BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

What Christians don't know
but need to know about Islam
Interview by Jamie Glazov

January 23, 2013

William Kilpatrick is the author of several books, including Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong. But he also has a special interest in Islam, about which he has written for FrontPage Magazine, Investor’s Business Daily, Catholic World Report, and other publications.



His most recent book, Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West, explores the threat that Islam poses to Christianity and Western civilization. The book also examines the role played by militant secularists in facilitating the expansion of Islam. He talks about the book in this interview.

Let’s begin with you telling us what inspired you to write this book.
In a way, it’s a continuation of Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right From Wrong. That book looked at the ways in which moral relativism impaired Johnny’s ability to tell right from wrong. Part of the new book looks at the ways in which cultural relativism, or multiculturalism, impairs his ability to tell friend from foe.

One of the chapters is titled “Why Johnny Can’t Read the Writing on the Wall.” One of the main reasons Western citizens can’t see the obvious about Islam is that they have been subjected to an educational system that insists on the moral equivalency of all cultures and religions, just as it had previously insisted on the equivalency of all value systems.

So, the initial impulse for writing the book was my realization that the same people who introduced moral chaos into schools and society were now bent on normalizing an alien ideology. Or, to paraphrase Mark Steyn, the people who brought you Heather Has Two Mommies are about to bring you “Heather has four mommies and a great big bearded daddy.”

Can you explain the title?
I use the word “atheism” in the title as shorthand for both atheists and militant secularists, most of whom tend to be on the left. Many Christians have awakened to the fact that they are in a cultural struggle with secular leftists, but far fewer have come to the realization that they are also in a civilizational struggle with Islam. Fewer, still, are aware that the left has formed a tacit alliance with radical Islam against the West.

Of course, Christians aren’t the only ones who are threatened by Islamic expansion. All non-Muslims are. But in the West, Christianity has traditionally been the focal point of resistance to Islamization.

Unfortunately, Christianity in the West has been weakened both by secular attacks and by self-inflicted wounds. As a result, Christians in the West are failing to stand up for their cultural heritage. In fact, many fail to realize that their culture is under attack.

But without Christianity you are left mainly with philosophies of relativism, skepticism and materialism — philosophies that have proved themselves incapable of resisting Islamization and, in fact, serve to enable its spread. You can see this most clearly in Europe where the decline of Christianity has been accompanied not only by the rise of secularism but also by the rise of Islam.

With the loss of faith has come a loss of meaning and the loss of a sense among Europeans that they have anything worth defending. The loss of faith is also one of the main factors accounting for Europe’s population loss. In other words, the decline of Christian faith in Europe created a spiritual vacuum and a population vacuum, both of which Islam was quick to fill.

While Muslim leaders and radical secularists are fully engaged in the struggle for the soul of the West, many Christians seem unaware that they are under attack from two sides. They need to wake up before it’s too late.

In one of your chapters, you spoke of “Christian enablers of Islam.” Can you elaborate on that?
Many Christian leaders unwittingly act as enablers of Islam’s totalitarian agenda by focusing on the surface similarities between Christianity and Islam rather than on the profound and irreconcilable differences.

A prime example is the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate which includes a short statement of the Church’s relation to Muslims [and other non-Christian religions]. Essentially, it says that Muslims adore the one God, revere Jesus, honor Mary, and value the moral life. Reading it one could easily jump to the conclusion that the Christian faith and the Islamic faith are very much alike. One might also conclude that Islam is indeed a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a handful of terrorists who misunderstand their own religion.

However, before jumping to that conclusion one needs to realize that Nostra Aetate was never intended to be the last word on Islam. Rather, the stated purpose of the declaration was to consider “what men have in common.”

Moreover, it was written at a time — the 1960s — when the Muslim world was far more moderate than it is now, a time when inter-religious dialogue seemed to hold great promise.

Recently Pope Benedict noted that with the passage of time “a weakness” of Nostra Aetate has become apparent: “it speaks of religion solely in a positive way and it disregards the sick and distorted forms of religion.” I think it safe to say that he’s referring here to Islam or, at least, to some forms of Islam.

This is a hopeful sign of a new realism about Islam. [Mr. Fiztpatrick, are you forgetting the Regensburg lecture of 2006? That was the first time that any leader of consequence anywhere confronted the ugly reality of Muslim fundamentalism and the violence it engenders! Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has never had blinders about Islam (or anything else, for that matter)!]

For too long, Catholic and Protestant leaders, alike, have been content to fall back on what I call the “common ground thesis” — the comforting belief that the Christian faith and the Islamic faith share much in common. As a result, a lot of Christians have been lulled into complacency about the threat from Islam. [That's the complacency that had settled into the Vatican about Islam during the previous Pontificate, which Benedict XVI almost immediately sought to shake up when one of his first organizational moves was to temporarily place the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialog (CIRD) with the Pontifical Council for Culture, which allowed him to re-assign the former longtime head of CIRD, Mons. Michael Fitzgerald, as Nuncio to Cairo and Vatican observer in the Arab League instead. It was speculated at the time that despite his sterling qualifications and experience as a scholar and missionary who had worked in the Muslim world, Fitzgerald had become too complacent about Islam, which was far from Benedict XVI's more vigilant attitude. To his credit, Mons. Fitzgerald - as far as I know - never contested the Pope's decision in public, and in fact, performed his tasks in Cairo very well even in the difficult months immediately following Hosni Mubarak's overthrow, until he retired recently at age 75. At the time of the Regensburg lecture, the Pavlov-dog reaction by Fitzgerald's supporters like John Allen and Thomas Reese (who were among those outraged by Fitzgerald's 'demotion') said it - what they considered the Pope's monumental 'gaffe' on Islam - "would never have happened if Fitzgerald had still been at the Vatican". People make up their own narratives to fit their biases. But who would still say today that Regensburg was a 'gaffe'? It marked, among other historic firsts for the occasion, the first time that someone with the global consequence of the Pope dared to speak the truth about the 'pathologies' inherent in Islam (as well as in Christianity, really, and where the West had gone wrong, which was the focus of the lecture, not Islam.]

If they want to avoid the fate of Christians in North Africa, the Middle East, and various other Muslim regions they need to get a better grasp on what Islam really teaches.

What do Christians need to understand about the differences between Islam and Christianity?
Islam is built on a rejection of the main tenets of Christianity. It rejects the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. There is a Jesus in the Koran but he seems to be there mainly for the purpose of denying the claims of Jesus of Nazareth.

Muhammad seemed to have realized that if the Christian claim about Jesus was true, then there would be no need for a new prophet and a new revelation. Consequently, in order to buttress his own claim to prophethood it was necessary for him to cut Jesus down to size. Thus the Koran tells us that “he was but a mortal” and only one in a long line of prophets culminating in Muhammad.

John the Baptist said of Jesus that “He must increase but I must decrease.” Muhammad preferred it the other way around. For him to increase it was necessary for Jesus to decrease.

Christians need to realize that Jesus is in the Koran, not because Muhammad thought highly of him but because Muhammad saw him as a rival who needed to be put in his place. The problem is that in using Jesus for his own purposes, Muhammad neglected to give him any personality. The Jesus of the Koran is more like a stick figure than a person.

Whether or not one accepts the claims of the Jesus of the Gospels, he is, at least, a recognizable human being who goes fishing with his disciples, attends wedding feasts and gathers children about him. By contrast, the Jesus of the Koran seems to exist neither in time nor space. The Koranic account of him is completely lacking in historical or geographical detail. There is no indication of when he lived, or where he conducted his ministry, or the names of his disciples or his antagonists such as Herod and Pilate.

In other words, he seems to be nothing more than an invention of Muhammad’s—and not a very convincing invention at that. In this regard it’s instructive to note that the Koran rails constantly against those who claim that “he [Muhammad] invented it himself.”

In sum, Christians who think that Muslims revere the same Jesus as they do need to better acquaint themselves with the Koran.

Why do you think there is so much ignorance in the West about Islam?
Much of the ignorance can be explained in terms of multicultural dogma combined with self-censorship. In the West the multicultural ideology has attained the status of a religion. Christians believe that Jesus saves, but multiculturalists believe that diversity saves. And to question the dogmas of diversity is tantamount to heresy.

Nowadays heretics aren’t burnt at the stake, but they are threatened with loss of reputation and loss of employment, and sometimes, as in the cases of Geert Wilders and Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, they are hauled before courts.

As a result, people learn to engage in self-censorship or what Orwell called “crimestop.” They won’t allow themselves to think certain thoughts or to explore certain avenues of inquiry. This is particularly true in regard to Islam. By now, just about everyone understands which thoughts about Islam are permissible and which are not.

As Andrew McCarthy points out, this results in a kind of “willful blindness” toward Islam. Like the people in The Emperor’s New Clothes we deny the evidence of our own eyes when it conflicts with the official narrative. In short, we prefer to remain ignorant.

In addition, elites in government, media, and education actively cover up for Islam. The media doesn’t report even a hundredth of the negative stories about Islam and it does its best to deny any linkage between Islam and terrorism. At the same time the media does everything it can to normalize Islam and make it seem as American as apple pie. For example, a recent Huffington Post article likens Muhammad to George Washington.

The schools are engaged in a similar kind of whitewashing. High school and college textbooks routinely define jihad as an “interior spiritual struggle” and describe Muslim conquests in the 7th and 8th centuries simply as “Muslim expansion.” Moreover, many of these texts have a distinct bias against the West and in favor of Islam.

For example, while the Atlantic slave trade is described at length and in gruesome detail, the Arab slave trade which lasted longer and resulted in more deaths is rarely mentioned. So, insofar as our children are learning anything about Islam, they are learning a Disneyfied version of it.