Actually Ace,

the Pope is 100% correct. What we are doing in the Middle East is to try and reform the countries, not Islam itself. We are trying to make people realize that Islam doesn't have all the answers to society's questions, but Islam itself cannot have a reformation in the way Christianity had because the Koran is believed to be the literal word of God. Kinda difficult to tell God you are just going to disobey his will and do what you feel like if you're raised in a culture where your will is meaningless compared to the will of Allah.

We're planting a seed of doubt into the Middle East as to whether the Islamic faith is the one true faith. And that's a very good thing.

Oops,

that comment is directed to Fiesty since he wrote it and not Ace.

My apologies.

Psst. Disagree with me, not aceypoo.

I think the fact that women voted in full force in Afghanistan is proof that Islam can change.

The notion of voting in Iraq as response to the Pope is a non-sequitur.

The Pope was talking Islam as a religion, not Islamic society. The Democracy that's going on in Iraq is in stark contrast to the sharia requirements of the Koran. To the extent that muslim societies reform themselves it will be because they, as a society choos to disregard certain portions of Islamic doctrine.

Feisty,

It's far from clear whether democratic processes will lead to actual liberalization -- so far, everyone is voting for the Islamist parties in places where elections have been held: Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine. The old Arab bugaboos of tribalism, endemic corruption, and xenophobia may prohibit the rise of a truly civilized modern state (based on the rule of law, with a clear separation of government powers and an independant judiciary not based on Shari'a).

Father Fessio simply alludes to the fact that most Muslims -- whether Sunni or Shi'a -- take the Koran to be the actual and literal Word of God. God spoke Arabic to Mohammed, who faithfully wrote down God's words. Many Arabs believe that the Koran can only be truly understood in Arabic, as this is the language God used to Mohammed; any translation is by definition a bastardization of the work.

Many non-Muslims still don't understand this core truth about Islam. The literalists are not the fringe as they are in the Christian and Jewish faiths. They are in the vast mainstream of the Muslim faith. Frankly, I find the prospects of any truly civilized and modern civil society in the Arab world to be pretty dim -- Iraq is an experiment, and it is an experiment whose success will not be known for many years. But we need to understand that this experiment may fail in the end. That doesn't make the experiment itself a failure; it will teach us something valuable about the nature of both Arabs and the Muslim faith.

Most Iraqis aren't very devout. They're the muslim equivalent of "C&E Christians". ("Christmas and Easter Christians"; people who go to church once or twice a year at most.) They probably believe that Allah expects them to be good, but they don't know much about islamic theology.

anonymous:

The problem isn't actually one of theology; it's one of a backward culture and closed tribalism, interpreted through an austere Islamic prism. Most Iraqis (and Egyptians, and Syrians, and Moroccans, etc. ad nauseam) take their cues not from civic leaders, but from local Imams and mullahs. Nepotism, corruption, and bribery are not evils to be avoided; they are simply artifacts of tribal life.

Remember: the true translation of Islam is not "peace". It is "submission". Submission to authority, to God's will, to teachers, to leaders. It's no accident that the most common saying among Arabs is insh'allah, or "it will be if God wills it". It bespeaks a very fatalistic and static worldview that resists change very strongly.

Viewing Islam - or any other religion - as a concrete rulebook immune to human interpretation is a mistake. One might make a very cogent and accurate argument that Islam is much more resistant to change because it's logically set up as immutable; I understand this. But it relies on immutable human devoutness and cooperation with its tenants to truly be "incapable of reform." And once culture and society reforms in the Islamic world, what do you think is going to win?

The strict immutable structure of Islam?

Or the desire of the individual to see Islam through adaptive eyes that maintain the religion and identity, yet embrace new cultural norms that violate historically strict tenants?

Newsflash: if you think that we can change culture but can't in turn change Islam, then you've logically boxed the effort to modernize the Islamic world into assured failure. Why? Because a billion muslims aren't going to suddenly forsake their religion completely for Pokemon.

Thank God Il Papa doesn't play PC games.

A very wordly African student of mine maintains that any Muslim nation in Africa is incapable of supporting democracy.

In such a nation, if you disagree with your enemy, you kill him, and the disagreement is over. We see this in the tribal genocides that continue every day. Do we honestly think they would "submit" to democracy?

I can say as a Catholic that our faith has evolved very little in 2000 years, which should not be surprising to anyone who understands the nature of a dogmatic religion. But we have tried to adapt to the evolving civilization for better and worse.

As Monty says, it is truly an experiment.

This is slightly old news.

"It bespeaks a very fatalistic and static worldview that resists change very strongly."

Which is why all the cultural and societal values we hold in high regard are abscent from Islamic societies. The Islamic world cut itself off from the development of thought that has led to western philosophy. The literalness of the Koran meant that a major rational for questioning anything is not present in Islamic society. When the Caliph burned the last remains of the Library at Alexandria he justified it by saying if its not in the Koran its blasphemous and if its in the Koran it is redundant.
Whereas Christianity, and by extension Western society, inherited the Jewish tradition of interpretation and questioning. The Catholic Church, as an example, views itself as a learning institution, as it believes that not all God's mysteries are revealed, which is why it founded so many universities and schools to explore them, while Islamic universities in contrast where mainly devoted to theology and law. Seeking God's mysteries is why so many priests are scholars and scientists.
Because of this ability to question, western society was able to explore ideas that would never occur to someone living in Islamic society. The basic ideals of our society are alien to people in Islamic society. However, with the hopeful re-introduction of western thought to the middle east, perhaps we can see a movement to moderate Islam. However as B16 says, they're pretty much locked in.

Bill,

I hope that you are right>. Let us agree on this: neither one of us will know the outcome of this experiment for many years. Someday when we are old and gray, you may story me along with tales of our great liberalization of the Middle East; or I may sing you a sad song about the radioactive wastes that used to be Arabia, and about a people who found themselves unable to master a fire that eventually consumed them.

But I hope even more that we two are still around in our old age to swap these tales.

Let us agree on this: neither one of us will know the outcome of this experiment for many years.

Agreed, 100%.

What's happening to Christianity in Europe may happen to Islam in the Middle East.

Josie,

What's happening to Christianity in Europe?

To be all Logic 101 on ya'all, I was saying that while I agree with the pope's purported statement that Islam is the latin of religions...static..., I do not agree with the op-ed columnist's assertion, nor the general subtext of articles about this subject, that it follows that we should assume that Muslim cultures are immune to change.

It is an experiment, sure, but I also think the natural state of being is freedom, and that people, when given the chance, will move towards that goal in a way that is acceptable to them. Change is rarely sweeping, and that'll frustrate the west for decades to come.

I also think the natural state of being is freedom

See, Feisty, this is where we disagree. Freedom, as we understand it, is a very modern invention -- throughout most of human history, we lived short, brutal, and mostly anonymous lives. Freedom evolved -- it began in Greece, and evolved in fits and starts. Think about what it means: not just freedom to move (physical freedom), but also freedom to speak and freedom to think (which translates to freedom of spirit).

I am not convinced that what we call "freedom" is anything like universal: there are too many examples to the contrary. It took the west centuries to achieve the freedom we have, and it took the abolition of tribalism and the imposition of the rule of law to achieve it. The Arab tradition has none of these things (nor does Africa, which goes a long way to explaining why it remains such a basket case).

Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248,50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities...but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled,the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."

The pope is right. Islam is per se unreformable. If muslims cotton to modernity, they will do so at the price of abandoning Islam. To speak of the reform of Islam is a bit like discussing the reform of a flat-earth doctrine. The process of 'reform' would involve rejecting the fundamental tenets of the creed.

Consider the Koran's injunction on charging interest on a loan: But trade has been sanctioned and usury forbidden by God. Those who are warned by their Lord and desist will keep (what they have taken of interest) already, and the matter will rest with God. But those who revert to it again are the residents of Hell where they will abide forever.

So you'll go to hell if you give someone a home equity loan. The language could not be more clear. The only way to 'reform' Islam to conform to modern practice is simply to throw out entirely what it says on the issue. This holds true for almost everything the Koran says, from polygamy to wife-beating to executing homosexuals to beheading infidels, etc. To call this process 'reform' is to abuse the term.

Christian reform movements have argued that one should get back to basics and live as Christ did, which is useful since Jesus, whatever else you think of him, was an exemplary individual. Islamic reform movements likewise that one should get back to basics and live as Mohammed did. Herein lies the problem: Mohammed was a very different character from Jesus, and thus we face the disheartening realization: what we are witnessing in Wahhabism is in fact the Islamic reform movement.

I think the reason there are human beings at all (that we were not killed by lions nor did we die in a drought or famine millions of years ago) is that humans are uniquely capable of free and complex thought and acting upon those thoughts.

The problem comes when people figure out they can gain an advantage by using other people and DENYING them freedom.

You know what would give me hope? If there were some grand Islamic conclave like the Roman Catholic Vatican II conference. This happened in the ninth and tenth centuries, which is when the haditha/i> were collected, and when shari'a was codified. But these "outer shells" of Islamic philosophy have essentially remained frozen in time since then, and have become as immutable to many Muslims as the Koran itself.

Of all Islamic sects, the Sufi sect is probably the most amenable to change: they are the more spiritually focused and inwardly turned of Muslims. Their faith is almost Buddhist in nature. The salafist strain, however, is authoritarian and literalist in the extreme, and unfortunately this is the core of Sunni belief. And Sunnis comprise about 80% of all Muslims in the world.

Freedom, to a true believer in the salfist tradition, is heresy because it subordinates God's will to man's will. Freedom is a sin in this interpretation. When people speak blithely of Muslims "seeing the light", they fail to understand that to many Muslims, it is we who do not see the light. Muslims see "freedom" in a very different (and incompatible) way than we do.

Which is not to say that liberalism cannot work, eventually. But it will require Islam itself to change, and there is little past evidence that this is going to happen any time soon. If at all.

Monty's right! Thank you, Monty.

The Pope is, of course, 100% right. Islam as a religion is incapable of changing. The very name means "submission" to the will of Allah as interpreted by the Imans. There is no freedom of thought as that concept is known in the West. Either you are of the House of Islam, a believer, and a follower of the true faith, or you are a member of the House of War and may be enslaved, killed, converted or forced into dhimmi status where you recognize the superiority of Islam, pay special taxes, and live as Islamic leaders allow you to live.

Islamic countries can reform only to the extent they secularize, and this is most likely not going to happen too much if the success of Islamic political parties in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, etc is anything to go by.

The West must prepare for war or surrender, those are your only choices.

To assume that the Muslim world will not borrow anything from the Western world is foolish because they will, but what they adopt may not be to our liking. They will acquire new medicine, new technology, new weaponry, and even to a limited degree, new media (the internet and sattelite television). However, they will not adopt secularism (unless they are forced to from outside or within), equal rights for women, equal rights for minorities, or freedom of speech and assembly. The first batch of stuff doesn't help us and actually could be used against us (e.g. higher demographics with this new medicine and the obvious dangers of ANY Muslim power obtaining new weaponry). The second batch of stuff could help the West and more importantly, the Muslims themselves but for the various reasons Monty pointed out, it cannot happen.

Islam is immutable. There is no denying it. Either one accepts all of Islam and follows every rule or one is a hyprocrite or an apostate, and we all know what happens to them in the Muslim world. Sufism is a strange case and the comparison to Buddhism is problematic. During its genesis the various forms of Sufism were syncretic for various reasons. Sufis in South Asia adopted some aspects from Hinduism in order to attract more Indian converts, but the syncreticism seems to dissapate once it is brought to the attention to the Sufis that they are not following the straight path. For example, many Sufis prostrate themselves in front of the tombs of the saints, but it is pointed out as being shirk and those Sufis who do not change this practice are considered to be bad Muslims. That is the only way Islam can change. If it is proven to be deviating from its proper path. Despite what Stephen Schwartz says, we should not look towards Sufism as an enlightened example for all Muslims. Keep in mind, they still believe in jihad and in fact most of the jihadis in Chechnya are Sufi (albeit with some Wahabbi influence)

The best thing we can do with regards to the Muslim world instead of foolishly trying to change it through "democratization" is to find different energy sources and get off of oil so we can find ways to ostracize it and contain it. Perhaps during this period, when the Muslim world is weakened, we can think of some better strategies for dealing with the terrorist threat it presents us and the demographic threat it presents Europe.

I'll bet anything if a bunch of women were in charge of re-translating the Koran, it would be a lot better.

Of course, all references to north, south, east and west would be replaced by different variations on the basic template of "on the right, if you're coming FROM town..."

But hey, omelet/eggs/etc.

Over the next two generations, most people in the Middle East will gradually stop believing in Islam.

Fr Fessio has clarified his remarks.

Fr Fessio has clarified his remarks.

Not so much clarified as backpedaled in panic.

The Iraqi experiment in democracy will probably be decided this year - not in future decades.

Feisty,

Good conversation here. I believe Monty is right. I note that Muslihoon agreed with him. I wonder whether the proper tack to take on reforming Islam is to generate some kind of Vatican II for Muslim clierics or whether it is to fight Islam with all our soul. Is there another way?

I have seen the comments regarding eliminating dependence on Muslim Oil, but the laws of physics remain immutable. There is no possible way to do without oil and still be able to eat, drink and sleep with the lights on at midnight. It will never happen until nuclear power and a hydrogen economy become possible suppliers. And then only the rich nations will have power, the poor will live by fire in the wilderness. This is not a scenario conducive to peaceful coexistence with anyone.

So good thoughts, Feisty and everyone, but there are no easy solutions. Force will have to be used to keep the peace --- forever. The world cop's job will never be over.

Subsunk

FATHER FESSIO RECANTED. This version of the Pope's reality has been superceded. Sorry.

If anyone's interested, Roger Scruton has an interesting discussion on Islamic society (vis-a-vis Western, Christian society) in the Jan. 2006 New Criterion. It might be subscription only; I could dig up some quotes if anyone's game.

FATHER FESSIO RECANTED. This version of the Pope's reality has been superceded. Sorry.

Oh, well! That fixes everything, doesn't it? All of the problems we were just talking about magically disappeared! Boy, is that a load off or what? C'mon everybody! Group hug!

My dear Mr. Monty: the post was not an ironic comment on the mistaken views of those who believe that Islam is a religion that inculcates anti-democratic values, rather a sophisticated and brilliantly analytic apercu on the compromises theology must make to political correctness. As I understand it, the remarks were amended to clarify that the Pople was merely referring to the special value of direct revelation Islamic believers place in the Koran--the Koran itself, as a divinely revealed document is not subject to democratic debate. However, the Pope did not intend, according to the good Father to imply that Islam, as a religion, as a faith, has anything but the blah blah flkflase sdf;lks f/k cvl a .v . ....

And, it is in the spirit of democracy and love that an Iranian official has announced that should there be any sanctions on Iran for its peaceful and progressive study of applied quantum mechanics, Iran will shut down the Straits of Hormuz.

Back in school I read a comment from an anthropologist, Mary Catherine Bateson, who had done a fair amount of work in Iran. She said the basic difference between Christianity and Islam was that Christianity was a writhing mass of contradictions, subject to rival interpretations from a dozen different theological and philosophical angles. And that was a good thing. Islam, she said, “just lies there flat on the page.”

That’s why reforming Islamic cultures is going to be very, very tough. Unlike the Bible, the Quran is God speaking in the first person, and as far back as al-Ghazali the Muslims decided that intepretation of any kind wasn’t an option. There’s not the slightest equivalent in Islam for the evolution that took Europe from Catholicism through the Reformation and Enlightenment and eventually to post-Christianity. Instead, Islam has gone from being the wealthiest and most advanced sector of the world five centuries ago to its present status as Baltic Avenue on the global Monopoly board because: a) technological advances always implied social change; b) any social change that conflicted with shari’a was forbidden; and c) shari’a explicitly encompassed every aspect of life.

So the Pope and the Taliban are right about the nature of the confrontation. The reformers—feminists, democracy advocates, all the rest—are right on the level of basic human aspirations, but they’re kidding themselves if they think that what they’re doing isn’t antithetical to the basic spirit of Islam. It’s fine with me if they completely redefine their religion and keep calling it Islam, but being a Muslim reformer and being a Christian reformer are , literally, worlds apart.

Iran will shut down the Straits of Hormuz

Oh, they may try. But the U. S. Navy may have a thing or two to say about that.

They tried before. It was, an unimpressive effort.

To extent utron's remarks:

The Shi'a an Sunni schism is not theological, so using that as a basis for an "Islam can change" argument is not valid. The schism between Shi'a and Sunni is one of succession of Caliphs, and the investment of corporeal authority. In terms of Koranic belief, and adherence to the hadiths and shari'a as the only basis of law.

I must say that the Sufi branch of Islam does give one a ray of hope. But it is a very pale and weak ray; the Sufis are roundly hated by both Shi'a and Sunni as heretics, and comprise less than 2% of all Muslim believers.

The main problem confronting Islam in terms of reform is that there is no fixed heirarchy -- all Muslims are equal in God's eyes. Imams and mullahs have studied and trained, but there is no formal elections process -- one may become an Imam simply by declaring oneself to be so, and gathering a flock of followers. Influential clerics can issue fatwas to "rightly guide" their followers, but these fatwas are not binding on Muslims as a whole (and are often the target of competing fatwas by other clerics).

and I think that the Pope agrees with you Monty, plus I think the Catholic Church, with its emphasis on revelation and reason, on Divine law and natural law, holds that Church teaching of Scripture itself encourages intellectual inquiry--that Luther and the Protestant movements did not exhaust the possibilities of reform. But the Pope, from what I read, holds out the hope publicly that Islamic religious culture in the broadest sense is "reformable"--notwithstanding your observation that plurality in Islam has led to fundamentalist retrenchment rather than Western-style inquiry.

Dave, when did the Iranian regieme challenge freedom of shipping in the Straits?

Dave, when did the Iranian regieme challenge freedom of shipping in the Straits?

1987.

I think that it is worth mentioning that most Muslims do not want a "Reformation" because they do not see anything wrong with Islam. That does not mean they do not see anything wrong with their society, far from it. They see anything "cultural" or "political" imported from the West as corrupting their society whether it is one of their dictators (which they associate with the West eventhough they are homegrown) or Oprah. The general consensus among the Muslim world is that in order for society to be "good" it must be Islamic because they only associate "the good" with Islam. Goodness does not exist outside of Islam and that is why evil is associated with the infidel. Islam is a complete program for the Muslim world. It provides culture, political structure, religion, and philosophy. The level of corruption and poverty in the Muslim world is never blamed on Islam, but rather on imperialist (infidel) meddling. Muslims were content with the Ottoman caliphate despite the blatant corruption and poverty, but they are not happy with the rise of the modern nation state even if their living standards and freedoms have gotten better because it is still an infidel invention.