relda,
I certainly agree with what you wrote about Fundamentalist Christians. However, in your previous post you seemed to have implied that they continued to see “Jewish unbelief” as threatening to their religion, and I just wanted to point to Christian Zionists as a notable exception: you can hardly see the “Jewish unbelief” as a threat to your religion if you believe that the restoration of Israel as a Jewish state is a precondition for Christ’s second coming.

Constance,
Thank you for your defense of the Catholic position. However, you might note that just recently “the pope struck a note of Christian-Muslim harmony... expressing "deep respect for the Muslim community" during a brief welcoming ceremony at Amman's Queen Alia International Airport“ (c.f. http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/emphasis-islam-makes-popes-trip-original).

“Because of the burden of our common history, so often marked by misunderstanding,” Benedict said, Muslims and Christians must “bear witness to all that is good and true,” especially “the common origin and dignity of all human persons.” (c.f. http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/benedict-xvi-sets-new-papal-record-mosque-visits).

Relda: Thank you for excellent, balanced post about Sufiism. Exactly this point - the huge contrast between Sufiism and the intolerant, bullying shopfront of Wahhabiism - is made cogently by Ed Husain in "The Islamist", where he talks about his Pakistani background, suffused in mild, tolerant, personally spiritual Islam. Lamentably, just about everywhere this benign legacy of Islam is being challenged by a rabidly hostile and violent attitude combining hatred of Kuffars and a killjoy disdain for the value of the present life. Of course the West can't reform Islam: only the Islamic world can do that.

The culturally Christian world has junked the spiritual underpinnings of Western civilization and we've plunged into decline from within. Heading in the opposite direction, modern Islam has junked its own valuable underpinnings and its "shop front" evokes in me - a normally mild-mannered, cerebral and tolerant person with a phobia of violence - a seething anger towards those who would destroy “ civilization”.

Literalism is mainstream in today's Islam. If you read the Koran literally, it is a terrorist book exactly as Geert Wilders says in his film Fitna. If Muslims want to be taken seriously as partners in human civilization, they need to do FAR more to combat the monsters among them.

As a Christian, I deplore and condemn the US Religious Right and the (tiny) fringe of violent bombers of abortion clinics and so on. "Morality" covers far more than just sex and reproductive technology. But those politically correct left-liberals who cite this tiny fringe group as meaning that Christianity as "just as bad" as the madness behind the widespread fundamentalist excesses of Islam are both dishonest and intellectually bankrupt.

I am aghast at the ignorant antisemitism propagated throughout nearly all of the Islamic world. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (egregious tsarist forgery) are still taught as fact in places like Egypt. I have heard Arabs in Australia call Jews in general (and I am not one) pigs. How can one feel anything but contempt for this?

Tariq Ali in his book "The Clash of Fundamentalisms" says in a “Letter to a young Muslim”:

"What do the Islamists offer? A route to a past which, mercifully for the people of the seventh century, never existed. If the 'Emirate of Afghanistan' is the model for what they want to impose on the world then the bulk of Muslims would rise up in arms against them. Don't imagine that either Osama or Mullah Omar represent the future of Islam. It would be a major disaster for [our] culture if that turned out to be the case. .....

"I've met many of our people in different parts of the world since 11 September. One question is always repeated: 'Do you think we Muslims are clever enough to have done this?' I always answer 'Yes'. Then I ask who they think is responsible, and the answer is invariably 'Israel'. Why? 'To discredit us and make the Americans attack our countries.' I gently expose their wishful illusions, but the conversation saddens me. Why are so many Muslims sunk in this torpor? Why do they wallow in so much self-pity? Why is their sky always overcast? Why is it always someone else who is to blame? Sometimes when we talk I get the impression that there is not a single Muslim country of which they can feel really proud. Those who have migrated from South Asia are much better treated in Britain than in Saudi Arabia or the Gulf States…

"Here lies the challenge. We are in desperate need of an Islamic Reformation that sweeps away the crazed conservatism and backwardness of the fundamentalists but, more than that, opens up the world of Islam to new ideas which are seen to be more advanced than what is currently on offer from the West. This would necessitate a rigid separation of state and mosque; the dissolution of the clergy; the assertion by Muslim intellectuals of their right to interpret the texts that are the collective property of Islamic culture as a whole; the freedom to think freely and rationally and the freedom of imagination....."

Relda, Glorfindel, George et al.

I have for many years said that the Sufi way would lead Muslim towards greater spiritual attainments and social harmony. When I suggested this to a Muslim friend -- a highly educated man who holds a high status in his faith-community and teaches others about Islam -- he said he had never heard of the Sufi!

If Muslim don't know about the alternatives in their own faith do outsiders need to inform them, I wonder.

Dear Glorfindel, Tariq Ali is not quite correct but I do agree with the general line being pushed. The fault lies in the unthought out assumptions that "new ideas" must automatically out-trump existing ideas, let alone religion. Evererything including new ideas and opf course religion mut be tested. Being 'new' doesn't rule out the 'old' quite so quickly. As for an "Islamic Reformation"- this automatically assumes that Christianity ie the Catholic Church needed Lutheranism and Calvinism. This is a false assumption. This is not a given and is certainly something that I question. Any religion either stands or falls upon what it teaches from its inception. That is something that Catholics and Muslims share in common although we both are diametrically opposed. Both cannot be right; either both are wrong or only one is right. That is the challenge for secularists whtether they be from the East or the West. The degree of separation of Church and State is another assumption that is a recent introduction and not accepted particulalry by those who hold to one religion being true. The assumption that God must keep out of everyday life and out of our legislation is not something that people must sign onto. Unless one be an intolerant person whcih today is not allowed by our laws. But those very laws are only meant to cut one way. I think this is unfair and should be open for debate. John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy in Scotland seems to think so. I agree with him.

George,
Christian Zionists certainly have a strong focus in advocating Israel, however, this is far from meaning they accept Judaism as a legitimate means of ‘salvation’ after Jesus – something very unexceptional from a Christian Fundamentalist view point. Nor does it translate into genuine love for the Jews – even if the ‘Rev’ John Hagee, a prime example of a Christian Zionist zealot from the U.S. bible-belt, enjoins with the biblical description of the Jews as 'the apple of God's eye' [Zech 2:8]. As with Christian Fundamentalists generally, Christian Zionists believe that Christianity is the only religion acceptable to God – after all, a literal reading of the bible allows the rendition “salvation is possible only through Jesus, the Jews therefore cannot be 'saved' unless they convert to Christianity".

Biblical literalists like Hagee have a god in their imagination who performs like a quirky real estate agent - “God established Israel's national geographic boundaries” (Hagee) Christian Zionists are dogged defenders of the state of Israel and are fiercely anti-Arab and anti-Muslim – hence their unholy alliance with Jewish right-wing groups.

Glorfindel,
Fortunately, literalism is not a part of ‘mainstream’ Christianity – unfortunately, many see it as the shopfront for it has a pretty big window on display. Religious fundamentalists also often share some common traits and motivations with their secular dissident counterparts who engage in political violence. But perhaps the most disturbing situation is the convergence of fundamentalist interests and their potential to inflame or incite a global holy war.

crabsy,
“If Muslim don't know about the alternatives in their own faith do outsiders need to inform them, I wonder” - Nothing wrong in the attempt to ‘enlighten’ someone, perhaps today at least it is not so blunt an instrument as proselytization.