Crosstalk - Christians and Muslims

First Things looks at dialog between Christians and Muslims.

The history of democracy in the West owes a great debt to (the Two Commandments,” i.e., love of God and love of neighbor). Secular-minded historians and political scientists would like us to believe that democratic ideals emerged from the triumph of Enlightenment thought—in opposition to Christian doctrine. In fact, the Biblical concepts of human dignity and equality supplied the philosophical pillars of liberal democracy, especially in the Anglo-American tradition. Ministers on both sides of the Atlantic, for example, regularly cited the golden rule—what they called “the great rule of equity”—to argue for religious toleration and equal justice under the law.

Are the Christian leaders who gathered at Yale familiar with this history, and are they willing to press its lessons upon their Muslim guests? Participating groups such as the liberal National Council of Churches have shown scant interest in defending the persecuted church, the principle of religious freedom, or the democratic institutions that sustain it. Yet if Muslims are serious about the golden rule, they must explain why the governments of most Islamic states represent such a brutal contradiction to its democratic expression ...

The global threat today is a faith-based version of European fascism—a re-emergence of the totalitarian impulse, animated by the theology of radical, Islamist jihad. This ideology of bloodlust and martyrdom claims millions of adherents worldwide, inspires terrorist cells across entire continents, and is obsessed with acquiring the world’s most destructive weapons to unleash against civilian populations. “Why were millions of people astounded by what happened to America on September 11?” writes Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s second in command. “We have the right to kill four million Americans—two million of them children—and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands.” There is simply no equivalent to this perverted religion anywhere in the Christian world—it is a crisis within Islam, a moral and spiritual malaise that has grown unchecked for decades.

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