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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
April 23, 2006
Case dismissed
My reader may not be surprised to learn I get many letters from Muslims -- and papers in which I appear get more -- accusing me of being anti-Islamic to one degree or another, and suggesting remedies that range from correcting my supposed mistakes, to killing me. Most are reasonable; though the number of overt or implied threats is a matter of concern.“Once again columnist David Warren shows his bias against everything Islamic,” wrote the ambassador of Egypt this last week. “It seems that he is waging his own modern-day crusade against Islam and Muslims.” I count this as neither reasonable, nor a threat. While flattered to be compared with Pope Urban II, and admitting that I am biased against Islam when its rival is Christianity, I cannot accept these charges at face value. His Excellency Mahmoud al-Saeed should see the wall of books I have at home, on the Koran and its interpretations; on Islamic preaching and devotion; on the philosophers; on the literature, art, architecture, ceramics, textiles, music (yes, music), of Arabs, Persians, Turks, Berbers, Muslim Indians and Indonesians; the histories and historiographies. It would be hard for him then to imply that I condemn Islam or Muslims out of hand. I particularly delight in certain phases of Islamic decorative art, and especially the calligraphy. My grandfather was a cartographer and illuminator; I acquired this taste from him. Am I biased against everything Islamic? No, my biases are more selective. There have been moments in history when Muslim peoples were among the most civilized, and in which their cultural achievements could be ranked with the best the world had seen. I wish any of those moments had occurred in the last three centuries. I also wish the present was among the great moments in Christian cultural achievement. One cannot choose when he is born. For years I considered it my business to be almost an apologist for Islam, and for Muslims, to people who belittled the religion. This partly from the sense of duty, in having spent some years in Muslim countries; and partly for the honour of defending my brother believers, against the godless in the West. I leave this job now mostly to the paid, professional apologists for Islam, such as Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, and to the innumerable Muslim missions in the West. My reason is that the West has come under escalating attack, in the name of Islam, on many fronts, and the urgent matter now is to defend it. There is an important distinction to be made between Muslims and Islam. One could, in theory, love Muslims and hate Islam, on the Christian principle of loving the sinner but not the sin. One might even say, for sake of argument, that while we in the West have had a religion that was better than we were, they, in the East, were often better than they were taught. Yet still agree with Augustine that, “nulla falsa doctrina est, quae non aliquid veri permisceat” (there is no false doctrine that does not contain some truth). I by no means think the Koran is all evil, and consider parts of it exalted for its time, or any time. I think J.M. Rodwell, a translator of the Koran into English from a century ago -- not the best of the translators, but among the most useful, analytically -- summarized the matter well when he wrote: “It must be acknowledged that the Koran deserves the highest praise for its conceptions of the Divine nature, in reference to the attributes of Power, Knowledge, and universal Providence and Unity -- that its belief and trust in one God of Heaven and Earth is deep and fervent -- and that, though it contains fantastic visions and legends, teaches a childish ceremonial, and justifies bloodletting, persecution, slavery, and polygamy, ... at the same time it embodies much of a noble and deep moral earnestness.” If there were true dialogue between East and West, we could say on each side what we truly believe, without threat and intimidation, and we could examine the Koran and its interpretive traditions with the same freedom that is allowed to scholarly inquiry into the Bible and its traditions. Perhaps some day. In the meanwhile, we owe it to every Muslim to take him as a human being, not as a representative. I know many Christians worse, and many Muslims better; and in that sense, I do not think I am biased against Muslims. Or put it like this. If self-declared Buddhists had been committing acts of terror and intimidation in the name of Lord Buddha, with the same frequency and on the same scale as self-declared Muslims have been doing in the name of Allah for the last many years, I think I would be writing about Buddhism and Buddhists in about the same way. Ditto for Confucians, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Jews, or even Christians for that matter. Now, my reader will observe: I hardly ever say anything against Buddhists. David Warren
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