For Christians caught in the crossfire between Islamist and “Islamophobic” hatred, the only choice is to take the Mercutio option, refusing to take sides in a heartless and headless feud and calling down a plague upon both hate-filled parties…
What is the world coming to? More specifically, what is my own country of England coming to? Earlier this month, London suffered the sickening sight of Islamist fanatics driving a van at high speed into civilians on London Bridge. Then, when the van crashed, the men ran to the nearby Borough Market and began slashing defenseless people to death with knives. Twelve days earlier, in Manchester, an Islamist suicide bomber killed twenty-two concert goers. According to the Manchester Evening News there was a 500% rise in “Islamophobic” attacks in Manchester in the days after the attack. And then, on June 19, an Englishman, in a copycat revenge attack for the London Bridge atrocity, drove a van into Muslims leaving a mosque in north London.
Responding to the surge in “Islamophobic” incidents in Manchester in the wake of the suicide bombing, the police insisted that they would tackle all “hate crimes” ruthlessly but they expected the surge in “Islamophobic” incidents to be only a temporary phenomenon while people remain angered by the bombing.
Call me a pessimist but I doubt that the rise in “Islamophobic” incidents is a temporary phenomenon, any more than the rise in Islamist terrorism is likely to be a temporary phenomenon. We can hope that this will be the case but we shouldn’t confuse healthy hope with hopelessly naïve wishful thinking, the latter of which is akin to burying our head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich.
The problem is that hatred feeds on itself. More Islamist terrorism will mean more “Islamophobia”, a fear of terrorists being reasonable enough, which will itself lead to further radicalizing of the Islamic population, breeding a new generation of terrorists. Et cetera. Ad nauseam. Begging to differ with the Manchester police, we might not be facing a temporary phenomenon but rather a feeding frenzy of mutually destructive hatred.
The worst case scenario is almost unthinkable but nonetheless bears thinking about. It is this. It is the balkanization of culture into warring factions, based on ethnic or religious lines, akin to the situation in the old Yugoslavia. The worst case scenario is that England (and France and Germany) could go the same way as the Balkans, culminating in a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing, as we saw in Kosovo and Bosnia. This is becoming a nightmare possibility because the number of Muslims in England (and in France and Germany) has now reached, or is now reaching, the critical mass necessary to enable the formation of semi-autonomous caliphates practicing sharia law, i.e. a law unto themselves.
What, then, is to be done?
For Christians, the answer is simple enough. We are to obey the commandment to love our neighbours and even our enemies. We are not free, as Christians, to indulge in the “Islamophobic” eye-for-an-eye option, smiting the other man’s cheek because we refuse to turn our own. In any case, and let’s be blunt about this, the vast majority of indigenous Englishmen are no more Christian than are their Muslim neighbours. They worship no god except their hedonistic selves, though they might have a tribalist allegiance to “England” (whatever that might mean in their eyes). Choosing between the sort of Englishman who drives a van into Muslim worshippers and the sort of Muslim who drives a van into pedestrians is like choosing between Satan and the Devil. It’s a choice between two evils and is, therefore, no choice at all. In such circumstances, we should take the Mercutio option and call down a plague upon both their houses.
Mercutio, for those who don’t know, is a character in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet who gets caught in the crossfire, or actually the swordplay, between the two feuding families, the Capulets and the Montagues. As he lies dying, he calls down a plague on both houses, condemning the prideful hatred that had fed the feud. And yet Mercutio is part of the problem. As his name suggests, his mercurial temperament and hot-headedness lead him into the fight with the blood-lustful Tybalt from whom he receives his mortal wound. It is the aptly named Benvolio, whose name means “goodwill”, who is the would-be peacemaker in the scene. His words of meekness go unheeded with disastrous and deadly circumstances.
For Christians, therefore, caught in the crossfire between Islamist and “Islamophobic” hatred, the only choice is to take the Mercutio option, refusing to take sides in a heartless and headless feud and calling down a plague upon both hate-filled parties. We must do so, however, with the benevolence of Benvolio. We are called to practice the Cardinal Virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice, regardless of the provocation that hatred places in our path. We are called to the life of virtue, which is to say that we are called to become saints. If we succeed, we will become the candles of light and love in a world darkened by hatred. We will be the clear and present answer to the clear and present danger of mutually assured destruction. Never will Christianity seem so attractive to those caught in the coils of societal meltdown than when we are seen to be the practitioners of love in a world darkened by hatred. This is the challenge that Christians face in our hate-filled world. May we rise to the challenge.
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I disagree with the option of remaining neutral. As Christians, we MUST take sides and do our duty to Queen and country, defending her and her courts of law against all enemies, foreign and domestic. If we have to reckon with an Islamist insurrection aimed at imposing sharia law in any part of the realm, then soldiering is a commendable vocation for the Christian, including the crusade against the enemies of God and His Christ.
Unfortunately we are obligated to consider the option presented to us, and to act on it. That is, confront a religion/movement founded in war, that regards those of other faiths or creeds as being inherently our enemy and therefore wages war on those who would only desire peace. This has been going on since the 700’s when the first islamic onslaughts began.
Michael Petek is correct, though that need not *necessarily* contradict what Pearce wrote. Pearce is correct that a Christian must reject both irrational and unjust extremes, such as murdering the innocent followers of a false religion. Pearce is however wrong if he thinks that Christian love is in conflict with justice. Christian love goes beyond the requirements of justice, but it has to start with justice; sitting there like a fat, self-satisfied Buddha while your country goes up in flames is not exactly what Our Lord had in mind in Matthew 5.
Let us pray that we not only rise ‘to’ the occasion but that we also rise ‘from’ the occasion. Are we Christians, as members of the Royal Priesthood, commanded to practice non-violence or has our Lord restricted that commandment to the ordained so that men may fulfill the commandment to ‘protect the widows and orphans?
To choose the lesser of two evils is still to choose evil. I could not in good conscience – or even in not-very-good-conscience – vote for the candidates of either of the dominant parties in the last general election, and so wrote in my dog’s name. Down-ballot, I voted prayerfully and thoughtfully.
Let’s look at the concept of “the innocent followers of a false religion”. “Innocence” means innocence of such crimes as sedition and murder, which are within the jurisdiction of the civil authorities for capital crimes.
Idolatry and blasphemy – and Islam partakes of both – are capital crimes under biblical law, at least under those aspects in which they involve insubordination to the civil authorities (as with sharia courts), or use the Name of God for criminal purposes.
I’m totally with you, Mack, but generally speaking voting is about the least significant thing you can do for your country. Even under the best of circumstances, it would not be #1 in importance, but the way it is now the choices presented to the voter are so filtered to prevent non-evil options from being available — and once a candidate is elected, he has nothing to fear from voters for another 2-4 years, which he knows to be far longer than the average attention span. Voting is a symbolic act of defiance befitting a free citizen, but it is no longer an effective check on abuses. No, the best things you can do are to PRAY, to live a life according to the Faith, and to teach the Faith to your kids. All those things have real and enduring value, which voting does not have.
This proposal sounds very nice in theory but, in practice, it will simply lead to the extinction of Christianity. Paradoxically, this may be very close to the original aims of Jesus. Christianity survived for two thousand years almost entirely due to its alliance with civic power, and thanks to the said power’s exertion of protective violence, while Jesus said (among many similar things), “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it” (Luke 9:24).
There are conflicts which do not allow for neutrality. Being a follower of Mohammed, or not being a follower of Mohammed, is one of those conflicts. Following Christ or not following Christ is another example. Followers of Christ are instructed to pray for their enemies. Followers of Mohammed are instructed to bring others into the faith or subject them. Those fellows on the beach beheaded by ISIS, had two choices: renounce Christ or die. Now Professor, don’t go wondering off in the woods and say those were just violent Muslims. Empirical evidence clearly shows that when there are enough Mohammedans, this is what they will do. When the Muslims are in power, non-Muslims must submit. Non-negotiable. So, then Mercutio, where will you stand?
By the way, those fellows on the beach–the last one didn’t belong. His skin tone is a different shade, and even the Bishop for the others didn’t recognize him. He just was rounded up. But he watched the others being beheaded for Christ and when his turn came he said something like ‘I think I’ll take what they are having.’ and was beheaded as well. The testimony of the others converted him.