The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has publicly supported the Pope (calling Pope Benedict’s speech “extraordinarily effective and lucid”) and – more – used much stronger words to describe the current situation in the world and more specifically what he considers to be the state in which Islam finds itself these days.
Whereas the Pope only spent a short amount of time on Islam/Mohammed (since his lecture simply was about, as the Times of London puts it, “that reason and religious faith can be compatible”), the former Archbishop focused completely on, what President Bush yesterday called, “the calling of our generation”
Lord Carey of Clifton did not ‘just’ focus on the extremist kind of Islam/extremist Muslims.
Lord Carey said that Muslims must address “with great urgency” their religion’s association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the “clash of civilisations” endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole.
“We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times,” he said. “There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths.”
I consider it to be a great thing that two important Christian figures have the courage to address this problem, this problem within the Muslim world itself, this clearly. Albeit that the former Archbishop of Canterbury put it in a much more confrontational and, as Ed points out, “it does not have the academic tone taken by the Pontiff”.
He, Lord Carey is, in my opinion, completely right. If the problem would just be a couple of extremists, we would see a gigantic movement, formed by moderate Muslims, that would be dedicated to calling the spread and influence of extremism to a halt.
Lord Carey, who as Archbishop of Canterbury became a pioneer in Christian-Muslim dialogue, himself quoted a contemporary political scientist, Samuel Huntington, who has said the world is witnessing a “clash of civilisations”.
Arguing that Huntington’s thesis has some “validity”, Lord Carey quoted him as saying: “Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”
Lord Carey went on to argue that a “deep-seated Westophobia” has developed in recent years in the Muslim world.
Before anyone starts acting as if he is some kind of ‘bigot’, calling for a crusade: he also said that, according to him, “true Islam not a violent religion” and that Lord Carey of Clifton has “continued to work in interfaith collaboration since his retirement in 2002”.
He is not talking about ‘true Islam’, he is talking about the state contemporary Islam finds itself in, he is talking about what seems to be the leading culture in the Muslim world: one in which dissent is not allowed, one in which questions are not allowed, one in which ‘apostasy’ and ‘blasphemy’ are considered to be, not just despicable, but even punishable by death, in which reason seems to be despised.
Cross-posted at Liberty and Justice
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