The following is a response to A Departure from Tradition: On Nostra Aetate and the Mohammedans at One Peter Five.
Do the Muslims adore the Holy Trinity? Do they really give honor to Jesus and Mary? Does Mohammedanism actually value a truly moral life?
These are the questions asked and answered by Jean Delacroix at One Peter Five. Rather than dispute the answers, I submit that the questions themselves are flawed. The Holy Trinity and the Divinity of Jesus, upon which our beliefs on Mary depend, cannot be proven by the use of reason alone. They are matters of faith. Holding Muslims to a standard of Christian faith that goes beyond the use of reason is unfair. Further, “Mohammedanism” is better stated as “Islam.” Since Nostra Aetate does not judge Islam to be true, the question on Mohammedanism is moot. It is also unfair to assume that all Muslims hold tight to Islamic teaching in areas where it defies reason.
Nostra Aetate appeals to us to see most “Muslims” as the best-case scenario of any individual Muslim. That is, those who rely on their human reason to come to various truths, including the oneness of God, the faith of Abraham and so forth, and who reject Islam’s teachings which contradict reason. So it is that Nostra Aetate proclaims:
The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men.
Nostra Aetate also makes a distinction between “Muslims” and “Islam.”
The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God.
Islam is not linked to Abraham. Islam merely “takes pleasure in linking itself” to Abraham. Muslims, on the other hand, believe in the “inscrutable decrees” of God as with the faith of Abraham, which makes them linked somewhat to us as Catholics.
Delacroix seems to insist that the subjective nature of the faith of Muslims should mean nothing to us, but in fact, we have proof from the Book of Acts that the subjective nature of faith is entirely legitimate. St. Paul spoke to the Romans about God by claiming that He is the “unknown god” they had been worshiping all along.
For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
Muslims have named God “Allah” but they may as well have named Him “unknown god” and their worship of that god would be worship of Almighty God, according to St. Paul’s formula in the Book of Acts. Regardless of the name, they are worshiping, subjectively, the same God Whom we worship. This subjective understanding has everything to do with how God will judge them. He takes into account their ignorance and credits their faith in even a half-truth of God as an “unknown god.”
Where Muslims go wrong is where they hold things as a matter of faith that are a rejection of reason. It is not rational to kill, to abuse women, etc. We can assume that a great number of Muslims are peaceful and it is they whom we can find kinship with. This was not set out plainly in Nostra Aetate but was voiced plainly enough in Pope Benedict XVI’s controversial Regensburg speech which does not contradict Nostra Aetate.
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.
He said that “Muslim teaching” (which is “Islam”) defies reason, but he did not go so far as to condemn “Muslims” as a whole. Rather, his entire point was about Islam and how it requires the rejection of human reason.
Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.
So, while individual Muslims might not reject reason, Islam does. Nostra Aetate seems to agree with this. This is the main problem with Islam, when it all boils down, but we cannot assume that all Muslims, or even most, reject reason.
True, it may seen complicated at first, but it’s really quite simple if you let go of your emotions about Islam and stop thinking that all or most Muslims are like ISIS. Think rather of individual Muslims and the great power of human reason on how we judge truth.
Finally, it is not for us to judge any man on whether he is going to hell or not. We can judge acts but we cannot judge the salvation of any soul. That includes all Muslims, including members of ISIS. We can, and should, say that ISIS members and other violent Muslims are in “danger of hell,” but their ultimate judgment will be from God.
