Christos Anesti

Happy Easter, everyone. Blogging will be erratic as I cope with the chocolate-induced bi-polar disorder reignant in our home this week. Plus, I'm having server problems. If you can face a dense read in your sugar coma, however, here's something both fascinating and important. Studium, an important Catholic journal, has just published a 30-page analysis of "The Islamic Question." Sandro Magister excerpts it broadly here. He notes that the lead author writes too for La Civiltá Cattolica, which is Vatican-approved. Magister wants to say that the article therefore represents the Vatican's current thinking on the topic, but was too explosive to be presented as such. Maybe. I don't think Cardinal Ratzinger would have suggested that all the articles he wrote in his own name in various journals represented the Church's view necessarily, even if he was prefect of the CDF. I think it wise to be wary of such leaps. Nonetheless, knowing the authors' pedigree lets us know that we're reading the ideas of serious scholars who are within the mainstream of the Church. Here's their introduction:

At the end of the 1980’s, there was a pitched battle within the Islamist camp between the positions of Abdullah Azzam and the more extremist positions of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, a true ideologue of jihad in the form it has taken today, which includes in the category of enemy the “Herodians,” or those who collaborate with the West. On November 24, 1989, Azzam was assassinated in Peshawar, and Al-Zawahiri had an open field. For the zealots, everything that comes from the outside is like poison to their traditional ways of life, so they hold that there is only one way to avert cultural catastrophe: expel the invader and hermetically seal off the borders, so nothing can pollute or corrupt their miniature world.

But of course "the West" is not limited to a territory.

The pervasiveness of the global village is such that there is only one way to escape its grasp: destroy it. And this is Al-Zawahiri’s ideological program, which he pursues with a complex strategy. For the formula of “modernizing Islam,” he substitutes another: “Islamizing modernity,” and therefore the West.

How is that to be accomplished?

Within the Muslim world, Islamization means de-Westernizing everything: from political and cultural institutions to economic ones, even to the point of rethinking banking operations. On the outside, it means spreading Islam through vigorous missionary activity, in both Europe and the United States: this activity is supported above all by Saudia Arabia. But according to the most radical interpretations, Islamizing the West means violently attacking its political and economic power, without sparing the civilian population.

This pan-Islamist program might make some smirk, just as many smirked at Hitler
before his political ascent. But this is a real program, which is being carried out according to a clear plan, and although it is working slowly, it is producing results.

That this is a real program can be seen in many ways.

The rest of the article is a detailed elaboration of that thesis. This is a much more in-depth treatment of the theme Mark Steyn took up with respect to the Iranians a week or so ago: that while we were treating Islamism as an aberration, they've been doggedly pursuing a strategy since 1979. When Jesuits and hawkish columnists agree, I pay attention.