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The Vatican Blasts Islam
The Church and Islam.
"La Civiltà Cattolica" Breaks the Ceasefire
ROMA – There is a conspicuous absence among the new cardinals
created on October 21 by John Paul II: Archbishop Michael Louis
Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious
Dialogue.
The current explanation is that Fitzgerald was not made cardinal
because of his excessively placid approach to Islam.
And it is true that, together with this exclusion, an article
was printed in “La Civiltà Cattolica” that
contrasts markedly with the matter of Fitzgerald’s rebuke.
“La Civiltà Cattolica,” edited by a group
of Jesuits in Rome, is a very special magazine. Every one of its
articles is reviewed by the Vatican secretary of state before
publication. So the magazine reflects his thought faithfully.
In its October 18 edition, “La Civiltà Cattolica”
published a strikingly severe article on the condition of Christians
in Muslim countries. The central thesis of the article is that
“in all of its history, Islam has shown a warlike and conquering
face”; that “for almost a thousand years, Europe lived
under its constant threat”; and that what remains of the
Christian population in Islamic countries is still subjected to
“perpetual discrimination,” with episodes of bloody
persecution.
What follows is an ample extract from the article printed in
“La Civiltà Cattolica” no. 3680, October 18,
2003, and used here with the kind permission of the magazine:
Christians in Islamic Countries
by Giuseppe De Rosa S.I.
How do Christians in Muslim-majority countries live? [...] We
must first highlight a seemingly rather curious fact: in all the
countries of North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco),
before the Muslim invasion and despite incursions by vandals,
there were blossoming Christian communities that contributed to
the universal Church great personalities, such as Tertullian;
Saint Ciprian, bishop of Carthage, martyred in 258; Saint Augustine,
bishop of Hippo; and Saint Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe. But after
the Arab conquest, Christianity was absorbed by Islam to such
an extent that today it has a significant presence only in Egypt,
with the Coptic Orthodox and other tiny Christian minorities,
which make up 7-10 percent of the Egyptian population.
The same can be said of the Middle East (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine,
Jordan, Mesopotamia), in which there were flourishing Christian
areas prior to the Islamic invasion, and where today there are
only small Christian communities, with the exception of Lebanon,
where Christians make up a significant part of the population.
As for present-day Turkey, this was in the first Christian
centuries the land in which Christianity bore its best fruits
in the areas of liturgy, theology, and monastic life. The invasion
of the Seljuk Turks and the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmet
II (1453) lead to the founding of the Ottoman empire and to the
near destruction of Christianity in the Anatolian peninsula. Thus
today in Turkey Christians number approximately 100,000, among
whom are a small number of Orthodox, who live around Phanar, the
see of the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople, who has
the primacy of honor in the Orthodox world and who holds communion
with eight patriarchs and many autocephalous Churches in both
East and West, with approximately 180 million faithful.
In conclusion, we may state in historical terms that in all
the places where Islam imposed itself by military force, which
has few historical parallels for its rapidity and breadth, Christianity,
which had been extraordinarily vigorous and rooted for centuries,
practically disappeared or was reduced to tiny islands in an endless
Islamic sea. It is not easy to explain how that could have happened.
[...]
In reality, the reduction of Christianity to a small minority
was not due to violent religious persecution, but to the conditions
in which Christians were forced to live in the organization of
the Islamic state. [...]
THE WARRIOR FACE OF ISLAM: “JIHAD”
According to Islamic law, the world is divided into three parts:
dar al-harb (the house of war), dar al-islam (the house of Islam),
and dar al-‘ahd (the house of accord); that is, the countries
with which a treaty was stipulated. [...]
As for the countries belonging to the “house of war,”
Islamic canon law recognizes no relations with them other than
“holy war” (jihad), which signifies an “effort”
in the way of Allah and has two meanings, both of which are equally
essential and must not be dissociated, as if one could exist without
the other. In its primary meaning, jihad indicates the “effort”
that the Muslim must undertake to be faithful to the precepts
of the Koran and so improve his “submission” (islam)
to Allah; in the second, it indicates the “effort”
that the Muslim must undertake to “fight in the way of Allah,”
which means fighting against the infidels and spreading Islam
throughout the world. Jihad is a precept of the highest importance,
so much so that it is sometimes counted among the fundamental
precepts of Islam, as its sixth “pillar.”
Obedience to the precept of the “holy war” explains
why the history of Islam is one of unending warfare for the conquest
of infidel lands. [...] In particular, all of Islamic history
is dominated by the idea of the conquest of the Christian lands
of Western Europe and of the Eastern Roman Empire, whose capital
was Constantinople. Thus, through many centuries, Islam and Christianity
faced each other in terrible battles, which led on one side to
the conquest of Constantinople (1453), Bulgaria, and Greece, and
on the other, to the defeat of the Ottoman empire in the naval
battle of Lepanto (1571).
But the conquering spirit of Islam did not die after Lepanto.
The Islamic advance into Europe was definitively halted only in
1683, when Vienna was liberated from the Ottoman siege by the
Christian armies under the command of John III Sobieski, the king
of Poland. [...] In reality, for almost a thousand years Europe
was under constant threat from Islam, which twice put its survival
in serious danger.
Thus, in all of its history, Islam has shown a warlike face
and a conquering spirit for the glory of Allah. [...] against
the “idolaters” who must be given a choice: convert
to Islam, or be killed. [...] As for the “people of the
Book” (Christians, Jews, and “Sabeans”), Muslims
must “fight them until their members pay tribute, one by
one, humiliated” (Koran, Sura 9:29). [...]
THE REGIME OF THE “DHIMMA”
According to Muslim law, Christians, Jews, and the followers
of other religions assimilated to Christianity and Judaism (the
“Sabeans”) who live in a Muslim state belong to an
inferior social order, in spite of their eventually belonging
to the same race, language, and descent. Islamic law does not
recognize the concepts of nation and citizenship, but only the
umma, the one Islamic community, for which reason a Muslim, as
he is part of the umma, may live in any Islamic country as he
would in his homeland: he is subject to the same laws, finds the
same customs, and enjoys the same consideration.
But those belonging to the “people of the Book”
are subject to the dhimma, which is a kind of bilateral treaty
consisting in the fact that the Islamic state authorizes the “people
of the Book” to inhabit its lands, tolerates its religion,
and guarantees the “protection” of its persons and
goods and its defense from external enemies. Thus the “people
of the Book” (Ahl al-Kitab) becomes the “protected
people” (Ahl al-dhimma). In exchange for this “protection,”
the “people of the Book” must pay a tax (jizya) to
the Islamic state, which is imposed only upon able-bodied free
men, excluding women, children, and the old and infirm, and pay
a tribute, called the haram, on the lands in its possession.
As for the freedom of worship, the dhimmi are prohibited only
from external manifestations of worship, such as the ringing of
bells, processions with the cross, solemn funerals, and the public
sale of religious objects or other articles prohibited for Muslims.
A Muslim man who marries a Christian or a Jew must leave her free
to practice her religion and also to consume the foods permitted
by her religion, even if they are forbidden for Muslims, such
as pork or wine. The dhimmi may maintain or repair the churches
or synagogues they already have, but, unless there is a treaty
permitting them to own land, they may not build new places of
worship, because to do this they would need to occupy Muslim land,
which can never be ceded to anyone, having become, through Muslim
conquest, land “sacred” to Allah.
In Sura 9:29 the Koran affirms that the “people of the
Book,” apart from being constrained to pay the two taxes
mentioned above, must be placed under certain restrictions, such
as dressing in a special way and not being allowed to bear arms
or ride on horseback. Furthermore, the dhimmi may not serve in
the army, be functionaries of the state, be witnesses in trials
between Muslims, take the daughters of Muslims as their wives,
be the guardians of underage Muslims, or keep Muslim slaves. They
may not inherit from Muslims, nor Muslims from them, but legacies
are permitted.
The release of the dhimma came about above all through conversion
of the “people of the Book” to islam; but Muslims,
especially in the early centuries, did not look favorably upon
such conversions, because they represented a grave loss to the
treasury, which flourished in direct proportion to the number
of the dhimmi, who paid both the personal tax and the land tax.
The dissolution of dhimma status could also take place through
failure to observe the “treaty”; that is, if the dhimmi
took up arms against Muslims, refused to remain subject or to
pay tribute, abducted a Muslim woman, blasphemed or offended the
prophet Mohammed and the Islamic religion, or if they drew a Muslim
away from Islam, converting him to their own religion. According
to the gravity of each case, the penalty could be the confiscation
of goods, reduction to slavery, or death – unless the person
who had committed the crimes converted to Islam. In that case,
all penalties were waived.
CONSEQUENCE: THE EROSION OF CHRISTIANITY
It is evident that the condition of the dhimmi, prolonged through
centuries, has led slowly but inexorably to the near extinction
of Christianity in Muslim lands: the condition of civil inferiority,
which prevented Christians from attaining public offices, and
the condition of religious inferiority, which closed them in an
asphyxiated religious life and practice with no possibility of
development, put the Christians to the necessity of emigrating,
or, more frequently, to the temptation of converting to Islam.
There was also the fact that a Christian could not marry a Muslim
woman without converting to Islam, in part because her children
had to be educated in that faith. Furthermore, a Christian who
became Muslim could divorce very easily, whereas Christianity
prohibited divorce. And apart from all this, the Christians in
Muslim territories were seriously divided among themselves –
and frequently even enemies – because they belonged to Churches
that were different by confession (Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian
Churches) and by rite (Syro-oriental, Antiochian, Maronite, Coptic-Alexandrian,
Armenian, Byzantine). Thus mutual assistance was almost impossible.
The regime of the dhimma lasted for over a millennium, even
if not always and everywhere in the harsh form called “the
conditions of ‘Umar,” according to which Christians
not only did not have the right to construct new churches and
restore existing ones, even if they fell into ruins (and, if they
had the permission to construct through the good will of the Muslim
governor, the churches could not be of large dimensions: the building
must be more modest than all the religious buildings around it);
but the largest and most beautiful churches had to be transformed
into mosques. That transformation made it impossible for the church-mosques
ever to be restored to the Christian community, because a place
that has become a mosque cannot be put to another use.
The consequence of the dhimma regime was the “erosion”
of the Christian communities and the conversion of many Christians
to Islam for economic, social, and political motives: to find
a better job, enjoy a better social status, participate in administrative,
political, and military life, and in order not to live in a condition
of perpetual discrimination.
In recent centuries, the dhimma system has undergone some modifications,
in part because the ideas of citizenship and the equality of all
citizens before the state have gained a foothold even in Muslim
countries. Nevertheless, in practice, the traditional conception
is still present. [...] The Christian, whether he wish it or not,
is brought back in spite of himself to the concept of the dhimmi,
even if the term no longer appears in the present-day laws of
a good number of Muslim-majority countries.
To understand the present condition of these Christians, we
must refer back to the history of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In the Ottoman empire of the 19th century, where the millet system
was in force, the tanzimat, “regulations” of a liberal
character, were introduced. [...] From the second half of the
19th century to the end of the first World War, there was a “Reawakening”
(Nahda) movement in the Arab world, under Western influence, in
the fields of literature, language, and thought. Many intellectuals
were conquered by liberal ideas.
On another front, the Christians created strong ties with the
Western powers – France and Great Britain in particular
– which, after the dissolution of the Ottoman empire, obtained
the protectorate of the countries that had belonged to the empire.
This permitted the Christians both greater civil and religious
liberty and cultural advancement. Moreover, during the first half
of the 20th century various political parties of nationalist and
socialist, and thus secularist, tendencies were born, such as
the Ba’th, the Socialist Party of the Arab Renewal, founded
at the end of the 1930’s in Damascus by Syrian professor
Michel ‘Aflaz, a Greek Orthodox. In 1953 this party was
united with the Syrian Popular Party, founded in 1932 by Antun
Sa’ada, a Greek Orthodox from Lebanon. In brief, political
regimes inspired by the liberal and secular principles of Western
Europe rose up in various Islamic countries.
THE BIRTH OF RADICAL ISLAM
These events provoked a harsh reaction in the Islamic world,
due to fears that the secularist ideas and “corrupt”
customs of the Western world, identified with Christianity, would
endanger the purity of Islam and constitute a deadly threat to
its very existence. This reaction was fed by strong resentment
against the Western powers, which had dared to impose their political
rule upon Islam, “the greatest nation ever raised up by
Allah among men” (Koran, s. 3:110), and against their customs
“despised” by the “nation (umma) that urges
to goodness, promotes justice, and restrains iniquity” (ibid,
s. 3:104).
Thus was born “radical Islam,” which set itself
up as the interpreter of the frustrations of the Muslim masses.
Hasan al Banna, Sayyd Qutb, Abd al-Qadir ‘Uda in Egypt with
the Muslim Brotherhood; Abu l-A‘li al-Mawdudi in Pakistan,
and the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran are its most significant witnesses,
and their followers have spread from Dakar to Kuala Lumpur. [...]
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF CHRISTIANS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
Radical Islam, which proposes that shari’a law be instituted
in every Islamic state, is gaining ground in many Muslim countries,
in which groups of Christians are also present. It is evident
that the institution of shari’a would render the lives of
Christians rather difficult, and their very existence would be
constantly in danger. This is the cause of the mass emigration
of Christians from Islamic countries to Western countries: Europe,
the United States, Canada, and Australia. [...] The estimated
number of Arab Christians who have emigrated from Egypt, Iraq,
Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel in the last decade
hovers around three million, which is from 26.5 to 34.1 percent
of the estimated number of Christians currently living in the
Middle East.
Furthermore, we must not underestimate grave recent actions
against Christians in some Muslim-majority countries. In Algeria,
the bishop of Orano, P. Claverie (1996), seven Trappist monks
from Tibehirini (1999), four White Fathers (1994), and six sisters
from various religious congregations have been brutally killed
by Islamic fundamentalists, although the murders were condemned
by numerous Muslim authorities. In Pakistan, which numbers 3,800,000
Christians among a population of 156,000,000 (96 percent Muslim),
on October 28, 2001, some Muslims entered the Church of St. Dominic
in Bahawalpur and gunned down 18 Christians. On May 6, 1998, Catholic
bishop John Joseph killed himself for protesting against the blasphemy
law, which punishes with death anyone who offends Mohammed, even
only “by speaking words, or by actions and through allusions,
directly or indirectly.” For example, by saying that Jesus
Christ is the Son of God, one offends Mohammed, who affirmed that
Jesus is not the Son of God, but his “servant.” With
this kind of law, Christians are in constant danger of death.
In Nigeria – where 13 states have introduced shari’a
as state law – several thousand Christians have been the
victims of incidents. Serious incidents are taking place in the
south of the Philippines and in Indonesia, which, with its 212
million inhabitants, is the most populous Muslim country in the
world, to the harm of the Christians of Java, East Timor, and
the Moluccas. But the most tragic situation – and, unfortunately,
forgotten by the Western world! – is that of Sudan, where
the North is Arab and Muslim, and the South black and Christian,
and in part, animist. Since the time of president G.M. Nimeiry,
there has been a state of civil war between the North, which has
proclaimed shari’a and intends to impose it with fierce
violence on the rest of the country, and the South, which aims
to preserve and defend its Christian identity. The North makes
use of all of its military power – financed by oil exports
to the West – to destroy Christian villages; prevent the
arrival of humanitarian aid; kill the cattle, which are the means
of sustenance for many South Sudanese; and carry out raids, for
Christian girls in particular, who are brought to the North, raped,
and sold as slaves or concubines to rich, older Sudanese men.
According to the 2001 report of Amnesty International, “at
the end of 2000, the civil war, which started again in 1983, had
cost the lives of almost two million persons and had caused the
forced evacuation of 4,500,000 more. Tens of thousands of persons
have been compelled by terror to leave their homes in the upper
Nile region, which is rich in oil, after aerial bombardments,
mass executions, and torture.”
We must, finally, recall a fact that is often forgotten because
Saudi Arabia is the largest provider of oil to the Western world,
and the latter therefore has an interest in not disturbing relations
with that country. In reality, in Saudi Arabia, where wahhabism
is in force, not only is it impossible to build a church or even
a tiny place of worship, but any act of Christian worship or any
sign of Christian faith is severely prohibited with the harshest
penalties. Thus about a million Christians working in Saudi Arabia
are deprived by violence of any Christian practice or sign. They
may participate in mass or in other Christian practices –
and even then with the serious danger of losing their jobs –
only on the property of the foreign oil companies. And yet, Saudi
Arabia spends billions of petrodollars, not for the benefit of
its poor citizens or of poor Muslims in other Muslim countries,
but to construct mosques and madrasas in Europe and to finance
the imams of the mosques in all the Western countries. We recall
that the Roman mosque of Monte Antenne, constructed on land donated
by the Italian government, was principally financed by Saudi Arabia
and was built to be the largest mosque in Europe, in the very
heart of Christianity.
__________
A link to the historic magazine of the Jesuits in Rome:
"La Civiltà Cattolica"
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