BY KAREN ARMSTRONG
In the 12th century, Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny,
initiated a dialogue with the Islamic world. "I
approach you not with arms, but with words," he wrote to the Muslims whom
he imagined reading his book, "not with force, but with reason, not with
hatred, but with love." Yet his treatise was entitled "Summary of the
Whole Heresy of the Diabolical Sect of the Saracens" and segued repeatedly
into spluttering intransigence. Words failed Peter when he contemplated
the "bestial cruelty" of Islam, which, he claimed, had established itself
by the sword. Was Muhammad a true prophet? "I shall be worse than a donkey
if I agree," he expostulated, "worse than cattle if I assent!"
Peter was writing at the time of the Crusades. Even when
Christians were trying to be fair, their entrenched loathing of Islam made
it impossible for them to approach it objectively. For Peter, Islam was so
self-evidently evil that it did not seem to occur to him that the Muslims
he approached with such "love" might be offended by his remarks. This
medieval cast of mind is still alive and well.
Last week Pope Benedict XVI quoted, without qualification
and with apparent approval, the words of the 14th century Byzantine
emperor, Manuel II: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and
there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to
spread by the sword the faith he preached." The Vatican seemed bemused by
the Muslim outrage occasioned by the pope’s words, claiming that the holy
father had simply intended "to cultivate an attitude of respect and
dialogue toward the other religions and cultures, and obviously also
towards Islam".
But the pope’s good intentions seem far from obvious.
Hatred of Islam is so ubiquitous and so deeply rooted in western culture
that it brings together people who are usually at daggers drawn. Neither
the Danish cartoonists who published the offensive caricatures of the
Prophet Muhammad last February nor the Christian fundamentalists who have
called him a paedophile and a terrorist would ordinarily make common cause
with the pope; yet on the subject of Islam they are in full agreement.
Our Islamophobia dates back to the time of the Crusades
and is entwined with our chronic anti-Semitism. Some of the first
Crusaders began their journey to the Holy Land by massacring the Jewish
communities along the Rhine valley; the Crusaders ended their campaign in
1099 by slaughtering some 30,000 Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem. It is
always difficult to forgive people we know we have wronged. Thenceforth
Jews and Muslims became the shadow-self of Christendom, the mirror image
of everything that we hoped we were not – or feared that we were.
The fearful fantasies created by Europeans at this time
endured for centuries and reveal a buried anxiety about Christian identity
and behaviour. When the popes called for a Crusade to the Holy Land,
Christians often persecuted the local Jewish communities: why march 3,000
miles to Palestine to liberate the tomb of Christ and leave unscathed the
people who had – or so the Crusaders mistakenly assumed – actually killed
Jesus? Jews were believed to kill little children and mix their blood with
the leavened bread of Passover: this "blood libel" regularly inspired
pogroms in Europe and the image of the Jew as the child slayer laid bare
an almost Oedipal terror of the parent faith.
Jesus had told his followers to love their enemies, not to
exterminate them. It was when the Christians of Europe were fighting
brutal holy wars against Muslims in the Middle East that Islam first
became known in the West as the religion of the sword. At this time, when
the popes were trying to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy, Muhammad
was portrayed by the scholar monks of Europe as a lecher and Islam
condemned – with ill-concealed envy – as a faith that encouraged Muslims
to indulge their basest sexual instincts. At a time when European social
order was deeply hierarchical, despite the egalitarian message of the
gospel, Islam was condemned for giving too much respect to women and other
menials.
In a state of unhealthy denial, Christians were projecting
subterranean disquiet about their activities onto the victims of the
Crusades, creating fantastic enemies in their own image and likeness. This
habit has persisted. The Muslims who have objected so vociferously to the
pope’s denigration of Islam have accused him of "hypocrisy", pointing out
that the Catholic church is ill-placed to condemn violent jihad when it
has itself been guilty of unholy violence in crusades, persecutions and
inquisitions and, under Pope Pius XII, tacitly condoned the Nazi
Holocaust.
Pope Benedict delivered his controversial speech in
Germany the day after the fifth anniversary of September 11. It is
difficult to believe that his reference to an inherently violent strain in
Islam was entirely accidental. He has, most unfortunately, withdrawn from
the interfaith initiatives inaugurated by his predecessor, John Paul II,
at a time when they are more desperately needed than ever. Coming on the
heels of the Danish cartoon crisis, his remarks were extremely dangerous.
They will convince more Muslims that the West is incurably Islamophobic
and engaged in a new crusade.
We simply cannot afford this type of bigotry. The trouble
is that too many people in the western world unconsciously share this
prejudice, convinced that Islam and the Koran are addicted to violence.
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.
With disturbing regularity, this medieval conviction
surfaces every time there is trouble in the Middle East. Yet until the
20th century, Islam was a far more tolerant and peaceful faith than
Christianity. The Koran 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. Until the middle of the eighth century, Jews and Christians
in the Muslim empire were actively discouraged from conversion to Islam
as, according to Koranic teaching, they had received authentic revelations
of their own. 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 prevalence
of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and the West’s perceived
"double standards" – and not to an ingrained religious imperative.
But the old myth of Islam as a chronically violent faith
persists and surfaces at the most inappropriate moments. As one of the
received ideas of the West, it seems well-nigh impossible to eradicate.
Indeed, we may even be strengthening it by falling back into our old
habits of projection. As we see the violence – in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon
– for which we bear a measure of responsibility, there is a temptation,
perhaps, to blame it all on "Islam". But if we are feeding our prejudice
in this way, we do so at our peril.
(Karen Armstrong is the author of Islam: A Short
History.)
(Courtesy: The Guardian)
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