Open Letter to Msgr. Charles Pope on Islam (Updated)

There's a blog that the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington maintains, that I really like. There's a priest, Msgr. Charles Pope, who writes what I think is really excellent stuff on Catholic spiritual life there.

Today, however, Msgr. Pope posted a piece on secularism and European population implosion and decline that uses Islam as a bogeyman and recycles most of the tired tropes that reduce the entire religion down to a caricature in which the views and actions of the extremist fringe are imputed to "all Muslims."

Worse, he links to a "news report" by Pat's Robertson's claque CBN that is pure racist and quasi fascist propaganda.

This is the clip, notice how many times the word "white" is used:



The ironic thing is that the likes of Pat Robertson act like they are horrified by the polarization of people along religious and ethnic lines (which of course is a real problem) but in actuality they need that polarization to fulfill their violent fantasies, in which the eroticized venal other - in this case the Muslims, who are to be the catalyst for the apocalypse and rapture in their cosmology - is used to radicalize people politically.

Note also that the French people interviewed are all people who confirm CBN's feedback loop. CBN has absolutely no compunction in interviewing outright racists and crypto facsists like that fellow from the Bloc Identitaire - click here to visit their website, where they rail against the gypsies and beat other old fascist hobbyhorses with vigor.

Disgusting, pure and simple.


Here is my open letter to Father Pope, that I posted without proofreading on the post at the Archdiocese's site. It's still awaiting moderation at the site, we'll see if he let's it through, and if he reacts to it.

I am posting it here because this sort of thing is too important to let pass in silence. Muslims are not a monolithic block. They are not all out to get us. We must seek peace and understanding, and admit complexity as well as recognize that most Muslims - though admittedly quite often difficult to deal with - are still human beings like any other group, and need to be treated with respect, and listened to, at the very least.

The letter, with minor corrections:


Charles Curtis says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 1, 2011 at 6:07 pm

Father,

I admire your blog very much – when it comes to teaching Catholicism, you are incredible.

But when it comes to Islam, with all due respect, you don’t know what you are talking about. The crap you’ve posted here is sheer right wing propaganda.

I’ve lived in Switzerland, Egypt and Turkey, have studied Islam and Arab studies in graduate school, and can tell you the reality of Islam and Muslim people is vastly different than the lurid imaginings of Pat Robertson and cretins like him.

The video clip you’ve posted from CBN has an interview of a member of Bloc Identitaire:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloc_identitaire

They are crypto fascists and racists. I suggest that you ought not be associating the arch-diocese with such politically charged material. It is, to say the very least, inappropriate.

Further, all Muslims do not “believe that Shariah is God’s law.” My sister in law, for example, is a Turk and a Muslim – as well as an American citizen, now – and she and her entire Turkish family all believe in secular political values. They are vociferous supporters of Ataturk’s republic, as incidentally are even most of the Turks that support the AK, PM Erdogan’s party which is characterized as “Islamicist” by idiots here who have no idea what they are talking about – see for example, how the Turkish constitution explicitly rejects use of Islamic law in governing the country:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey#Religion

While it is true that the Turkish Republic often engages in actions detrimental to Christians, as in the suppression of the Greek Ecumenical Patriarch, that has far more to do with nationalism than religion, religion having become an artefact of tribal identity in that case.

I could go on, Egypt and most other Muslim societies are just as complex and have little resemblance to the stupid rancid imaginings of the Western Right. What they are doing is making a caricature of a world religious tradition of vast complexity and richness. It would be like saying Catholicism is synonymous with the Christian Identity movement, and that all Christians (as opposed to just a minuscule percentage – millions out of the 2 Billion Christians in the world) share the beliefs of the likes of Pat Robertson.

Again, this post is both wrong, and benighted. It should not be associated with the archdiocese.

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Update: Msgr. Pope replied, I respond.

This, again, is the link to the archdiocesan page.

Msgr. Charles Pope says:
March 1, 2011 at 8:22 pm

Methinks thou dost protest too much. I wonder if you even read this post since I make important distinctions that you seem to have missed and also lay the blame at the feet of Christians.



I Reply:

Charles Curtis says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 1, 2011 at 8:42 pm

No, Father. I’m simply pointing out that you have linked to a “news report” which contains a sympathetic interview of a member of a right-wing French political party that is openly opposed to miscegenation, and which rails against gypsies and foreigners on its websites.

They are also, incidentally, openly opposed to American imperialism, an ironic detail that probably escaped Pat Robertson’s “journalists.”

Now, you are free to adhere to that sort of thing if you like, in which case I will lose all respect for you. But I say as a Catholic that I do not want my Church officially associated with such racist bigotry.

I’ll also repeat that the Islamicist caricature that you’ve propagated here is an unhelpful and distorted view of a religion that in practice is much more variegated and complex than your “expert” source understands. Most Muslims do not dream of imposing “shariah” on the West. I speak Arabic in rudimentary fashion (trained by our military) and can tell you that word means law. Not Islamic law, but just law. “The Shariah” (with the definite article) is analogous to “the Law” in Judaism. Islamic law is a very complex study, just as is study of Torah. There are many different local traditions, and four major Sunni schools of interpretation, as well as differing Shiite traditions, some more “liberal” (to use a reductive and problematic term) than others. There is, in other words, no one “Shariah.” Again, it’s like Judaism in that there are differing stream of thought in the Tulmud, and now many different traditions in Judaism, from varieties of Reform to manifold Orthodox perspectives.

A brief search online – google Sunni madhabs for example – will prove what I am saying.

This is not meant as an attack against you personally, Father, I am telling you – as someone who has studied all this formally – that what you have posted here is not accurate.

Period.

We need to be careful and fair, Father. That’s all I’m saying.

Is that to protest too much?



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