Nomad (36 page)

That is my dream. But frankly, I do not know if Western feminists have the courage or clarity of vision to help me realize it.

One June evening in 2007 I had dinner in Rome with Father Antoine Bodar, a Dutch priest who had been recommended to me by a mutual friend. I found him to be rather inspiring, a peaceful, intellectual, and yet also very worldly man. The restaurant that he had chosen for us was just behind the Vatican, and as we sipped our wine I found myself genuinely enjoying the evening. Night was drawing in, the Renaissance buildings were lit up and became almost surreally majestic and beautiful, and I was struck by the idea that we were seated in a place of great power: the Hejaz of Christianity.

And yet, how are the mighty fallen, I thought to myself—or not fallen exactly, but faded. While Islam is rising across Europe, Christianity appears to be in decline in Muslim lands. Churches are falling empty, converted into apartments and offices, even nightclubs, or razed, while mosques are sprouting from the ground. The magnificent cathedrals of France are deserted; some people have even suggested that small disaffected chapels and churches should be modified into mosques in order to give the booming French Muslim communities space for prayer. This would also be a way to distance Islam from the hard-to-monitor garages and basements where young people are radicalized at a rapid rate.

As we sipped coffee, I tried to imagine having a meal in Mecca with a member of the
‘ulema
, or with any imam for that matter, almost anywhere. It seemed another demonstration of fundamental differences: Islam and Christianity are
not
the same.

I explained to Father Bodar why I had asked him to meet me. “I’m not a Christian, and I’m not here to ask you to help me convert and become one,” I told him. “But I think the Christian churches should begin
dawa
exactly as Islam does. You need to compete, because you can be a powerful tool to reverse Islamization. You should start with Muslim neighborhoods in Rome. Europe is sleepwalking into disaster—cultural, ideological, and political disaster—because the authorities of the church have neglected the immigrant ghettos.

“The churches could go into Muslim communities, provide services just as the radical Muslims do: build new Catholic schools, hospitals, and community centers, just like the ones that were such a civilizing force under colonialism in Africa. Don’t just leave this in the hands of governments—take an active role. The churches have the resources, the authority, and the motivation to convert Muslim immigrants to a more modern way of life and more modern beliefs. Teach hygiene, discipline, a work ethic, and also what you believe in. The West is losing the propaganda war. But you can compete with Islam outside Europe and vigorously assimilate Muslims within it.”

Father Bodar positively beamed with happiness. He said he had been trying to achieve just this for years and that he had often been mocked for even suggesting it. The Roman Catholic Church has a long history of resisting religious challenges from inside and outside what used to be called Christendom. All kinds of heresies have been combated successfully from the earliest times. The Counter-Reformation saw the Church vigorously reassert itself against the teachings of Martin Luther and the other Protestant reformers. And, of course, the Church had fought against Islam not only in the time of the Crusades but also when, as recently as 1683, Muslim troops of the Ottoman sultan menaced the Holy Roman Emperor’s capital, Vienna.

But what about the challenge facing Christian civilization today—the challenge of radical Islam that is already inside Europe’s supposed fortress?

Islam claims to be the fastest-growing religion in the world today. This expansion is achieved partly through the relatively high birth rates of Muslim societies but also through
dawa
, by which people are
persuaded to adopt its values and its outlook. Millions of Muslims now live in the West; clearly it’s not enough to assume that the allure of the material plenty around them will sway these Muslims to relax into a Western value system of tolerance and individual rights. Some of them may, but the evidence is all around us that many will remain sympathetic to a worldview that is steeped in conspiracy theories and blames all Muslim failures on outsiders. Moreover some non-Muslims in the West will be attracted to that worldview and become converts.

You can (and must) fight violent jihadis with military might. But military means are just one element of war. Although it is important to stand your ground and deploy weaponry, you can’t use military means to affect the larger mind-set that supports the Muslim warriors. Propaganda is a powerful tool of war geared to win over the masses, persuade them to defect, break their morale or their trust in their own ideology.

Some Westerners have a vision of Muslims as a mass of unbending, irrational, unthinking beings, incapable of calmly examining new ideas on their merit. But a Muslim’s mind is just like anyone else’s and is capable of absorbing new information. If Muslims can be helped to reexamine the bedrock ideas of Islam, they may then admit that the Prophet Muhammad’s example is fallible, that not everything in the Quran is perfect or true, and that this doctrine can be adjusted so that the mental pain that comes of trying to apply it in the modern world is diminished.

I have a theory that most Muslims are in search of a redemptive God. They believe that there is a higher power and that this higher power is the provider of morality, giving them a compass to help them distinguish between good and bad. Many Muslims are seeking a God or a concept of God that in my view meets the description of the Christian God. Instead they are finding Allah. They find Allah mainly because many are born in Muslim families where Allah has been the reigning deity for generations; others are converts to Islam or the children of converts.

My theory is based on two observations. One is the fact that many Muslims—some pundits would say most—are instinctively appalled by the violence committed in the name of their faith. Their reaction
to terrorism is always the same:
No, it cannot be. The terrorists have hijacked my religion. I think it is wrong to kill and maim people. My religion stands for peace; it tells me to be compassionate
. “Unto thee thy faith and unto me my faith,” they quote from the Quran, thus proving to themselves that Islam promotes freedom of religion.

My second observation is that most Muslims do not know the content of the Quran or the Hadith or any other Islamic scripture. The much-quoted edict promoting freedom of religion is indeed in the Quran, but its authority is nullified by verses that descended upon the Prophet later, when he was better armed and when his following had grown to great numbers.

The Muslims who say that Allah is peaceful and compassionate simply do not know about other concepts of God, or the concepts they do have are wrong. They have been told that Christians have misunderstood the real God, Allah, that they are guilty of
shirk
(an unforgivable sin) by associating the one true God with the Holy Ghost and Jesus, a mere prophet, they argue, whom Christians wrongly put on the throne as the son of God.

The Muslims who hear all this (and worse) about Christianity hardly ever make an attempt to find out more. Meanwhile Christians have stopped teaching people in Muslim countries because the bitter resistance from the local Muslim clergy and political elites made it harder and harder to do so. In short, the Muslim masses are insulated from all alternative religions.

To change this, I have in mind a kind of spiritual competition. This was my question for Father Bodar in Rome: If Saudi Arabia invests millions of dollars in madrassas and a systematic campaign of
dawa
, taking advantage of all the institutions of freedom in the West, why should the Catholic Church, with its financial resources and its millions of steadfast followers, not do the same?

I hope my friends Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens—the esteemed trinity of atheist activists in Britain and the United States—will not be dismayed by the idea of a strategic alliance between secular people and Christians, including the Roman Catholic Church. I concede that the idea is a little paradoxical. For centuries the proponents of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment saw the Vatican as their archenemy. The Church persecuted
and in some cases executed those it condemned as heretics. My atheist friends are right to point out that many Christians have abandoned biblical literalism only because of the constant criticism by such freethinkers. It is also true that there is no shortage of misogyny in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Contempt for women is inscribed in the works of Saint Paul.

But the modern Catholic Church is a very different and more tolerant institution. Christians in more recent times must be given some credit for heeding a least some of the critiques advanced by the thinkers of the Enlightenment. That very openness to criticism is what makes Christianity different from Islam.

Nor is Christianity riven as it used to be by bitter sectarian conflicts dating back to the Reformation. Today the relationship between the Catholic Church and the mainstream Protestant denominations, the Anglicans and Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, Unitarians, and Universalists, is peaceful. In most of the Western world these churches and their congregations either leave one another alone or have good ecumenical relations. Finally, the Christian churches have put behind them the centuries of anti-Semitism that so stained their reputation.

It is true that on a wide range of issues the Roman Catholic Church takes positions with which I, along with most liberals, disagree. On questions such as abortion, birth control, and women priests there are deep divisions within the Western world. Many American Protestants as well as Catholics are deeply opposed to abortion, a polarizing issue particularly in the United States. But all these differences are matters of debate and not matters of war. Debate, however bitter, takes place within Western societies in a peaceful if sometimes heated exchange of words. The occasional madman who blows up an abortion clinic or murders physicians who provide legal treatments to women whose pregnancies are unwanted is the exception that proves the rule.

The clash between Islam and the West is different. All possible means are used by the agents of radical Islam to defeat the West. Even though most of our attention is consumed by those Muslims who are willing to blow themselves up in the name of their religion, we cannot ignore the more subtle campaign of conversion and radicalization. For too long the West has sat back and allowed Islam to make a run at people who are susceptible to conversion. Sometimes I feel as
if the only people in the West who really get this are Jews, who are far more exposed to the workings of radical Islam because of their contacts with the state of Israel.

Take a look at the institutions of the Enlightenment, the schools and universities established throughout the Western world on secular principles. To defend the values of the Enlightenment from the encroachment of Islamist thought they must wake up and see how effectively they have been infiltrated. Their resources are limited, and large donations from Saudi princes and Qatari sultans come with strings attached. Their curricula are increasingly politicized, and they tolerate and even encourage the rise of all kinds of anti-Enlightenment movements based on feelings of group grievance and victimhood. Some teachers even encourage their classes to wallow in self-flagellation over the misdeeds of Western history. Eastern, Middle Eastern, and African cultures that see compromise and conciliation as manifestations of weakness interpret all this as a sign of their own impending victory: it emboldens them.

In this clash of civilizations the West needs to criticize the cultures of men of color too. We need to drop the ethos of relativist respect for non-Western religions and cultures if respect is simply a euphemism for appeasement. But we need to do more than criticize. We need—urgently—to offer an alternative message that is superior to the message of submission.

When I’m told to be careful not to impose Western values on people who don’t want them, I beg to differ. I was not born in the West and I did not grow up in the West. But the delight of being able once I came to the West to let my imagination run free, the pleasure of choosing whom I want to associate with, the joy of reading what I want, and the thrill of being in control of my life—in short, my freedom—is something I feel intensely as I manage to extricate myself from all the shackles and obstacles that my bloodline and my religion imposed.

I am not the only one who feels and thinks this.

The multiculturalism and relativism so rampant in Western institutions of learning remind me of my aunt Khadija’s imposing and
beautiful polished antique cabinet in Mogadishu. One day, when she moved the huge wooden cupboard to clean behind it, the whole thing came down with a shocking crash. An infinite army of termites had ensconced themselves in the rear of the cabinet and had slowly, inch by inch, eaten almost the whole thing. No one had suspected it, and now only the exterior skeleton of the frame was left.

I want nothing more than that pro-Enlightenment, free-thinking atheists should spontaneously organize themselves to combat the comparable gnawing threat of radical Islam. But the likelihood of such an organization attracting significant support seems remote because the children of the Enlightenment are hopelessly fragmented in their views about how to deal with Islam. Many contemporary Western thinkers have unconsciously imbibed the toxin of appeasement with the ideas of equality and free speech. They give chairs in the most distinguished and best institutions of higher learning to apologists for Islam. There is no unity, no shared view of how to deal with this threat. Indeed, those of us who clearly see the threat are dismissed as alarmists.

That is why I think we must also appeal to other, more traditional sources of ideological strength in Western society. And that must include the Christian churches. There are people in Europe and America who maintain that it is secularism that has made us defenseless against a Muslim onslaught. But it is not only leftists who appease Islam. Afflicted with similar pangs of white guilt, many prominent Christian theologians have also become accomplices of jihad.