Atlas Exclusive: Robert Spencer: The Pitfalls of “Dialogue”

The
Pitfalls of “Dialogue”
By Robert Spencer

Robert McManus, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Worcester,
Massachusetts, recently dropped me from a scheduled appearance at a Catholic
conference in Worcester on
the grounds that “Mr. Spencer’s talk would impact negatively on the
Church’s increasingly constructive dialogue with Muslims.”

In the name of interreligious dialogue, it’s not uncommon
for Muslim spokesmen to visit churches with the stated goal of clearing up
“misconceptions” about Islam. Such sessions often include the Muslim speaker’s
downplaying the reality of jihad activity and Muslim persecution of Christians,
and offering his Christian audience bland assurances that such things have
nothing to do with authentic Islam.

On a larger scale, Muslims have engaged in several high-profile
attempts at dialogue with Catholics in recent years, to which Catholics have
generally responded with enthusiasm. Yet, there is less to these attempts at
outreach than meets the eye. The two most visible and well-publicized attempts
by Muslims to reach out to Catholics turn out, on close examination, to be
thinly veiled exercises in proselytizing. All of these attempts at “dialogue”
share several common characteristics, including most notably a downplaying and
glossing-over of the differences between Christianity and Islam, an
over-emphasis on the similarities between the two religions, and a call to
Christians to abandon or modify certain of their core beliefs, while never
budging an inch on Islamic doctrines.

One notorious example of this came a few years ago, when 138
Muslim leaders and scholars from all over the globe issued a more extensive
appeal to Christians for mutual understanding, entitled A Common Word Between Us and You. The “Common Word” initiative is
quite extensive, with ongoing conferences and other mutual endeavors between Muslims
and Catholics, as well as between Muslims and other Christian groups. The
Common Word website describes the project in enthusiastic terms: “Never before
have Muslims delivered this kind of definitive consensus statement on
Christianity. Rather than engage in polemic, the signatories have adopted the
traditional and mainstream Islamic position of respecting the Christian
scripture and calling Christians to be more, not less, faithful to it.”

Following a pattern that’s common in documents like these,
data contradicting the assertions in A
Common Word Between Us and You are not addressed and refuted but simply
ignored. Nothing is said, for example, about the Islamic claim that the
Christian Scripture has been corrupted. While claiming they want to respect
Christian Scripture and build on common ground, the Muslim scholars (despite
copious Qur’an quotes) never mention Qur’an 5:17, which says that those who
believe in the divinity of Christ are unbelievers; or 4:171, which says that Jesus
was not crucified; or 9:30, which says that those who believe that Jesus is the
Son of God are accursed; or 9:29, which mandates warfare against and the
subjugation of Jews and Christians. Why should they mention these unpleasant
passages in the midst of trying to build bridges? Because they are precisely
the obstacles to such bridges. For there to be any true and honest dialogue,
verses like these must be addressed in some way, even if only to give them a
benign interpretation.

When Pope John Paul II died, the Washington Post reminded
its readers how “during his long reign, Pope John Paul II apologized to Muslims
for the Crusades, to Jews for anti-Semitism, to Orthodox Christians for the
sacking of Constantinople, to Italians for the Vatican’s associations with the
Mafia and to scientists for the persecution of Galileo.” In reality, he never
apologized for the Crusades; the closest he came was on March 12, 2000, the
“Day of Pardon,” when he said, “[W]e cannot fail to recognize the infidelities
to the Gospel committed by some of our brethren, especially during the second
millennium. Let us ask pardon for the divisions which have occurred among
Christians, for the violence some have used in the service of the truth and for
the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken towards the followers of
other religions.”

Though it’s hardly an “apology for the Crusades,” nonetheless
one would be hard pressed to find a similar statement from any Muslim leader, still
less one of the pope’s stature, acknowledging any wrongdoing on the part of
Muslims individually or of any Islamic state. The idea of a Muslim asking
pardon and forgiveness from a non-Muslim is anathema to Islamic theology. But
some kind of reciprocity of this kind would seem necessary for genuine
dialogue.

Reading the entire Qur’anic verse from which the phrase “a
common word between us and you” was taken makes clear the Common Word
initiative’s agenda: “Say: ‘People of the Book! Come now to a word common
between us and you, that we serve none but God, and that we associate not aught
with Him, and do not some of us take others as Lords, apart from God.’ And if
they turn their backs, say: ‘Bear witness that we are Muslims’” (3:64). Since
Muslims consider the Christian confession of the divinity of Christ to be an
unacceptable association of a partner with God, this verse is saying that the
“common word” that Muslims and the People of the Book should agree on is that
Christians should discard one of the central tenets of their faith and essentially
become Muslims.

Not a promising basis for an honest and mutually respectful
dialogue of equals. The Common Word document’s explanation for this was
disingenuous, not mentioning that according to the mainstream Islamic
understanding of what it means to “ascribe a partner to God,” the Christians
were guilty of this sin:

The words: we shall ascribe no
partner unto Him relate to the Unity of God, and the words: worship none but
God, relate to being totally devoted to God. Hence they all relate to the First
and Greatest Commandment. According to one of the oldest and most authoritative
commentaries on the Holy Qur’an the words: that none of us shall take others
for lords beside God, mean “that none of us should obey the other in
disobedience to what God has commanded.” This relates to the Second Commandment
because justice and freedom of religion are a crucial part of love of the
neighbour.

The Common Word document suggests its true intentions in its
Qur’anic epigraph: “Call unto the way of thy Lord with wisdom and fair exhortation,
and contend with them in the fairest way. Lo! thy Lord is Best Aware of him who
strayeth from His way, and He is Best Aware of those who go aright.” This verse
(16:125) is a curious choice to head up a document that is ostensibly devoted
to finding common ground for dialogue and mutual cooperation—unless the
intention is actually only to proselytize.

The use of this epigraph recalls the words of the Egyptian
Islamic supremacist writer Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the great theorist of the
Muslim Brotherhood: “The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah [the society of
unbelievers] is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the
people on the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of
Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam.”

Muslims in the U.S. and Europe often term their outreach to
non-Muslims “bridge-building,” but to Muslims this expression has a very
different meaning. Bishop McManus, and those like him, should take careful
note.

Robert Spencer is the
director of Jihad Watch and author of
the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam
(and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His upcoming book, Not Peace But A Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam, will be available March 25.