Will over at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen takes issue with my critique of Ross Douthat‘s last column:
I mean, what? Other than his willful misinterpretation of the word “foe,” I challenge Serwer to identify anything at all in Douthat’s column that endorses religious warfare between Muslims and Christians.
It’s true that Catholicism and Islam compete for spiritual converts. But this isn’t Lepanto or the Siege of Jerusalem. It’s a straightforward case of religious pluralism, with both faiths striving to attract adherents through persuasion and institutional expansion. Are secularists like Serwer threatened by a robust public competition between Islam and Christianity? And if so, why?
Douthat didn’t actually say Christianity and Islam were merely in competition for “souls” or religious converts, and the language of war permeates Douthat’s column. He worries about the “entrenched Islamic presence across a fault line running from Nigeria to Sudan,” the necessity of an “united Anglican-Catholic front” against “Christianity’s most enduring and impressive foe.”
If Douthat was really just talking about a competition in the marketplace of ideas, he would not have referred to Islam as being “incompatible with the Western way of reason.” That is the phrase that makes Douthat’s column relevant to the Times’ readers, because it posits the West, rather than merely Christianity as being in conflict with Islam. It is this statement that explains to the average urban, secular Times reader why Benedict’s actions should matter: Because if Christianity falls, Douthat is saying so does the West. Moreover, aside from being prejudiced on a very basic level, it is the typical rationalization for the use of violence against a mysterious and exotic other: If Islam can’t be “reasoned with,” then…well the conclusion is obvious without Douthat leading you to it explicitly.
Incidentally, this clash of civilizations worldview Douthat is proposing is strikingly similar to that posed by Osama bin Laden, simply from the opposite perspective. To the chagrin of extremists everywhere however, bin Laden and his takfiri cohorts are losing the theological debate taking place within Islam over the use of violence.
Finally, Will accuses me of “blaming Christians for the Iraq War:” Frankly, if you’re going to criticize someone for “willful misinterpretation” it might help to not only avoid willful misinterpretation of the person you’re criticizing, but at least base your interpretation on something that was actually said. Most Christians neither share the religious/political worldview I was criticizing, nor did they serve in the Bush administration prior to the Iraq war.
— A. Serwer
