The Reality of Religion
Putting things in context.

By Michael Ledeen

It's notable, I think, that religion - not so long ago pronounced
irrelevant by most everyone in proper society - now dominates the
global debate. Even a Communist like Hugo Chavez used religious terms
to denounce W., perhaps because he is now in a tag team with Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who speaks for a theocracy. But despite the fundamental
importance of religion, most of our sages and scribblers are poorly
equipped to deal with it, as you can see from the awkward coverage of
the pope's speech at Regensberg. It was, as you'd expect from a
pope, a religious text, but the religious content was rarely reported,
aside from Benedict's remarks about Islam - themselves a part of a
broader religious message aimed primarily at Europeans. A big part of
his message was that Greek philosophical thought is central to Roman
Catholicism, and that Catholicism evolved in Europe, in the constant
interplay between faith and reason. It's almost impossible to find
that in the discussion.

The stuff about Islam was predictably discussed in the usual context
of political correctness, according to which it is always wrong to
criticize another person's beliefs, and very wrong to criticize the
beliefs of a foreign "culture." They seemed unable to comprehend
that, in ultimate issues, this sort of total tolerance doesn't work.
And the pretense that violently conflicting views of the world can be
smoothed over in pleasant conversation only has the effect of
intensifying the conflicts. We have arrived at the present unhappy
situation not so much because we challenged those with different
worldview, but because we ceased to assert our own values and advance
our world view. In my graduate-student days, I met a fine New York
editor by the name of Howard Fertig. Howard edited the books written
by my boss, the great historian George L. Mosse, and from time to
time I got to have lunch with him in Manhattan, usually at a
long-gone German restaurant, Luchow's. At one of these lunches Howard
shook his head sadly - we're talking 1963 or 64 - and pronounced the
death of America. Why? Because, he said, we had adopted the view that
everyone is entitled to one hang-up. Yes, so-and-so was a child
molester, but hey, that's his hang-up. This attitude used to be
applied to great artists and writers, like Ezra Pound, whose hang-up
was the embrace of fascism.

The combination of this crackpot toleration with a general contempt
for religion made it difficult for us to comprehend the nature of the
current war. Everyone from W. on down has been at great pains to
assure us and themselves that we have no basic conflict with Islam,
that our battle is with some lunatics who say falsely that they speak
in the name of Islam. So we feel quite uncomfortable when the pope -
quite deliberately - poses a question about Islam itself: Is it
capable of responding to reason, or is it, as he put it, completely
transcendent, beyond the reach of man, and hence unchallengeable by
man under any circumstances?

It's a big question, not easily reduced to newspeak like "did the
pope anticipate the reaction?" Or "did the pope go too far?" That
sort of banter is embarrassingly silly. Of course the pope anticipated
the reaction, he's one of the smartest and most learned men in the
world, and he's spent a lot of time studying Islam. He wanted to draw
a line. He is not prepared to extend total, blind toleration to people
who use violence in the name of faith, and he's challenging the
Muslims to answer the real questions. That quotation he chose - the
one that asks, Is there anything positive that has emerged from the
expansion of the domain of Islam? - wasn't generated at random. He
picked it quite wittingly. Of course he knows that, for several
centuries, Islam conserved the wisdom of the West, the same "Greek"
wisdom he invoked as the indispensable partner of Christian faith.
He's defying the Muslims to admit that, because he knows that the
jihadis don't want to hear about it, and that an open debate about it
may undermine the sway of so many dogmatic mosques, schools, TV
stations, and Internet sites.

And a surprising number of Europeans understood it, and responded
positively. Did you notice that the former archbishop of Canterbury
weighed in with a statement even tougher than anything the pope said?
Lord Carey said that our problem was not with a minority of Muslims
but with Islam itself, whereas the pope left the question open, and
called for dialogue. Even the famously wimpy Spanish President
Zapatero had words of support, an amazing spectacle for a man who has
delighted in flaunting his laicism and challenging numerous Catholic
doctrines.

But I'm afraid that we're not engaging this debate, because our
leaders are afraid to do so, and poorly equipped to participate. Our
educational system has long since banished religion from its texts,
and an amazing number of Americans are intellectually unprepared for a
discussion in which religion is the central organizing principle. I
learned from a teacher at one of the best private high schools in this
area that it was virtually impossible for him to teach the Reformation
properly, since the major metaphors came from the Book of Daniel, and
virtually none of his students was familiar with the text.

Ignorance of things religious is terribly damaging for other reasons
as well, not least of all because it prevents us from understanding
the nature of our most dangerous enemies. Michael Rubin wrote a fine
piece in the Wall Street Journal the other day, listing some of the
lies produced by the Islamic Republic of Iran, and noting that there
was actually a provision in sharia that made such lying to infidels
completely acceptable and on occasion admirable. Yet the Europeans,
who preen themselves on their cultural superiority, continue to be
gulled by the Iranians, and W. has now completely swallowed the
notion that if the Iranians ignore one ultimatum, we must not act,
but simply set a new deadline. Down this path lies ruin. Yet the
self-proclaimed "realists" always color themselves "surprised" when
the
Iranians do it.

In their latest attempt at realistic appeasement, the Council on
Foreign Relations hosted President Ahmadinejad, obviously hoping to
begin that "dialogue" so dear to their hearts. But, at least
according to the New York Times, it didn't go well at all. "He is a
master of counterpunch, deception, circumlocution,'' Brent
Scowcroft said, shaking his head. Robert Blackwill emerged from the
conversation wondering how the United States would ever be able to
negotiate with this Iranian government..."If this man represents the
prevailing government opinion in Tehran, we are heading for a massive
confrontation with Iran," he said.

As usual, the most surprising thing about the likes of Scowcroft and
Blackwill is that they are surprised. But then, these are the folks
who gave us the debacle of the first Bush presidency - the desperate
attempt to prevent the fall of the Soviet empire, the last-minute
rescue of Saddam, etc. Let's hope they don't convince the second
President Bush to follow in their tiny footsteps.