bertacchini and Vanzan is that, while she maintains that Islam is incapable of reform and incompatible with the Christian West, the other two acknowledge that an integration of the two civilizations is possible, albeit extremely difficult.

And Benedict XVI is also known to acknowledge this last possibility.

Here is an extract from the much more extensive essay published in the January-February 2006 issue of “Studium”:


The Islamic Question

by Roberto A.M. Bertacchini and Piersandro Vanzan S.I.


Islamic terrorism is a rather complex response to the confrontation with the West, which Islam sees as a devastating, deadly threat.

At the end of the 1980’s, there was a pitched battle within the Islamist camp between the positions of Abdullah Azzam and the more extremist positions of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, a true ideologue of jihad in the form it has taken today, which includes in the category of enemy the “Herodians,” or those who collaborate with the West. On November 24, 1989, Azzam was assassinated in Peshawar, and Al-Zawahiri had an open field.

For the zealots, everything that comes from the outside is like poison to their traditional ways of life, so they hold that there is only one way to avert cultural catastrophe: expel the invader and hermetically seal off the borders, so nothing can pollute or corrupt their miniature world. This is, in part, the position of Osama Bin Laden, who is opposed to the American presence, not only in Iraq, but also in Saudi Arabia.

But this defensive program would never work against Western civilization. Unlike all previous civilizations, it is not localized or territorially circumscribed. The pervasiveness of the global village is such that there is only one way to escape its grasp: destroy it. And this is Al-Zawahiri’s ideological program, which he pursues with a complex strategy. For the formula of “modernizing Islam,” he substitutes another: “Islamizing modernity,” and therefore the West.

Within the Muslim world, Islamization means de-Westernizing everything: from political and cultural institutions to economic ones, even to the point of rethinking banking operations. On the outside, it means spreading Islam through vigorous missionary activity, in both Europe and the United States: this activity is supported above all by Saudia Arabia. But according to the most radical interpretations, Islamizing the West means violently attacking its political and economic power, without sparing the civilian population.

This pan-Islamist program might make some smirk, just as many smirked at Hitler before his political ascent. But this is a real program, which is being carried out according to a clear plan, and although it is working slowly, it is producing results.

That this is a real program can be seen in many ways.

* * *

The first piece of macroscopic data is that from Afghanistan to Kashmir to Chechnya to Ossetia to the Philippines to Saudi Arabia to Bosnia to Kosovo to Palestine to Egypt to Algeria to Morocco, sizeable groups have unleashed a war against the West. It is impossible to think that these attacks are completely independent from each other.

The second piece of macroscopic data is terrorism, especially if one has the patience to follow the thread that extends from July 7, 2005 to 1969, and the airplane from the Rome Fiumicino airport that Leila Khaled hijacked and blew up in Damascus.

1972 was the year of the Olympics in Munich and the massacre that happened there. But before that, on August 16 of that same year, an airplane headed for Tel Aviv was blown up by a record player rigged with explosives that a couple of English tourists had received from two Arabic men who had been romancing them. Thinking about it today brings chills: Al-Qaeda is a new and closely related phenomenon. Courting two women in order to carry out an attack means being deeply steeped in ideology. And it means that there is a connection between ideology and organization – you can’t just pick up an exploding record player at the local hardware store. Unless two Arabs happened to meet two tourists going to Tel Aviv, and then happened to get the idea of carrying out an attack, and again happened to have a friend at the ready to provide them with the surprise package. But already in 1970, six airplanes had been hijacked or blown up on the ground or during flight.

The conditions for carrying out the attack of August 16, 1972, were so complex that they required a plan constructed over years, assisted by excellent propaganda systems and economic and human resources of the highest caliber. People’s sense morality cannot be altered in the blink of an eye. The young women were probably attractive, and there may have been some tenderness in them. Placing this episode side by side with the massacre at the school in Beslan in 2004, with one hundred fifty children killed, with those three days of torment in the gymnasium and the torture of withholding water, with the girls who were first raped and then killed, we see a ferocity at work that is so opposed to the common sense of morality that it must be sustained by an absolute ideological commitment. And such an ideology, which has religious foundations, requires that the theologians themselves weave together the theoretical justifications for terror.

The third piece of evidence is anti-Zionism. Let’s take a look at the sequence of events. Anti-Zionism is evident in the first attacks of the 1970’s: the episode in Munich makes this utterly clear. In 1973, we had the war of Yom Kippur, which again saw the Islamic countries forced to concede defeat. But on October 16 and 17 of that year, during the Syro-Egyptian war against Israel, OPEC held a conference in Kuwait City that established: a) the quadrupling of the price of crude oil; b) the embargo against the United States, Denmark, and Holland; c) the progressive reduction of the amount of oil extracted; d) the effort to extend the embargo to countries that would not accept their conditions; e) including among their political conditions the acceptance of the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories on the part of their economic partners, the recognition of the Palestinians, the presence of the PLO at the peace negotiations, and the application of UN resolution 242. It is a positive fact that the Islamic countries did not recognize the newly established state of Israel. And Saddam Hussein’s hostility towards Israel was evident to the very end. So there is a clear convergence of economic, military, and terrorist policies. After the attacks on New York, Madrid, London, and Sharm El Sheik, one would have to be blind not to see the almost maniacal sense of coordination and timing in this form of Islam. But there was also coordination between the OPEC conference and the war of Yom Kippur. This sense of timing and coordination is a cultural message directed toward the Muslim world itself, an eminent means of asserting that Islam is united and coordinated.

The fourth indication is missionary activity, and the fifth is immigration. Aisha Farina, an Italian woman from Milan who converted to Islam and has publicly expressed her veneration for Bin Laden as for a reliable guide, said this: “Maybe all the Italians will end up converting. In any case, we will conquer you peacefully, because our numbers double every generation, but you are at zero growth.”

But Islam is advancing in other ways, too. In Mazara del Vallo in Sicily, since the end of the 1970’s there has been a Tunisian community that obtained permission to preserve its identity in all respects, with Tunisian schools, teachers sent from Tunisia, Tunisian laws, etc. So although polygamy is illegal there, it is tolerated. In other places, Muslims open unauthorized schools, but no intervention is made. Infibulation is practiced on women, but no one is put on trial. One the whole, this creates an asymmetry among citizens before the law, by virtue of which some minorities are first protected, but then become privileged. And this proves the incompatibility of radical multiculturalism and the rule of law.

But there is an obstacle to this strategy: the American troops on Islamic soil. From this are derived two political stances that differ not according to the result they seek, but according to the strategies they employ. In fact, Bin Laden – but also Iran, and perhaps Pakistan – thinks that the oil pump will, in the end, be less influential than the nuclear trigger. Two reasons are given for why blackmail using oil supplies cannot last for long: one is that if the price of crude is raised too high, other sources of energy will become more economically attractive. The other is that, when the West is really put into a bind, it will react with force. That is why a different strategy is necessary, which, by bringing the war into the heart of Europe and America, blocks the use of nuclear weapons. But doing this requires an enormous amount of money and control of the political power that is now in the hands of less radical Muslims. So the terrorist political approach proceeds along two parallel guidelines: fighting the “moderate” Islamic regimes and carrying out spectacular attacks in the West, in order to reinforce its own prestige in the eyes of the Muslim world and establish itself as a legitimate guide. If these are the plausible scenarios, the politics of George W. Bush also takes on an entirely different meaning. It is the politics of the “countertrigger.” The validity of this option is yet to be verified.

The sixth and final piece of evidence is the feelings of joy expressed by the Islamic population in the public squares, on websites, and even in the press after September 11, 2001, and also after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which the Kuwait daily “Al’Siyassa” called “a soldier sent by God.” If one comes to the point of rejoicing at horrible things, this joy breaks off natural human solidarity and sharpens the meaning of the expression “infidel dogs.” A massacre of dogs doesn’t affect me; they are not human. This is racism, and one must begin with calling it by its name, and then arrive at the appropriate consequences.

* * *

In short, the Islamization of the West is neither a phantasm nor merely something feared: it is an intention and a fact that emerges from an objective examination of the evidence.

Moderate Islam, properly so called, does not exist because there is no institutional and moderate form of Islamic theology. There are moderate Muslims, and some of them see things with a clear and long-term perspective. But Islam itself, or rather the institutional religious culture of the Muslims, has reacted in its encounter with modernity by entrenching itself in fundamentalist positions. And this is true not only in Iran or Pakistan, but also in Egypt.

There is, therefore, an objective convergence between the trend in Islamic theology and the ideology of the terrorists. Fortunately, not all the imams have the same zeal for jihad, but the problem is that there is no moderate Islam, or rather there does not exist an Islamic theology that has integrated modernity. This is why it would not only be prudent, as cardinal Giacomo Biffi has suggested, to discourage Islamic immigration in Europe, it would be masochistic to encourage it without demanding reciprocation in terms of integration.

Islam is not compatible with liberal democracies for stronger and deeper reasons than those that usually come to mind: it is not only a question of polygamy, the veil, Friday religious observance, etc. That is, it is not only a problem of the rules of behavior, morals, and worship. It is seen in how Islam functions on its home turf. In Iran, there are mullahs who are appointed to supervise morality. And apart from peering into the bedroom, many more of them scrutinize the cinema, the press, and books: this is the monitoring of the public expressions of thought, which are censured if they are not in conformity with shari’a or the Qur’an and its official interpretation. A professor cannot say what he likes at school, and if an intellectual publishes his own views, he is taking a risk.

By way of explaining this issue, it is true that the Church did not abolish the index of prohibited books until Vatican II, but before it was abolished this institution did not carry any weight in civil affairs. That’s not how it is in Islam. Religious censure is “ipso facto” civil censure, because the religious authorities have civil authority, and vice versa. The entire spectrum of these and other related facts calls for intellectual honesty on our part, because we cannot interpret them as isolated cases devoid of general significance. And if these are not isolated cases, only one conclusion can be drawn: the word “freedom” did not exist in Arabic for centuries because Islamic civilization simply makes no provision for it (it was introduced with the word “hurriyya,” meaning “entitlement,” only in 1774, and out of the necessity of signing treaties with Westerners). So the absolutism of Saudi Arabia or other emirates, the legal inferiority of women and so forth, are not correctible eccentricities. They are the effects of a deep-rooted cause, which cannot be removed without destroying Islam. And this is why these eccentricities are so fiercely defended: because they have an intrinsic relationship with Muslim identity. And therefore integration can be achieved with Muslims on an individual basis, but not with Islam.

Unfortunately, open and liberal society becomes paralyzed when it encounters a closed and incompatible civilization. The problem of tolerance was worked out within Christian civilization in order to defuse its internal conflicts. But its introduction made sense, because tolerance was a value recognized by all parties, in that it was able to find a theological foundation.

But in Islam, there is no foundation for tolerance in the broad sense that characterizes our secular societies. Freedom of the press does not make sense. The Middle Ages had Boccaccio, and the Renaissance had Pietro Aretino. But in a much less offensive case, Islam censured the mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam (1048-1122) for talking about wine and drunkenness. And the fact that he was rehabilitated to some extent in Iran at the end of the twentieth century does not represent the sort of openness that one would like to believe it does. In Saudi Arabia, Islam protects itself by banning even the visible wearing of a necklace with a cross. But how can it protect itself in Europe? It’s not just the problem of girls wearing jeans. It is the problem of schools, newspapers, labor unions, women in leadership roles, cinema, television, libraries: it is the West in the sum total of its institutions that is a threat to Islam. And not because it wants to be, but simply because it exists. Like Israel.

* * *

The necessity for extensive self-criticism on relations with Islam, one that would finally emerge from a blind and suicidal “niceness,” is therefore unavoidable.

Dialoguing with those who have, in the back of their minds, the idea of Islamizing us and reducing us to dhimmi status, as subjects of an inferior order, simply makes no sense. Dialogue with moderate Muslims should not only be pursued; it should be increased, and the moderates supported in every way possible, even more so than the support that was given to the anti-Soviet resistance. But these forms of openness must be combined with a politics of distrust and suspicion, which would tighten the net as much as possible and utterly discourage the presence of the Islamizers in Europe. These are, in fact, the ideological column of terrorism: you cannot fight the one without opposing the other.

In order to enter the banquet, one must wear the wedding garment, which we must demand of those who knock on our door. It is a garment that makes acceptance dependant upon the observance of our laws. Otherwise we cannot prevent some mosques, centers of Islamic culture, and circuits of electronic preaching from cultivating hatred against us. And that’s just it, hatred – a sentiment toward which we have for too long shown a suicidal tolerance. It is a sentiment that renders social life impossible.

And anyway, it would be too sad if everything were to end this way. We should, instead, be the prophetic proponents of a phase of tolerance and integration.

From the point of view of intercultural relations, a certain reduction of the level of secularism in Western societies is probably necessary, and this will not happen without overcoming great resistance. But from the point of view of Islamic theology, the road ahead is not so obvious, in part because their cultural centers seem like fortresses that will be difficult to expunge. One way that might be practicable is that of returning to the great mystics of the Muslim world: for example, Rabi’a or Al-Hallaji. But Al-Hallaji was martyred by a caliph, and not by the Christians. So this problem is connected with that of the theoretical and practical possibility for a pluralistic Islamic theology. We think that the problem is a an arduous one, but that it would be equally wrong to maintain either that it is insurmountable or that it does not exist.

And this also holds true on the political level. Today’s Islam presents Europe with the problem of the civil recognition of its identity. This is a serious problem, which Christianity has not been able to present on its own behalf with the same forcefulness. Finding a solution on a basis of equity – of harmonizing and safeguarding the rights of all religious groups in the same way – will not be easy, but it is unthinkable that a Muslim minority would be granted the civil protection of its identity and the cultural recognition that the secularism sprung from the French Enlightenment presumes to withhold from the Christian majority.

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The website of the journal in which the essay by Bertacchini and Vanzan was published:

> “Studium”

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On this website, previous articles on this topic:

> Focus on ISLAM

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English translation by Matthew Sherry: traduttore@hotmail.com

For the latest articles go to the English home page:

> www.chiesa.espressonline.it

Sandro Magister’s e-mail address is s.magister@espressoedit.it

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