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I'm one of those people who roots for the moderate Muslim. And yes, they do exist. After the big flap last year following Pope Benedict's remarks about Islam, the mainstream media never got around to informing you that his invitation to dialogue was answered by a number of imams and Islamic scholars, and the conversation has been ongoing. Likewise, you probably never heard about a beautiful and wrenching letter by Adnam Mokrani, Professor of Islamic Studies in the Institute for the Study of Religion and Culture and the Pontifical Gregorian University, lamenting the murder of his dear friend, Fr. Ragheed Aziz Ganni, at the hands of Bronze Age thugs in Iraq. Such people need to be encouraged and given as much exposure as possible, both here and in the Islamosphere.
That said, there remains a rather glaring problem with the way in which many Islamic moderates address the problem of Radical Islamism in the public square. It is best summed up in a little ad I got the other day from Beliefnet, inviting me to check out the work of "nine prominent American Muslims giving definitive statements, once and for all, about why Islam has nothing to do with terrorism and violence."
Because charity believeth all things, one can -- with effort -- put a charitable construction on that. You can, for instance, insert unspoken qualifiers like, "'True' Islam has nothing to do with terrorism." With some effort, you can take it to mean, "The particular Islamic family that raised me has nothing to do with terrorism and violence." With a little elbow grease, you can work "has nothing to do with terrorism and violence" into meaning "wishes to have nothing to do with terrorism and violence." A stubbornly charitable mind can find ways to put the best possible (not to say pollyanna) construction on such words.
But the vast majority of people are not going to do that sort of charitable heavy lifting for Islam when images of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Cartoon Rioters, beheading thugs, ululating crybabies, murderous fanatics, honor-killers, mobs stoning helpless women, dunces blathering Quran-laced manifestos for Jihad on YouTube and various other thin-skinned buffoons and bullies are in your face 24/7, all crying "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet!"
Here's the deal: Speaking as a Catholic who deeply believes the Catholic faith, it would (rightly) not pass the Laugh Test if I were to declare the Church has nothing to do with violence, or anti-semitism, or terrorism or abusive priests or [insert sin here]. To be sure, there is a distinction between the eschatological vision of the spotless Bride of Christ and her extremely spotty members. And so we can and do speak of One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. There is a sense in which the Church remains holy even when all her members are not, because its soul is not a fallen man but the Holy Spirit himself.
But get real. You'd have to be nuts to demand that non-Catholics just accept that Catholics have "nothing to do" with sins which everybody knows Catholics have committed. We're talking Mafiosi, Crusaders who sacked Constantinople, Borgia Popes, Richelieu, weird Latin American cults, citizens of Northern Ireland blowing each other up, pedophile priests and their guardian bishops, kooky anti-Semites who think Hitler was on to something, most of the citizens of Dante's Inferno, concentration camp guards, that Opus Dei guy who spied on the United States and entertained himself with porn, Spanish Inquisitors, slave traders, and a wide assortment of other people who did what they did (and will do what they do till the Parousia), often with the express claim that they were upholding the Faith.
The Catholic motto is, "You can pick your friends, but you are stuck with your family." What's sauce for the Catholic goose is sauce for the Muslim gander. The sooner they address themselves to that fact, the better.
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