Redstate

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In today's Guardian, Karen Armstrong pens a seriously misguided attack on the Pope's Regensburg speech, and in the process ends up offering an apologia for Islamic violence. Since the issue is important, it is worth the effort to dissect her arguments more carefully than they perhaps deserve.

Armstrong begins with a tendentious and frankly irrelevant discussion of medieval history and the Crusades. Since the historical details are utterly beside the point, it suffices to note that, while the leaders of Christendom acted and behaved according to medieval principles during the medieval period, medievalism of that sort ended in the West centuries ago. The point is not that barbarism of the most awful sort has not flourished in the West -- unfortunately, quite the opposite -- but rather that no one in the West has sought to justify murderous barbarism by invoking Christian principles or accepted the contention that barbarism of that sort is justified by Christian principles in very long time. The issue raised by the Pope's speech was not some academic comparison of violence and murder by Islamic vs. Christian leaders of centuries ago, but the obvious fact that, in today's world, only Islamic religious leaders call for or seek to justify murderous violence by invoking religious principles.

When Armstrong finally gets to that issue, she makes a very weak argument indeed: "The 9/11 terrorists, who in fact violated essential Islamic principles, have confirmed this deep-rooted western perception and are seen as typical Muslims instead of the deviants they really were. … Yet until the 20th century, Islam was a far more tolerant and peaceful faith than Christianity. The Qur'an strictly forbids any coercion in religion and regards all rightly guided religion as coming from God; and despite the western belief to the contrary, Muslims did not impose their faith by the sword. The early conquests in Persia and Byzantium after the Prophet's death were inspired by political rather than religious aspirations. … The extremism and intolerance that have surfaced in the Muslim world in our own day are a response to intractable political problems - oil, Palestine, the occupation of Muslim lands, the prevelance of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, and the west's perceived 'double standards' - and not to an ingrained religious imperative."

There are many problems with Armstrong's argument. First, many Islamic clerics do not accept her contention that the "9/11 terrorists ... violated essential Islamic principles." The Pope's Regensburg speech was intended, in part, to get a dialogue going with Islamic scholars who share his (and, it seems, Armstrong's) view that murderous violence of the 9/11 sort is wholly unacceptable, and cannot be justified by any religious principle. But it is quite foolish of Armstrong to suggest that the problem here is some supposed bigotry by the Pope is raising the question, rather than the obvious fact that there are many Muslims and Islamic clerics who contend that murderous violence is not only consistent with Islamic principles but can be commanded in the name of Islamic principles.

Second, as the Pope pointed out in his speech, "[t]he emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: 'There is no compulsion in religion'. According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war." With all the calls to jihad, and the fatwas demanding that observant Muslims should murder some imagined defiler of the Prophet (remember the fatwa against Salman Rushdie for Satanic Verses, and his need literally to hide for fear of his life), it is idle of Armstrong to pretend that Islamic principles, as commonly understood by large segments of the Muslim faithful, do not sanction violence in various situations or that Islamic clerics do not call for such murderous violence with depressing regularity.

Third, Armstrong gives the game away by contending that "[t]he extremism and intolerance that have surfaced in the Muslim world in our own day are a response to intractable political problems," after which she gives a list of grievances (real or imagined) that supposedly explain and thus in some sense justify that "extremism and intolerance." It is interesting that, in making her argument, she is forced to rely on "extremism and intolerance" when what she is actually talking about is murderous rage justified by religious leaders invoking the Koran. But if she had admitted that uncomfortable fact, her essay would have been truly pointless. Apart from these obvious evasions, Armstrong's final point collapses of its own weight: it would make no difference to the Pope's argument if Muslims fanatics thought that their murderous violence was "a response to intractable political problems," as Armstrong claims, since they intentionally choose to frame that response in religious terms.

The point of the Pope's speech was to find Islamic clerics or other leaders who would make common cause with him in knocking the religious props out from under that justification for the sort of murderous violence that the world has become all too accustomed to seeing. Armstrong evidently agrees with the Pope that calls for violence have no place in any religion, including Islam. Fine. The problem is that many Islamic clerics do not. Far from confronting that issue, Armstrong instead offers a shameful apologia for Islamic violence that just seeks to sweep it under the rug.