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Archbishop Defends Pope
The former head of the Anglican church Lord Carey has defended Benedict XVI"s speech on war and religion, and warned that there is some merit in the vision of a "clash of civilisations."
Lord Carey, who was Archbishop of Canterbury between 1991 and 2002, praised the Pope's “extraordinarily effective and lucid” speech during a lecture titled The Cross and the Crescent: The Clash of Faiths in an Age of Secularism.
The Times reports that he urged Muslims to address Islam's association with violence "with great urgency", adding that the clash of civilisations was not between violent Islamism and the west, but within Islam as a whole. "There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths," he said.
If Benedict XVI's reference to an obscure medieval text provoked fury among Muslims, Carey's quoting of a rather more prominent modern book risks angering them more. Carey quoted approvingly from Samuel Huntington's controversial Clash of Civilisations theory: "“Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”
He added that tensions between Islam and the west are potentially "cataclysmic" adding that the two societies are, at times, "polarised and uncomprehending." The Danish cartoon jihad demonstrated this: “two world views colliding in public space with no common point of reference”.
The west must share some of the blame, Lord Carey added. First, western nations redrew the map of the Middle East. What he described as the "moral relativism of the west" outrages Muslim sensibilities. And then Iraq, which Lord Carey claims Muslims believe was about oil.
On these points, Lord Carey seems less in touch: Most Islamic hatred is directed towards the United States, which has never been a colonial power in the region (at least not during the map-redrawing era). We can grant him the moral relativism point, though the fury rained on Benedict XVI demonstrates that even those westerners fervently opposed to such relativism are targets for Islamic anger. Finally, it's true that many Muslims believe the invasion of Iraq (which was in 2003, not 2004 as the Times says) was about oil: But many more believe it to be a new Crusade, with the west trying to suppress a religion which frightens it (on Israel's behalf, in some cases).
This could be another obscure speech by a retired cleric thrown into the spotlight because of the current climate: Lord Carey was aware of the reaction to the Pope's speech, obviously. How will this one go down? Benedict's speech was attacked in the westen media as ill-timed or malicious - and Carey, a Conservative appointment though a less controversial figure?
For the moment, there has been no reaction - though, following Benedict's speech last week, police security has been stepped up around a number of central London churches. Strange days.
