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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
December 16, 2001
The lash of Islam
I was quite struck by a letter published in the Citizen a couple of weeks ago. It was from an Ottawa Muslim who wanted to share the spiritual meaning of Ramadan. He described the fast which ends today in the feast of Eid ul-Fitr as "a triumph of self-control abstinence deprivation and deep reflection in comparison to the Christian Christmas with its rushed shopping frenzy" and "downing of much food and alcohol".Several readers were outraged by this comparison and wrote in letters that this Nae Ismail attempted to rebut. They tended to overlook his rather awkwardly made but more subtle point: that Christianity should no more be blamed when Christians profane Christmas than Islam should be blamed when Muslims commit terrorist acts. "Inter-faith dialogue" often generates more heat than light. I was myself rather scandalized to see the 30-day "half fast" (i.e. daylight hours) of Ramadan compared not with the 40 day full fast of the Christian Lent but instead with a Nativity feast that many Christians over the centuries have refused even to recognize. Moreover the Eid at the end of Ramadan must necessarily be compared with the Easter that comes at the end of Lent for it is this celebration of the Resurrection of Our Lord that is the primary Christian feast in all denominations. We should compare apples to apples not durians to kumquats. And I have every confidence that in a true inter-faith dialogue between men and women of goodwill who are granted freedom of mind and conscience and who hunger for the truth Christianity will do no worse than it has done over the last twenty centuries. It is a religion which has found adherents in every human culture often in defiance of worldly power. Though truth to tell except perhaps in the United States Christianity is in recession today in the Western world even as it continues to advance in Africa and Asia. And Canada certainly has played its role in the front ranks of Christian apostasy. This takes so many different forms though all are part of the spirit of the age. I do not think the lash of Muslim critics who condemn the crass materialism of the post-Christian West should be entirely unwelcome. In a sense they are performing in a much more gentle way the service that was visited upon all the Christian communities in 7th-century Arabia then soon after throughout what we call today the "Middle East". The new religion of Islam conquered by the sword but where it met up with the long-established churches of Eastern Christendom it did not find much resistance. The consensus of the older scholars seems to be that almost everywhere it encountered a Christianity that had gone soft that was vitiated by Gnosticism by Monophysitism by Nestorianism and other doctrinal heresies; and which was wallowing in Oriental luxury. Many of the individual churches were tied up in hypocritical accommodations with the various worldly powers. To many of the Christians of those days indeed to many who were most sincere Islam must have seemed to offer something purer and less compromising. Their own scholars sometimes referred to Islam as a scourge brought on them by God. And yet Christianity was not completely routed in any country but Arabia. The Muslims in their power granted tolerance in exchange for the payment of special taxes and tributes; not all the churches' properties were seized. Only today have the last Christians begun to emigrate from such countries as Algeria Egypt Palestine Yemen Iran -- following the Jews into permanent exile in the face of growing persecution. Where they remain (e.g. Lebanon Syria Iraq) the paradox is that their position may also become untenable when the secular tyrannies that protect them fall. For Christian Arab nationalists were among the founders of those regimes and continue to serve in high places within them. Indeed the whole waning phenomenon of "Pan-Arab nationalism" was from its beginnings associated with Arab Christians trying to integrate politically into societies that rejected them as religious infidels. Such (non-Christian) monsters as Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad may actually offer the only shield still standing between the Christian communities and the increasingly "Islamist" masses. Though that is no reason not to take them down for they have themselves been buying into Islamic fanaticism in the struggle to preserve their own power. The position of Christians in Canada is much less extreme. Not only do Christians of all confessions continue to be tolerated under the laws but there is no Islamist regime in Ottawa nor any detectable surge of Muslim fervour among the general population. (Yes I am being arch.) But in Canada too a long tradition of public Christianity has been successfully challenged. For the first time in the nearly five centuries since Jacques Cartier landed here the name of Jesus Christ is no longer uttered in public places. Christianity is to my understanding the only religion in Canada under such a ban. We have seen the effect plainly in the complete suppression of traditional Christian references in public ceremonies from the mourning for the victims of the Swissair crash in 1998 to the Sept. 14 national memorial for the World Trade Centre victims. More recently we learned that the Christian chaplains in the Canadian Armed Forces had been advised "to be sensitive in the use of specific sacred faith formulas to allow for greater inclusivity" when speaking publicly outside their chapels. This is bureaucratic code for Don't mention Jesus. Getting at the cause -- who gave this order? -- will not be easy. If you write to your Liberal MP you will get a vague formulaic response denying that a policy exists specifically to suppress the mention of Christ. If you write to the CAF chaplain-general's office you will get a response that is identically worded. If as a Baptist pastor of my acquaintance then tried you write personally to the chaplain-general Archdeacon Commodore Tim Maindonald ( maindonald.ta@forces.ca ) asking for a more candid explanation you will get a reply from a certain Col. Bourque director chaplain policy with supplementary verbiage on "faith journeys and experiences". My readers are invited to join in the search. In the meanwhile I would like to suggest to the many Christians among my readers that if we could stand up to fourteen centuries of Islam surely we can stand up to this. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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