Below is a thoughtful overview of issues by Australia’s Catholic Cardinal, George Pell. Given in the USA earlier this year.

(Sorry for the formatting: I still don’t know how to successfully copy and paste from pdf. Rowland).

05/04/2006

http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/print.asp?ID=648&url=http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/Addresses/200627_681.shtmlLegatus Summit, Naples, Florida U.S.ABy + Cardinal George PellArchbishop of Sydney4 February 2006September 11 was a wake-up call for me personally. I recognised that I hadto know more about Islam.In the aftermath of the attack one thing was perplexing. Many commentatorsand apparently the governments of the “Coalition of the Willing” wereclaiming that Islam was essentially peaceful, and that the terrorist attackswere an aberration. On the other hand one or two people I met, who had livedinPakistan and suffered there, claimed to me that the Koran legitimised thekillings of non-Muslims.Although I had possessed a copy of the Koran for 30 years, I decided then toread this book for myself as a first step to adjudicating conflictingclaims. AndI recommend that you too read this sacred text of the Muslims, because thechallenge of Islam will be with us for the! remainder of our lives – atleast.Can Islam and the Western democracies live together peacefully? What ofIslamic minorities in Western countries? Views on this question range fromn ¤ive optimism to bleakest pessimism. Those tending to the optimistic sideof the scale seize upon the assurance of specialists that jihad is primarilyamatter of spiritual striving, and that the extension of this concept toterrorism is a distortion of koranic teaching[1]. They emphasise Islam’sselfunderstandingas a “religion of peace”. They point to the roots Islam has in common withJudaism and Christianity and the worship the three greatmonotheistic religions offer to the one true God. There is also the commoncommitment that Muslims and Christians have to the family and to the defenceof life, and the record of co-operation in recent decades between Muslimcountries, the Holy See, and countries such as the United States indefending lifeand the family at the international level, particularly at the Un! itedNations.Many commentators draw attention to the diversity of Musli m life—sunni, shi’ite, sufi, and their myriad variations—and the different forms that Muslimdevotion can take in places such as Indonesia and the Balkans on the onehand, and Iran and Nigeria on the other. Stress is laid, quite rightly, onthewidely divergent interpretations of the Koran and the shari’a, and thecapacity Islam has shown throughout its history for developing newinterpretations.Given the contemporary situation, the wahhabist interpretation at the heartof Saudi Islamism offers probably the most important example of this, butMuslim history also offers more hopeful examples, such as there-interpretation of the shari’a after the fall of the Ottoman empire, andparticularly afterthe end of the Second World War, which permitted Muslims to emigrate tonon-Muslim countries[2].Optimists also take heart from the cultural achievements of Islam in theMiddle Ages, and the accounts of toleration extended to Jewish and Christiansubjects of Muslim rule as “people of the Book”. Som! e deny or minimise theimportance of Islam as a source of terrorism, or of the problems that moregenerally afflict Muslim countries, blaming factors such as tribalism andinter-ethnic enmity; the long-term legacy of colonialism and Westerndomination; the way that oil revenues distort economic development in therich Muslim states and sustain oligarchic rule; the poverty and politicaloppression in Muslim countries in Africa; the situation of the Palestinians,and the alleged “problem” of the state of Israel; and the way thatglobalisationhas undermined or destroyed traditional life and imposed alien values onMuslims and others.Indonesia and Turkey are pointed to as examples of successfuldemocratisation in Muslim societies, and the success of countries such asAustralia and theUnited States as “melting pots”, creating stable and successful societieswhile absorbing people from very different cultures and religions, is ofteninvokedas a reason for trust and confidence in the growing M! uslim populations inthe West. The phenomenal capacity of modernity to weaken gradually theattachment of individuals to family, religion and traditional ways of life,and to commodify and assimilate developments that originate in hostility toit(think of the way the anti-capitalist counter-culture of the 1960s and 70swas absorbed into the economic and political mainstream—and intoconsumerism), is also relied upon to “normalise” Muslims in Westerncountries, or at least to normalise them in the minds of the non-Muslimmajority.Reasons for optimism are also sometimes drawn from the totalitarian natureof Islamist ideology, and the brutality and rigidity of Islamist rule,exemplified in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Just as the seculartotalitarian-isms of the twentieth century (Nazism and Communism) ultimatelyprovedunsustainable because of the enormous toll they exacted on human life andcreativity, so too will the religious totalitarianism of radical Islam. Thisassessment draws on a more general underlying cause for optimism, or atleast hope, for all o! f us, namely our common humanity, and the fruitfulnessofdialogue when it is entered with good will on all sides. Most ordinarypeople, both Muslim and non-Muslim, share the desire for peace, stabilityandprosperity for themselves and their families.On the pessimistic side of the equation, concern begins with the Koranitself. In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invocations toviolence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exerciseafter 50 or 60 or 70 pages. I will return to the problems of Koranicinterpretation later in this paper, but in coming to an appreciation of thetrue meaning of jihad, for example, it is important to bear in mind what thescholars tell us about the difference between the suras (or chapters) of theKoran written during Muhammad’s thirteen years in Mecca, and those thatwere written after he had based himself at Medina. Irenic interpretations ofthe Koran typically draw heavily on the suras written in Mecca, whenMuhammad w! as without military power and still hoped to win people, includingChri stians and Jews, to his revelation through preaching and religiousactivity. After emigrating to Medina, Muhammad formed an alliance with twoYemeni tribes and the spread of Islam through conquest and coercionbegan[3]. One calculation is that Muhammad engaged in 78 battles, only oneof which, the Battle of the Ditch, was defensive[4]. The suras from theMedina period reflect this decisive change and are often held to abrogatesuras from the Meccan period[5].The predominant grammatical form in which jihad is used in the Koran carriesthe sense of fighting or waging war. A different form of the verb in Arabicmeans “striving” or “struggling”, and English translations sometimes usethis form as a way of euphemistically rendering the Koran’s incitements towaragainst unbelievers[6]. But in any case, the so-called “verses of the sword”(sura 95 and 936)[7], coming as they do in what scholars generally believeto beone of the last suras revealed to Muhammad[8], are taken to abrogate a largen! umber of earlier verses on the subject (over 140, according to one radicalwebsite[9]). The suggestion that jihad is primarily a matter of spiritualstriving is also contemptuously rejected by some Islamic writers on thesubject.One writer warns that “the temptation to reinterpret both text and historyto suit ‘politically correct’ requirements is the first trap to be avoided”,beforegoing on to complain that “there are some Muslims today, for instance, whowill convert jihad into a holy bath rather than a holy war, as if it isnothingmore than an injunction to cleanse yourself from within”[10].The abrogation of many of the Meccan suras by the later Medina suras affectsIslam’s relations with those of other faiths, particularly Christians andJews.The Christian and Jewish sources underlying much of the Koran[11] are animportant basis for dialogue and mutual understanding, although there aredifficulties. Perhaps foremost among them is the understanding of God. It istrue that Christia! nity, Judaism and Islam claim Abraham as their Father andthe God of Ab raham as their God. I accept with reservations the claim thatJews, Christians and Muslims worship one god (Allah is simply the Arabicword for god) and there is only one true God available to be worshipped!That they worship the same god has been disputed[12], not only by Catholicsstressing the triune nature of God, but also by some evangelical Christiansand by some Muslims[13]. It is difficult to recognise the God of the NewTestament in the God of the Koran, and two very different concepts of thehuman person have emerged from the Christian and Muslim understandings ofGod. Think, for example, of the Christian understanding of the person as aunity of reason, freedom and love, and the way these attributes characteriseaChristian’s relationship with God. This has had significant consequences forthe different cultures that Christianity and Islam have given rise to, andforthe scope of what is possible within them. But these difficulties could bean impetus to dialogue, not a reason f! or giving up on it.The history of relations between Muslims on the one hand and Christians andJews on the other does not always offer reasons for optimism in the way thatsome people easily assume. The claims of Muslim tolerance of Christian andJewish minorities are largely mythical, as the history of Islamic conquestanddomination in the Middle East, the Iberian peninsula and the Balkans makesabundantly clear. In the territory of modern-day Spain and Portugal, whichwas ruled by Muslims from 716 and not finally cleared of Muslim rule untilthe surrender of Granada in 1491 (although over half the peninsula had beenreclaimed by 1150, and all of the peninsula except the region surroundingGranada by 1300), Christians and Jews were tolerated only as dhimmis[14],subject to punitive taxation, legal discrimination, and a range of minor andmajor humiliations. If a dhimmi harmed a Muslim, his entire communitywould forfeit protection and be freely subject to pillage, enslavement andmurde! r. Harsh reprisals, including mutilations, deportations andcrucifixion s,were imposed on Christians who appealed for help to the Christian kings orwho were suspected of having converted to Islam opportunistically. Raidingparties were sent out several times every year against the Spanish kingdomsin the north, and also against France and Italy, for loot and slaves. Thecaliphin Andalusia maintained an army of tens of thousand of Christian slaves fromall over Europe, and also kept a harem of captured Christian women. TheJewish community in the Iberian peninsula suffered similar sorts ofdiscriminations and penalties, including restrictions on how they coulddress. Apogrom in Granada in 1066 annihilated the Jewish population there and killedover 5000 people. Over the course of its history Muslim rule in thepeninsula was characterised by outbreaks of violence and fanaticism asdifferent factions assumed power, and as the Spanish gradually reclaimedterritory[15].Arab rule in Spain and Portugal was a disaster for Christians and Jews, aswas Turkish rule in! the Balkans. The Ottoman conquest of the Balkanscommenced in the mid-fifteenth century, and was completed over the followingtwo hundred years. Churches were destroyed or converted into mosques,and the Jewish and Christians populations became subject to forciblerelocation and slavery. The extension or withdrawal of protection dependedentirelyon the disposition of the Ottoman ruler of the time. Christians who refusedto apostatize were taxed and subject to conscript labour. Where the practiceofthe faith was not strictly prohibited, it was frustrated—for example, bymaking the only legal market day Sunday. But violent persecution was also aconstant shadow. One scholar estimates that up to the Greek War ofIndependence in 1828, the Ottomans executed eleven Patriarchs ofConstantinople,nearly one hundred bishops and several thousand priests, deacons and monks.Lay people were prohibited from practising certain professions and trades,even sometimes from riding a horse with a saddle, ! and right up until theearly eighteenth century their adolescent sons l ived under the threat of themilitary enslavement and forced conversion which provided possibly onemillion janissary soldiers to the Ottomans during their rule. UnderByzantinerule the peninsula enjoyed a high level of economic productivity andcultural development. This was swept away by the Ottoman conquest andreplacedwith a general and protracted decline in productivity[16].The history of Islam’s detrimental impact on economic and culturaldevelopment at certain times and in certain places returns us to the natureof Islamitself. For those of a pessimistic outlook this is probably the mostintractable problem in considering Islam and democracy. What is the capacityfortheological development within Islam?In the Muslim understanding, the Koran comes directly from God, unmediated.Muhammad simply wrote down God’s eternal and immutable words asthey were dictated to him by the Archangel Gabriel. It cannot be changed,and to make the Koran the subject of critical analysis and reflectio! n iseither toassert human authority over divine revelation (a blasphemy), or question itsdivine character. The Bible, in contrast, is a product of human co-operationwith divine inspiration. It arises from the encounter between God and man,an encounter characterised by reciprocity, which in Christianity isunderscored by a Trinitarian understanding of God (an understanding Islaminterprets as polytheism). This gives Christianity a logic or dynamic whichnot only favours the development of doctrine within strict limits, but alsorequires both critical analysis and the application of its principles tochangedcircumstances. It also requires a teaching authority.Of course, none of this has prevented the Koran from being subjected to thesort of textual analysis that the Bible and the sacred texts of otherreligionshave undergone for over a century, although by comparison the discipline isin its infancy. Errors of fact, inconsistencies, anachronisms and otherdefectsin the Koran are not ! unknown to scholars, but it is difficult for Muslims todiscuss these m atters openly.In 2004 a scholar who writes under the pseudonym Christoph Luxenbergpublished a book in German setting out detailed evidence that the originallanguage of the Koran was a dialect of Aramaic known as Syriac. Syriac orSyro-Aramaic was the written language of the Near East during Muhammad’stime, and Arabic did not assume written form until 150 years after hisdeath. Luxenberg argues that the Koran that has come down to us in Arabic ispartially a mistranscription of the original Syriac. A bizarre example heoffers which received some attention at the time his book was published istheKoran’s promise that those who enter heaven will be “espoused” to “maidenswith eyes like gazelles”; eyes, that is, which are intensely white and black(suras 4454 and 5220). Luxenberg’s meticulous analysis suggests that theArabic word for maidens is in fact a mistranscription of the Syriac word forgrapes. This does strain common sense. Valiant strivings to be consoled bybeautiful women is o! ne thing, but to be heroic for a packet of raisins seemsa bitmuch!Even more explosively, Luxenberg suggests that the Koran has its basis inthe texts of the Syriac Christian liturgy, and in particular in the Syriaclectionary, which provides the origin for the Arabic word “koran”. As onescholarly review observes, if Luxenberg is correct the writers whotranscribedthe Koran into Arabic from Syriac a century and a half after Muhammad’sdeath transformed it from a text that was “more or less harmonious with theNew Testament and Syriac Christian liturgy and literature to one that [was]distinct, of independent origin”[17]. This too is a large claim.It is not surprising that much textual analysis is carried outpseudonymously. Death threats and violence are frequently directed againstIslamic scholarswho question the divine origin of the Koran. The call for criticalconsideration of the Koran, even simply of its seventh-century legislativeinjunctions, isrejected out of hand by hard-line! Muslim leaders. Rejecting calls for therevision of school textbooks w hile preaching recently to those making thehajjpilgrimage to Mount Arafat, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia told pilgrimsthat “there is a war against our creed, against our culture under thepretext offighting terrorism. We should stand firm and united in protecting ourreligion. Islam’s enemies want to empty our religion [of] its content andmeaning.But the soldiers of God will be victorious”[18].All these factors I have outlined are problems, for non-Muslims certainly,but first and foremost for Muslims themselves. In grappling with theseproblemswe have to resist the temptation to reduce a complex and fluid situation toblack and white photos. Much of the future remains radically unknown to us.Itis hard work to keep the complexity of a particular phenomenon steadily inview and to refuse to accept easy answers, whether of an optimistic orpessimistic kind. Above all else we have to remember that like Christianity,Islam is a living religion, not just a set of theological or legisla! tivepropositions.It animates the lives of an estimated one billion people in very differentpolitical, social and cultural settings, in a wide range of devotionalstyles anddoctrinal approaches. Human beings have an invincible genius for variationand innovation.Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion andits capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited. To stop atthisproposition, however, is to neglect the way these facts are mitigated orexacerbated by the human factor. History has more than its share ofsurprises.Australia lives next door to Indonesia, the country with one of the largestMuslim populations in the world[19]. Indonesia has been a successfuldemocracy, with limitations, since independence after World War II. Islam inIndonesia has been tempered significantly both by indigenous animism andby earlier Hinduism and Buddhism, and also by the influence of sufism. As aconsequence, in most of the country (except in particular Aceh)! Islam issyncretistic, moderate and with a strong mystical leaning. Th e moderateIslam of Indonesia is sustained and fostered in particular by organisationslikeNahdatul Ulama, once led by former president Abdurrahman Wahid, which runsschools across the country, and which with 30-40 million members isone of the largest Muslim organisations in the world.The situation in Indonesia is quite different from that in Pakistan, thecountry with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. 75 per centofPakistani Muslims are Sunni, and most of these adhere to the relativelymore-liberal Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence (for example, Hanafijurisprudence does not consider blasphemy should be punishable by thestate). But religious belief in Pakistan is being radicalised becauseorganisations,very different from Indonesia’s Nahdatul Ulama, have stepped in to fill thevoid in education created by years of neglect by military rulers. Pakistanspendsonly 1.8 per cent of GDP on education. 71 per cent of government schools arewithout electricity, 40 per ce! nt are without water, and 15 per cent arewithouta proper building. 42 per cent of the population is literate, and thisproportion is falling. This sort of neglect makes it easy for radicalIslamic groups withfunding from foreign countries to gain ground. There has been a dramaticincrease in the number of religious schools (or madrasas) opening inPakistan,and it is estimated that they are now educating perhaps 800,000 students,still a small proportion of the total, but with a disproportionateimpact[20].These two examples show that there is a whole range of factors, some of themsusceptible to influence or a change in direction, affecting the prospectsfora successful Islamic engagement with democracy. Peace with respect for humanrights are the most desirable end point, but the development of democracywill not necessarily achieve this or sustain it. This is an importantquestion for the West as well as for the Muslim world. Adherence to whatGeorge Weigelhas called “a thin, indeed ! anorexic, idea of procedural democracy”[21] canbe fatal here. It is no t enough to assume that giving people the vote willautomatically favour moderation, in the short term at least[22]. Moderationand democracy have been regular partners in Western history, but have notentered permanent and exclusive matrimony and there is little reason forthis to be better in the Muslim world, as the election results in Iran lastJune andthe elections in Palestine in January reminded us. There are many ways inwhich President Bush’s ambition to export democracy to the Middle East is arisky business. In its influence on both religion and politics, the cultureis crucial.There are some who resist this conclusion vehemently. In 2002, the NobelPrize Economist Amartya Sen took issue with the importance of culture inunderstanding the radical Islamic challenge, arguing that religion is nomore important than any other part or aspect of human endeavour or interest.Healso challenged the idea that within culture religious faith typically playsa decisive part in the developm! ent of individual self-understanding. Againstthis,Sen argued for a characteristically secular understanding of the humanperson, constituted above all else by sovereign choice. Each of us has manyinterests, convictions, connections and affiliations, “but none of them hasa unique and pre-ordained role in defining [the] person”. Rather, “we mustinsistupon the liberty to see ourselves as we would choose to see ourselves,deciding on the relative importance that we would like to attach to ourmembershipin the different groups to which we belong. The central issue, in sum, isfreedom”.[23]This does work for some, perhaps many, people in the rich, developed andhighly urbanised Western world, particularly those without strongattachmentsto religion. Doubtless it has ideological appeal to many more among theelites. But as a basis for engagement with people of profound religiousconviction,most of whom are not fanatics or fundamentalists, it is radically deficient.Sen’s words demonstrate ! that the high secularism of our elites ishandicapped incomprehending t he challenge that Islam poses.I suspect one example of the secular incomprehension of religion is theblithe encouragement of large scale Islamic migration into Western nations,particularly in Europe. Of course they were invited to meet the need forlabour and in some cases to assuage guilt for a colonial past.If religion rarely influences personal behaviour in a significant way thenthe religious identity of migrants is irrelevant. I suspect that some anti-Christians, for example, the Spanish Socialists, might have seen Muslims asa useful counterweight to Catholicism, another factor to bring religion intopublic disrepute. Probably too they had been very confident that Westernadvertising forces would be too strong for such a primitive religiousviewpoint,which would melt down like much of European Christianity. This could proveto be a spectacular misjudgement.So the current situation is very different from what the West confronted inthe twentieth century Cold War, when secularis! ts, especially those who wererepentant communists, were well equipped to generate and sustain resistanceto an anti-religious and totalitarian enemy. In the present challenge it isreligious people who are better equipped, at least initially, to understandthe situation with Islam. Radicalism, whether of religious or non-religiousinspiration, has always had a way of filling emptiness. But if we are goingto help the moderate forces within Islam defeat the extreme variants it hasthrown up, we need to take seriously the personal consequences of religiousfaith. We also need to understand the secular sources of emptiness anddespair and how to meet them, so that people will choose life over death.This is another place where religious people have an edge. Westernsecularistsregularly have trouble understanding religious faith in their own societies,and are often at sea when it comes to addressing the meaninglessness thatsecularism spawns. An anorexic vision of democracy and the human ! person isno match for Islam.It is easy for us to tell Muslims that the y must look to themselves and findways of reinterpreting their beliefs and remaking their societies. Exactlythesame thing can and needs to be said to us. If democracy is a belief inprocedures alone then the West is in deep trouble.The most telling sign that Westerndemocracy suffers a crisis of confidence lies in the disastrous fall infertility rates, a fact remarked on by more and more commentators. In 2000,Europefrom Iceland to Russia west of the Ural Mountains recorded a fertility rateof only 1.37. This means that fertility is only at 65 per cent of the levelneeded tokeep the population stable. In 17 European nations that year deathsoutnumbered births. Some regions in Germany, Italy and Spain already havefertilityrates below 1.0.Faith ensures a future. As an illustration of the literal truth of this,consider Russia and Yemen. Look also at the different birth rates in the redand bluestates in the last presidential election in the U.S.A. In 1950 Russia, whichsuffered one of ! the most extreme forms of forced secularisation under theCommunists, had about 103 million people. Despite the devastation of warsand revolution the population was still young and growing. Yemen, a Muslimcountry, had only 4.3 million people. By 2000 fertility was in radicaldecline in Russia, but because of past momentum the population stood at 145million.Yemen had maintained a fertility rate of 7.6 over the previous 50 years andnow had 18.3 million people. Median level United Nations forecasts suggestthat even with fertility rates increasing by 50 per cent in Russia over thenext fifty years, its population will be about 104 million in 2050—a loss of40million people. It will also be an elderly population. The same forecastssuggest that even if Yemen’s fertility rate falls 50 per cent to 3.35, by2050 it willbe about the same size as Russia — 102 million — and overwhelminglyyoung[24].The situation of the United States and Australia is not as dire as this,although there is no c! ause for complacency. It is not just a question ofhaving morechildren, but of rediscovering reasons to trust in the future. Some of thehysteric and extreme claims about global warming are also a symptom of paganemptiness, of Western fear when confronted by the immense and basicallyuncontrollable forces of nature. Belief in a benign God who is master of theuniverse has a steadying psychological effect, although it is no guaranteeof Utopia, no guarantee that the continuing climate and geographic changeswillbe benign. In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vainattempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reductionin carbon dioxide emissions.Most of this is a preliminary clearing of the ground for dialogue andinteraction with our Muslim brothers and sisters based on the convictionthat it isalways useful to know accurately where you are before you start to decidewhat you should be doing.The war against terrorism is only one aspect of the challenge. Perhaps moreimportant is the struggle in the Islamic world be! tween moderate forces andextremists, especially when we set this against the enormous demographicshifts likely to occur across the world, the relative changes inpopulation-size ofthe West, the Islamic and Asian worlds and the growth of Islam in achildless Europe.Every great nation and religion has shadows and indeed crimes in theirhistories. This is certainly true of Catholicism and all Christiandenominations. Weshould not airbrush these out of history, but confront them and then explainour present attitude to them.These are also legitimate requests for our Islamic partners in dialogue. Dothey believe that the peaceful suras of the Koran are abrogated by theverses ofthe sword? Is the programme of military expansion (100 years after Muhammad’s death Muslim armies reached Spain and India) to be resumed whenpossible?Do they believe that democratic majorities of Muslims in Europe would imposeSharia law? Can we discuss Islamic history and even the hermeneuticalproblems around th! e origins of the Koran without threats of violence?Obviously some of t hese questions about the future cannot be answered, butthe issues should be discussed. Useful dialogue means that participantsgrapple with the truth and in this issue of Islam and the West the stakesare too high for fundamental misunderstandings.Both Muslims and Christians are helped by accurately identifying what arecore and enduring doctrines, by identifying what issues can be discussedtogether usefully, by identifying those who are genuine friends, seekersafter truth and cooperation and separating them from those who only appearto befriends.——————————————————————————–[1]. For some examples of this, see Daniel Pipes, “Jihad and the Professors”, Commentary, November 2002.[2]. For an account of how some Muslim jurists dealt with large-scaleemigration to non-Muslim countries, see Paul Stenhouse MSC, “Democracy, Daral-Harb, and Dar al-Islam”, unpublished manuscript, nd.[3]. Paul Stenhouse MSC, “Muhammad, Qur’anic Texts, the ! Shari’a andIncitement to Violence”. Unpublished manuscript, 31 August 2002.[4]. Daniel Pipes “Jihad and the Professors” 19. Another source estimatesthat Muhammad engaged in 27 (out of 38) battles personally, fighting in 9 ofthem. See A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq (Oxford UniversityPress, Karachi: 1955), 659.[5]. Stenhouse “Muhammad, Qur’anic Texts, the Shari’a and Incitement toViolence”.[6]. Ibid.[7]. Sura 95: “Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay theidolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and liein waitfor them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform theprayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; for God isAll-forgiving, Allcompassionate.”Sura936: “And fight the unbelievers totally even as they fight you totally;and know that God is with the godfearing.” (Arberry translation).[8]. Richard Bonney, Jihad: From Qur’an to bin Laden (Palgrave, Hampshire:2004), 22-26.[9].“The Will of Abdullaah ! Yusuf Azzam”,http://www.islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php? articleID=532& (dated 20 April1986).[10]. M. J. Akbar, The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islamand Christianity (Routledge, London & New York: 2002), xv.[11]. Abraham I. Katsch, Judaism and the Koran (Barnes & Co., New York:1962), passim.[12]. See for example Alain Besan §on, “What Kind of Religion is Islam?”Commentary, May 2004.[13]. Daniel Pipes, “Is Allah God?” New York Sun, 28 June 2005.[14]. On the concept of “dhimmitude”, see Bat Ye’or, The Decline of EasternChristianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, trans. MiriamKochman and David Littman (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison NJ:1996).[15]. Andrew Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate ofNon Muslims (Prometheus Books, Amherst NY: 2005), 56-75.[16]. Ibid.[17]. Robert R. Phenix Jr & Cornelia B. Horn, “Book Review of ChristophLuxenberg (ps.) Die syro-aramaeische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zurEntschl ¼sselung der Qur’ansprache”, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, 6:1(January 2003). ! See also the article on Luxenberg’s book published inNewsweek, 28 July 2004.[18]. “Hajj Pilgrims Told of War on Islam”, http://www.foxnews.com, 9 January 2006.[19]. The World Christian Database (http://worldchristian database.org)gives a considerably lower estimate of the Muslim proportion of thepopulation(54 per cent, or 121.6 million), attributing 22 per cent of the populationto adherents of Asian “New Religions”. On the WCD’s estimates, Pakistan hastheworld’s largest Muslim population, with 154.5 million (or approximately 96per cent of a total population of 161 million). The CIA’s World Fact Book(http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook) estimates 88 per cent ofIndonesia’s population of 242 million is Muslim, giving it a Muslimpopulation of213 million.The Muslim proportion of the population in Indonesia may be as low as 37-40per cent, owing to the way followers of traditional Javanese mysticism areclassified as Muslim by government authorities. See Paul Stenhouse MSC,“Indon! esia, Islam, Christians, and the Numbers Game”, Annals Australia,Octob er 1998.[20]. William Dalrymple, “Inside the Madrasas”, New York Review of Books, 1December 2005.[21]. George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America andPolitics without God (Basic Books, New York: 2005), 136.[22]. For a sophisticated presentation of the argument of the case for themoderating effect of electoral democracy in the Islamic world, see the PewForum’s interview with Professor Vali Nasr (Professor of National SecurityStudies at the US Naval Postgraduate School),“Islam and Democracy: Iraq,Afghanistan and Pakistan”, 4 November 2005,http://pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=91.[23]. Amartya Sen, “Civilizational Imprisonments”, The New Republic, 10 June2002.[24]. Allan Carlson, “Sweden and the Failure of European Family Policy”,Society, September-October 2005.  © Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney.