In Regensburg's wake, is anyone worried about Christian outrage?

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

While oceans of ink have been spilled analyzing Muslim reaction to Pope Benedict XVI’s Sept. 12 comments on Islam, I suspect no one has yet devoted sufficient attention to a parallel phenomenon that may turn out to be every bit as consequential – angry Christian reaction to the Muslim protests.

If Regensburg awakened Muslim resentments of the pope, there are signs that the violent backlash seems to be producing a growing fatigue among Christians regarding Muslim sensitivities, as well as doubts about the prospects for dialogue.

This is on my mind because last night I spoke as part of a “Theology on Tap” series sponsored by St. Joseph’s Parish in Bronxville, New York, in suburban Westchester County, on the subject of “Pope Benedict XVI and Islam.” A sizeable crowd turned out, and to take their temperature, it seems clear that it’s not just the pope who needs to do some “damage control.”

My presentation turned on three points:
•tFirst, Benedict is not just being polite when he insists upon his desire for dialogue with Islam. The real “clash of civilizations” Benedict sees in the world today is not between the West and Islam, but between truth and relativism, between belief and skepticism, and in that struggle he regards Islam as a natural ally. Benedict admires the religious and moral seriousness of Muslims. The heart of his Regensburg address was that reason and faith need one another, because reason without faith becomes nihilism, while faith without reason becomes extremism. If the West has moved too far in the former direction and the Islamic world in the latter, perhaps we can each supply something the other lacks.
•tSecond, Benedict is also in earnest when he said Sept. 17 that he wants a “frank” dialogue. Specifically, he intends to challenge Muslims on two points: the need to reject violence in the name of God, especially terrorism, and the need to practice “reciprocity,” meaning full respect for the rights of religious minorities.
•tThird, Benedict has expressed doubt about the capacity of Islam to adapt to pluralistic societies because of its literal reading of the Qur’an and the absence of a tradition of church/state separation. Yet Benedict has also acknowledged that Islam is highly complex, and that there are peaceful and reflective currents within it. The United States offers a particularly interesting test case, since the Muslim community here has the experience of living in a pluralistic environment that can foster rather than inhibit religious belief. Perhaps American Muslims, in part with our encouragement, may offer an important contribution to the global conversation within Islam.

What surprised me as we began to talk about these concepts was the depth of skepticism I sensed, as well as the fairly palpable irritation with what are perceived as irrational and defensive patterns of behavior in the Islamic world.

One man, for example, repeatedly asked why it seems that Christians are always the ones expected to ask forgiveness, while to date no one has suggested that Islamic leaders ought to make a public apology for attacks on Christian churches, or the murder of an Italian nun in Somalia. A young woman wanted to know if it’s realistic to expect Islam to be open to the pope’s call for reason, given that Mohammad himself is depicted in the Qur’an as a warrior, and given its harsh language about infidels and unbelievers. Another woman expressed incredulity that Islam is ready for the “conversion” to which the pope seems to want to invite it.

The questions all played to vigorous nodding of heads. How fair the perceptions are is not, for the moment, the point -- they're out there, and are shaping attitudes about what to do next. Of course, people would probably have asked the same things prior to Regensburg, but the experience of the last month obviously deepened the passion with which people asked them.

In response, I ran through all the obligatory points, including that it took sixteen centuries of fairly bloody experience, culminating in the Wars of Religion, before the Christian West itself was ready to renounce the use of force in religious affairs. I also argued that history offers examples of peaceful Muslim/Christian co-existence; that the more extreme reactions to the Regensburg address in the Islamic world were often smaller in scale than media reports suggested, and largely manufactured; that Islam is a global religion of 1.6 billion people, which encompasses a wide range of possible readings of the Qur’an and Islamic tradition; and that recent experience illustrates the potential for Muslim/Christian interaction, such as the coalition in defense of life forged by the Holy See and Islamic governments at United Nations conferences in Cairo and Beijing in the mid-1990s.

Whatever merit such arguments may have, they didn’t seem to cut much ice with this crowd, which I suspect is fairly representative of the Christian “street” in fearing that the next time anyone in the West says anything even remotely critical of Islam, we’ll be right back where we started, the best efforts of the pope or anyone else notwithstanding.

So, they may well ask, what’s the point?

In the end, the only possible reply was the following rhetorical question: What’s the alternative? It’s not as if we face a choice of whether to have a relationship with Islam – we’re thrown in this world together, for good or ill, and so we have to make the best of it. As Christians, we have to pray that the Spirit will act where human effort seems to fall short.

Inarguable as far as it goes, I couldn't help sensing that prayer for divine intervention seemed to many people in the crowd a fairly slender reed upon which to hang our hopes for dialogue.

What all this suggests is that while Benedict faces the challenge of persuading Muslims to move on, Muslim leaders have some hearts and minds to win over as well – beginning in Bronxville.