How Many Are 95 Theses--Squared?

Nolan Findley’s Sunday column in the Detroit News, “Ex-jihadist seeks Islam’s Martin Luther,” is another example of how Findley hasn’t gotten the memo about saying only nice things about Jihadists. That makes him a rare creature indeed in this part of the country. He also gives a nice introduction to Dr. Tawfik Hamid, a physician and author who was taught by Ayman al-Zawahiri, but broke free and fled to the West. Hamid is still a Muslim, but he believes the religion needs to be “reformed.” According to Findley,

“Hamid believes a reformation will lead to the more enlightened practice of Islam, as it did with the Christian and Jewish reformations. The essential ingredients of reform, he says, are rejection of the principles that apostates must be killed; women can be subjugated and enslaved; Jews are subhuman, and Islam can be spread through violence.”

If Islam can be reformed, that would be great. But I have to take issue with the notion going around that Islam's need of reform is somehow comparable to what history has come to know as the "Reformation" of the 16th Century. Neither Christianity, nor Judaism, ever had to experience “reforms” in order to be freed of notions that apostates must be killed, women enslaved, and the worship of God must be spread by violence. The Church never held such notions. Nor did Judaism.

And as I’m sure both sides of the Lutheran/Catholic debate would agree, even if we could agree on little else, the religious struggles of the 16th Century had nothing to do with turning a barbaric, belligerent, and intolerant religion into something more people-friendly, tolerant, and “open to secular pleasures.” Remember that the Sermon on the Mount was first preached, not in the mid-20th Century by Daniel Berrigan and William Sloane Coffin , but in the early 1st Century, (and so much better), by Jesus of Nazareth.

By the time Islam began its violent spread out of Arabia in the 7th Century, all of the great Christian creeds had been developed, the Church was far along in laying down the foundations of Western civilization, and the world had already been blessed with the brilliant lives of Jesus, the Apostles, Athanasius, Augustine, and Leo the Great, while Gregory had perfected chant, and Benedict had perfected his rule for Christian monasticism. Before the “Reformer” Luther was even born Christianity had already nurtured Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi and Clare, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas á Kempis, Chaucer, Dante--and Europe had seen the beginning of the Renaissance.

It will be objected that Christians fought wars, too, called the Crusades. We did indeed fight those wars, to save our civilization from, and deliver our kingdoms from, if we could, a fanatical faith that held apostates must be killed; women and defeated populations can be subjugated and enslaved; Jews are subhuman, and the truth of Allah can be spread through violence. In the 16th Century neither Pope nor reformer would disagree about Islam, and all parties in the religious struggles of that time were more enlightened on the matter than most churchmen seem to be these days.

My only point being that, if Christianity was not always perfect, it was never unenlightened, and never needed the kind of reform that Islam is going to require in order to be made safe now. But could Islam ever be reformed? Would a reformed Islam still be Islam?