Category: Islam

President Obama Defends Ground Zero Mosque!

In a speech at the White House on Friday—the Muslim holy day—commemorating the start of Ramadan—the Muslim holy month—President Obama expressed support for the right of Muslims to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City and, in fact, at the site of a building that was damaged in the 9/11 attacks when part of one of the planes used by terrorists crashed into the building’s roof.

In his usual snippy tone President Obama stated:

Let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances

By the next day, he was backpedaling, stating:

I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there.

Okay, so he’s a politician. You gotta expect flip-flops.

And non-denial denials, which is what his second remark was. He is deliberately not telling us what he thinks about the wisdom of building a mosque at Ground Zero. Let’s take him at his word on that. He may very well think it’s a great idea. Or he may not. We don’t know because he isn’t telling. He just wanted to take some of the political edge off his remark of the previous day.

I could even give him credit for defending a legal right on the part of Muslims to build a mosque on private property “in accordance with local laws and ordinances”—assuming two things: (1) That they actually have such a legal right (the First Amendment does not guarantee the right to build a place of worship anywhere you want) and (2) if he was backed into a corner and forced to answer the question.

Whether condition (1) obtains, I don’t know. But condition (2) didn’t.

He wasn’t backed into a wall and forced to answer the question. This wasn’t a press conference where Helen Thomas (or someone) sprang the question on him. It was part of his prepared remarks for a Happy Ramadan speech. This means that he chose to put in his oar on this issue. He didn’t have to do that. He chose to.

And he chose to for political reasons—to try to curry favor with the Muslim community.

It’s a calculated risk, because in making such remarks the President also opened himself up to critique on the issue, so if it results in a net loss of political capital for him, he deserves it. He invited it.

While it’s understandable that the President getting involved would focus the spotlight on him, I think that some light also should be shown on the people who are providing the property (presumably by selling it) to the mosque builders and on the mosque builders themselves.

Why do they want to build a mosque right there?

According to their website, they’re all about “improving Muslim-West relations.”

Hmmm.

Build a mosque—a place for Muslims to worship—within two blocks of the site of the worst Muslim terrorist attack in living memory—at the site of a building that was itself damaged as part of the attack.

Let’s flip some religious identities around.

Suppose that there was a Christian terrorist organization and that it attacked an iconic site in a major Muslim city—say, the Kaaba in Mecca—and in so doing not only destroyed the site but also killed 3,000 innocent people, overwhelmingly Muslim.

Then a group of Christians, who have set about “improving West-Muslim relations” announce that they want to build a Christian cultural center and church—a place for Christians to worship—just outside the former site of the Kaaba, at the spot where once stood a building damaged in the Christian terrorist attack.

Would any of us (a) think that this really would improve relations or (b) believe claims that this was the real motive (as opposed, e.g., to being a kind of covert Christian triumphalism)?

I know the Kaaba in Mecca isn’t a direct equivalent of the World Trade Center. It is more important to Muslims than the latter was to Americans—far more so, in fact. But the point remains the same. (And yes, I know that Saudi Arabia would never allow this, but we’re doing a thought experiment to tease out an underlying principle.)

I could understand Muslims wanting to build some kind of inter-religious discussion facility near Ground Zero as a way of allowing visitors to the area to hear the message, “We are Muslims and we don’t approve of what was done here. Please don’t judge our religion by this horrible atrocity.”

But that’s not the same thing as building a mosque—a place of worship for Muslims.

One would always have to suspect the motives of the builders-of-churches-near-the-demolished-Kaaba, as well as the motives of Christians who would go there to worship, and in the same way one must suspect the motives of the builders-of-mosques-near-Ground-Zero, as well as the motives of Muslims who would go there to worship.

Something smells rotten here because something is rotten here.

This is at best a colossally tone deaf and insensitive venture (particularly so for the families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks, but also for all Americans).

At worst it is something far darker.

What are your thoughts?

Why So Few Gospels?

A correspondent writes:

I’m just in need of a helping hand from you, because I’m in the middle of a debate with a muslim friend.

While we’re in the middle of discussion, he happen to addressed me with a question that blew me away, because I don’t have any idea on how I could tackle his question.

This is what he said, “Could you also tell me that there are hundreds of Gospels, then how come only four made it through the New Testament?”

I know that the “Books or Gospels” contained in the New Testament are all inspired by the Holy Spirit, but I think there are much more broader explanation regarding this matter.

I hope you could give me a helping hand regarding this subject Sir. I would really appreciate it if you could give me at least a brief explanation and answer regarding this.

The correspondent is correct that the canonical gospels are inspired by the Holy Spirit and false gospels aren’t. The question is how the Holy Spirit guided the Church into a recognition of which were inspired and which weren’t.

Here’s how that happened . . .

I don’t know that there are literally hundreds of gospels (that would mean 200 or more), but there are a large number of purported gospels that were written between A.D. 100 and A.D. 400. There may have been hundreds written back then (and people continue to crank out false gospels even today, like the Aquarian Gospel of Levi), but only a few dozen survive from those centuries.

The reason that they are not in the New Testament is that they are all fakes. The Church recognized them as such because (1) they often theologically contradicted the canonical gospels that had been passed down from the apostles and their associates and (2) they showed up out of nowhere, with no history of having been read in the churches down through the years.

The canonical gospels, by contrast, all date from the first century, they were written by the apostles or their associates, they were given to the first churches to read, and the churches read them all the way down through history. Also, the doctrine contained in them agreed with the doctrine passed down by the apostles to the bishops and handed on by them.

The later-written “gospels” thus were spotted as phonies because they had not been passed down like the others and they contained bad doctrine.

Eventually, as a warning to the faithful who might be confused by the new gospels, some of the early Church councils—like Rome in 382, Hippo in 393, and Carthage in 397 (among others)—published official canon lists naming the specific books of Scripture that had been handed down as sacred from the time of the apostles.

Incidentally, the image is Matthew 23:3-15 from an Arabic New Testament. (Note also that it reads from right to left.)

Hope this helps!

Former Muslim Martyr Saints

Over at the First Things blog First Thoughts there is a post in which a (necesssarily) unnamed missionary in the Middle East is quoted as follows:

In August of 2008 a young lady named Fatima al-Mutayri, age 26, was martyred in Saudi Arabia. She is from that country and became a Christian there by means of internet and satellite TV ministries, and was martyred there—she had her tongue cut out and was burned to death by her brother, who was carrying out the command of the Prophet who said, “who changes his religion, kill him” (man badala diinahu faqataluuhu).

This is, of course, horiffic. Words cannot convey the emotions that such an incident calls forth.

The missionary goes on to as some thought provoking questions, and I was asked for an opinion on them, so I'll do my best.

The missionary continues:

She was most certainly a Christian. I suspect that she was baptized but do not know for certain. And here is my two-part question: first, was she in full communion with Rome? I believe that she knew nothing of the debates between Catholics and Protestants. Moreover, I don’t think she ever had access to becoming a Catholic because the Catholic Church does not evangelize in Saudi Arabia and, of course, there no actual church buildings in that country.

The Catholic Church doesn't evangelize openly in Saudi Arabia, for obvious reasons, but there are certainly Catholics there who share their faith in an underground way, and these are able to baptize people, so the absence of above-ground evangelization and the lack of church buildings would be a practical impediment to a Catholic baptism but not something that would have made it altogether impossible.

So if she was baptized, it was at least possible that she was secretly baptized in an explicitly Catholic ceremony. If so, she would have by that fact been placed in full communion with the Catholic Church.

But let's suppose, as is likely, that if she was baptized that it was not in a Catholic ceremony. What then?

My understanding is that in former centuries it was common to regard any baptism as a Catholic one unless there was an express intent otherwise. On this view a person who was baptized with no specific knowledge of the Catholic Church would be regarded as a Catholic up until such time as the person might learn of and repudiate the Catholic understanding of the Christian faith.

Apart from very usual circumstances–especially in the Internet age–this kind of situation would be unlikely to arise, and current canon law seems to handle the situation differently.

The Code does not spell it out in the detail I would like, but the Green Commentary on the Code summarizes what I take to be common canonical opinion on the matter, which is that a person receiving baptism from a non-Catholic is held to be a non-Catholic unless there is a conscious intent for the person to be Catholic–for example, you are on a desert island and, before you die, you want to be baptized Catholic and the only person there is a Methodist, but he is willing to baptize you so you can be Catholic. (See the paragraph starting on the botton of the first column and its continuation in the second column, here.)

We don't have any evidence (so far as I know) that Fatima specifically intended to be Catholic if she was baptized, so it would be presumed that she wouldn't have been–that she would have been reckoned as a member of whatever specific church she was baptised into (if any) or just as a "generic Christian" if she was baptized non-denominationally.

At least the way such matters would be handled now, mere ignorance of disputes between Protestants and Catholics would not result in a baptism performed by a non-Catholic putting the baptizand in full communion with the Catholic Church.

I also wouldn't be quick to underestimate Fatima's awareness of the fact that there are different kinds of Christians. She was, it is reported, a Arabic-language blogger, and any amount of poking around on the Internet will reveal that there are different kinds of Christians. The pope being in the news on al-Jazeera and other Arabic news stations will result in awareness of the same thing. Fatima is supposed to have watched al-Haya (a Christian Arabic channel) and seen the programs of Fr. Zakaria Botros, who is Coptic. She also was involved with a significant variety of Christians on the Internet, and I strongly suspect she knew about Christian differences.

Does that mean she intended to join a specific Christian group upon her baptism? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe she just wanted to be a Christian and would figure out the who-to-affiliate-with question later (or never). No one can really say unless someone who knew her were to come forth and shed light on the subject.

On the other hand, maybe she wasn't sacramentally baptized at all. (We've been making a lot of assumptions thus far.)

In that case she could be described as having "baptism of desire"–either implicitly or explicitly–by virtue of her adopting the Christian faith. She also could be described as having "baptism of blood" by virtue of her death for the faith. 

These would suffice for salvation (nothing else standing in the way), praise God!

But they would not place her in full communion with the Catholic Church in this life.

The missionary then asks another ques
tion:

And second: given this information, is it possible for her to be canonized? The canonization of an ex-Muslim woman who was born, lived, and died in Saudi Arabia, and who was martyred by her own family, would be perhaps the single most powerful statement that the Church has made on Islam since Vatican II (hardly a clear statement, and one that led many Catholics to believe, incorrectly, that the Church no longer was interested in evangelizing Muslims).

Vatican II's statement regarding Islam could definitely have been better phrased, and canonizing Fatima would indeed be a powerful statement. And if the circumstances were different, it could even be a possibility. It would not, however, be done as a statement on Islam. Instead, it would be a statement about the heroic virtues of this young woman who accepted martyrdom for her love of Jesus.

Pope Benedict certainly has the wherewithal to do such a canonization. He personally–as pope, at Easter Vigil–baptized the notorious Muslim apostate Maghdi Allam. Allam is a firebrand and a controversialist who repeatedly got into disputes with Muslims in Italy long before his conversion to Catholicism, and now there are pictures of the pope baptizing him and everything.

Pope Benedict did this not as a statement about Islam but as an illustration of the Church's willingness to accept everyone, regardless of their background, and of the right of everyone to embrace the gospel.

Given his willingness to do this, I have little doubt that he would be willing to canonize a former Muslim who was martyred for the faith. (Providing it was a genuine martyrdom; early in his papacy Pope Benedict notably clarified what martyrdom is to prevent the concept from being used sloppily.)

I can easily imagine Benedict asking, "Should we deny canonization to someone who died for the faith simply because the person who killed them was Muslim? Why should Muslims be an exception? If we do not deny canonization to one who was martyred by atheists or polytheists or any other group, why should we do so in this situation? Is their heroic witness to Christ worth less because their killers were Muslim?"

So I don't doubt that Benedict would be willing to do this . . . if the circumstances were different.

But they are what they are.

At least at this time, we don't have evidence that Fatima entered full commmunion with the Catholic Church in her life or that he had embraced the Catholic faith specifically at the time of her baptism by blood. Consequently, I don't see grounds for her canonization.

That's not to say that she's not in heaven and is not, in fact, a saint. If the facts are as described, I am very, very hopeful of her salvation and thus her objective sainthood (I can't say I'm certain, because in this life we can never be certain), but the Church tends only to canonize those who were members of it or who were intending to be members of it at the time of their martyrdom.

If evidence were to emerge that overcame this hurdle, there would still be many others, of a practical nature, that would have to be overcome before canonization could occur.

There would have to be someone petitioning for her canonization, and the relevant local bishop would have to oversee the initial phase of the process. That would be tricky since there are no bishops in Saudia Arabia.

Investigating the case would also prove difficult since, so far as we know, there were no witnesses outside the family. Unless one or more of them decided to speak freely on the subject and describe what happened at the end, investigators would not be able to distinguish evidentially between a scenario in which she maintained her faith to the end and a scenario in which she renounced her faith at the last moment but was too injured to survive (or was killed anyway out of rage).

Given the sensitivity of the subject in Saudi society, getting any people with knowlege of the situation–even non-family members who weren't eyewitnesses–to speak freely could be very difficult.

Internet hearsay is not enough, given the difficulties of verifying it. 

One of the first things I did in preparing to write this post was to do some checking to see if I could verify that Fatima al-Martayri even existed. I don't want to be overly skeptical, but there is a reason God created Snopes.com.

While I wasn't able to find the kind of evidence I would have liked (perhaps because it's largely in the Arabic-language Internet), I was eventually able to find and verify enough pieces of the story that it looks like it's real.

(I also verified that Mutayri is real clan and thus "al-Mutayri" is not simply an Arabic term for "the Martyr.")

Even then, though, details of the story diverge. Some sources say that it was her father who killed her. Others (who seem to be the majority) say that it was her brother (though it may only have been him who exposed her). Details also differ over whether she was 23 or 26 and whether the murder occurred in Qassim Province or in the Eastern Province. (One source, which claims to be a Muslim friend of Fatima but who nevertheless disapproved of the killing, tries to set the record straight; I'll link the source below
).

These facts aren't to say that the matter couldn't be sorted out, but they illustrate the problems of fact-finding in such a situation.

I thus don't see a plausible path to canonization for Fatima.

But we may still pray for her and all in similar situations–and there are many of those. (I know; I've dealt with delicate situations like this, with people behind the Muslim curtain who wish to be Christian. Fortunately, none of the ones I've dealt with have suffered Fatima's fate–yet.)

(And if anyone wonders why one might pray for a martyr–it may be a common and pious belief that martyrs go straight to heaven, but this isn't a doctrine of the Church; I'd rather pray on the safe side, trusting God at least to apply the prayers to the person cross-temporally in their final moments of life.)

READ MORE ABOUT FATIMA–INCLUDING HER WRITINGS AND INTERNET MESSAGES–HERE. (.pdf)

A further note about Fatima: If she is in heaven, as an uncanonized saint, then her feast day is November 1st–All Saints Day.

At the First Thoughts blog, Joseph Bottum–who authored the post–has some additional insightful things to say, but he doesn't go into it at this length. (I'm long winded–at least if you don't give me a word count. Sorry.)

Oh, and as Lt. Columbo would say, there's one more thing . . . 

If Fatima's case doesn't present a good instance for the canonization of a former Muslim who was martyred for faith in Christ, it should be pointed out that the Church actually does have saints who were former Muslims, such as St. Josephine Bakhita and St. Casilda of Toledo.   

Furthermore, the Church also has saints who were former Muslims who were martyred by Muslims for their Christian faith. These include St. Abo the Perfumer, St.s Nunilo and Alodia of Huesca, and St.s Aurelius, Natalia, and Felix of Cordoba.

They may not be modern, contemporary individuals like Fatima, but they trod the same path, suffered the same fate, and may serve as inspiring examples for the many, many people today who yearn for Christ while being forced to live in the Islamic world.

May those in such situations look to them, and may their intercession guide us all.

Why Muslims Become Christian

SDG here with a Yankee cap tip to Mark Shea for pointing out Sherry Weddell’s in-depth blog post on a recent study of why Muslims convert to Christianity — a timely subject with Magdi Allam’s Easter Vigil baptism by Benedict XVI.

I’ll give the summary of the reasons below from the last link above at Christianity Today Library site, but do check out Sherry Weddell’s blog post for some good commentary… and a great punch line in the combox.

1) The lifestyle of Christians. Former Muslims cited the love that Christians exhibited in their relationships with non-Christians and their treatment of women as equals.

2) The power of God in answered prayers and healing. Experiences of God’s supernatural work—especially important to folk Muslims who have a characteristic concern for power and blessings—increased after their conversions, according to the survey. Often dreams about Jesus were reported.

3) Dissatisfaction with the type of Islam they had experienced. Many expressed dissatisfaction with the Qur’an, emphasizing God’s punishment over his love. Others cited Islamic militancy and the failure of Islamic law to transform society.

4) The spiritual truth in the Bible. Muslims are generally taught that the Torah, Psalms, and the Gospels are from God, but that they became corrupted. These Christian converts said, however, that the truth of God found in Scripture became compelling for them and key to their understanding of God’s character.

5) Biblical teachings about the love of God. In the Qur’an, God’s love is conditional, but God’s love for all people was especially eye-opening for Muslims. These converts were moved by the love expressed through the life and teachings of Jesus. The next step for many Muslims was to become part of a fellowship of loving Christians.

Those are the highlights. The reasons for checking out Sherry’s blog post include her own commentary and insights, but JA.o readers scanning down to the combox will note a very familiar tone in the very very very extensive, yet almost totally insubstantial, rambling, ADD-tinged polemical headlines that follow.

Scanning down, and down, and down… and down… I found myself wondering why Sherry hadn’t just deleted the comment… and then I got to her reply, and laughed out loud.

As Mark Shea says, check thou it out.

P.S. Mark also links to a couple of worthwhile articles on priestly doings among Muslims. Thanks, Mark!

Converting From Islam In Malaysia

A reader writes:

The Malaysian federal court has rejected professed Catholic Lina Joy’s appeal to change her stated religion from ‘Muslim’ to ‘Christian’ on her identity card. If she still persist to change her religion, she will need to apply for apostasy with the Syariah court, which the Syariah law forbids.

MORE INFORMATION

Please help to make available this news to your readers as this would help the world to know more about the suppression of religious freedom in Malaysia. It would be a great help to Lina herself.

I’d be happy to let people know about it and to ask for prayers for her and all in Malaysia and elsewhere in the Muslim world who wish to become Christian. The unsettling thing is that Malaysia is among the more progressive countries in the Muslim world when it comes to this issue.

EXCERPT:

In practice, sharia courts do not allow Muslims to formally renounce Islam, preferring to send apostates to counseling and, ultimately, fining or jailing them if they do not desist.

They often end up in legal limbo, unable to register their new religious affiliations or legally marry non-Muslims. Many keep silent about their choice or emigrate.

Lina Joy, 43, was born Azlina Jailani and was brought up as a Muslim, but at the age of 26 decided to become a Christian. She wants to marry her Christian boyfriend, a cook, but she cannot do so while her identity card declares her to me Muslim.

In 1999, the registration department allowed her to change the name in her identity card to Lina Joy but the entry for her religion remained "Islam."

Malaysia, like neighboring Indonesia, practices a moderate brand of Islam, but Muslims account for only a bare majority of Malaysia’s population and are very sensitive to any perceived threats to Islam’s special status as the official religion.

Malaysia has been under Islamic influence since the 15th century, but big waves of Chinese and Indian immigrants over the last 150 years has dramatically changed its racial and religious make-up. Now, about 40 percent of Malaysians are non-Muslim.

Allah = God?

A reader writes:

The thought comes from one of your commenters, and I
think it’s worthy of a blog entry (because I’m trying
to work it out myself).
Is the Christian God the same god as the Muslim Allah?
I think most orthodox Catholics will answer yes, but
that generates the question, what does that mean?

The immediately obvious discrepancy is that Muslims
deny the Trinity. But other characteristics fail as
well. Muslims would shudder at the description of God
as “Father.”

So if suffient characteristics of their description of
God diverges suffiently from our description of God,
do we have different gods?

I wrote a philosophical paper on this question a few years ago that I meant to submit as a journal article, but I’m afraid that I haven’t gotten around to it. At this point, I’m not even sure what hard drive it’s on, so I’ll have to do some digging around.

In the meantime, lemme see how well I can come up with a quick encapsulation of the overall argument.

For purposes of simplicity, let us consider the question of prayer, with the understanding that what is said about this topic can be applied in a general way to other forms of relating to the divine, such as offering praise, adoration, etc.

Prayer can be defined in various ways (lifting the heart and mind to God, petitioning God for some good, etc.), but let’s use an understanding of prayer that anyone can understand: Prayer is talking to God.

So the question becomes: When Muslims talk to Allah, are they talking to God?

We need not be detained by the fact that the word “Allah” is not the normal English word for God. It is the normal Arabic word for God, and it is used by Arabic-speaking Christians as a designator for the true God all the time.

We also need not be detained by alleged origins of the term in pre- and proto-Muslim history. Where a term comes from does not determine its meaning. How it is used determines its meaning (otherwise the word “nice” would mean “ignorant” since it comes from the Latin word nescius) and so, regardless of where the word came from, how Muslims use this word today is key to determining whether they pray to the same God we do.

How important it is to recognize present use is illustrated by the fact that Arabic-speaking Christians also use “Allah” as a descriptor of the true God. When they so use it, they have in mind a Trinitarian Being, the Second Person of whom became incarnate as Jesus Christ. That’s what Arabic-speaking Christians mean by “Allah.”

Arabic-speaking Muslims (and other Muslims) obviously mean something different, and the question is whether their usage of the term is different enough that it would prevent prayers they address to Allah from being prayers addressed to God.

What characteristics does a Muslim typically envision Allah as having? I would advance the following list as some of the most important characteristics:

1) Is an uncreated being
2) Is the creator of the universe
3) Appeared to Abraham
4) Is just
5) Is merciful
6) Will raise the dead
7) Is not a Trinity
8) Is not incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth

Characteristics 1-6 are ones that Christians agree with Muslims about. It is characteristics 7 and 8 that are the key points of disagreement. Are they sufficient to keep God from receiving Muslim prayers directed to him?

Before answering that question, take note of this fact: A non-Christian Jewish person would say exactly the same list of characteristics applies to the God to whom they direct their prayers.

Christian tradition and the Bible itself acknowledge that Jewish individuals do worship and pray to God, even if they do not understand that he is a Trinity or that he is incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth. If you’re going to say that belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation are essential for worshipping or talking to God then you’re going to have a huge problem with Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium.

And yet the person’s understanding of God is different than the one that the Church proclaims.

I think that light on this question can be shed by recognizing that it is quite possible for us to talk to someone even if there are things that we don’t know about them or even if we have false beliefs about them.

To illustrate this point, let’s take the case of someone with a secret identity: Bruce Wayne.

Suppose that I am a paperboy who delivers copies of The Daily Planet in the neighborhood where stately Wayne Manor is located, so one of my customers is millionnaire playboy Bruce Wayne, who always comes out to get his paper promptly, being as interested in local and world affairs as he is. One day as I’m pitching The Daily Planet in the neighborhood, I see him out on his lawn, and I say, “Howdy, Bruce!” He waves back and says, “Hi, Jimmy!”

I had this (brief) conversation with him even though I–as a normal Gothamite (transplanted from Texas)–am totally unaware of the fact that he is secretly Batman. There thus can be things about a person that I do not know and do not believe about him, yet it doesn’t stop me from having a conversation with him.

This is analogous to the situation of the Jewish people in the Old Testament, who prayed to God even though the doctrine of the Trinity had not yet been revealed.

But it’s not analogous to the situation of someone after the revelation of the Trinity who has considered and rejected the doctrine, so let’s go back to the thought experiment.

Suppose that one day as I am pitching copies of The Daily Planet and I notice an article on page one by Lois Lane that is headlined BATMAN IS REALLY BRUCE WAYNE!

Now, I’ve read all of Lois’s previous attempts to prove that Superman is really Clark Kent, and every single time she’s run a story like that, it’s been disproved. So I long ago concluded that Lois Lane is an unreliable source on the subject of superhero identities.

When I see her latest such story, I just laugh and shrug it off, and when I pitch the paper to Mr. Wayne, I call out “Hey, there’s a story on page one that you should really get a kick out of! Haw-Haw!” and Bruce smiles and says, “I know. I already read it on the Internet and had a good laugh. By the way, the Internet is driving dead-tree newspapers out of business, so you should start looking for a new job. May I suggest apologetics?”

Bruce and I were able to have this conversation even though I had already entertained and rejected the claim that he is Batman.

So if I can talk to someone about whom I have false beliefs, what would prevent a person from talking to God even though he has false beliefs about God?

Let me go back to the thought experiment one more time to unearth an insight that should be of help.

The next day I’m tossing papers and I see Mr. Wayne on the lawn and there is a TV reporter there interviewing him. I toss him his paper and shout, “Hey, Mr. Wayne! Thanks for that tip about apologetics! I put in my application with a group in California!” and he calls back, “Good for you, son!”

Unbeknownst to me, the person I talked to this time was not actually Bruce Wayne. In reality, it was Chameleon Boy from the Legion of Super-Heroes, who used his shape-shifting power to impersonate Bruce Wayne so that he coud be interviewed by a reporter while the real Bruce Wayne was being interviewed on TV with Commissioner Gordon at the same time across town, setting up “proof” that Batman and Bruce Wayne are two different people and thus once again denying Lois Lane the prize of outing a superhero.

In this case I believed that I was talking to Bruce Wayne, but in fact I was not. I was actually talking with Chameleon Boy.

In this case I had a massive number of false beliefs about the person I was talking to. I believed that he was (a) a human being, who was (b) a resident of Gotham and (c) a native of the 20th century and (d) from the planet Earth, and (e) a millionnaire and (f) a middle-aged man and (g) someone who possesses no superpowers.

In reality, I was talking to (a) an alien being, who will be (b) a resident of Metropolis and is (c) a native of the 30th century and (d) from the planet Durla, and (e) has no special wealth and (f) is a teenager and (g) possesses the power to change shape.

How could I get so much wrong about the person I was talking to and yet be talking to him? What was it that allowed my words to be addressed to him even though almost every belief I had about him was wrong?

It would seem that there is some set of minimal core criteria that allow me to talk to a person even though almost everything I believe about him is wrong. What might this be?

In the case of an ordinary conversation, I would suggest that the fundamental criterion of who we are talking to is something we aren’t always fully conscious of.

Suppose that on the third day I had a partner with me in the car, helping me roll papers, and after I finished speaking to Chameleon Boy, he turned to me and said, “Who were you just talking to?” I reply: “Bruce Wayne,” and my partner says, “Who’s that?” Annoyed, I point and say, “That guy over there.”

“That guy over there” is the real descriptor of who I was talking to. I believed that this person was Bruce Wayne (which was false) and that he was not Batman (which was true), but in reality I was talking to a particular person “over there.” As long as there was someone “over there” (i.e., as long as I wasn’t hallucinating) then that is the person I was talking to, even if I was mistaken about the person’s identity and everything else about him.

Notice thus that we have two different kinds of characteristics that apply to the person I was talking to. The primary criterion is that he was “that guy over there,” while everything else about him (the idea that he was Bruce Wayne, that he was not Batman, that he was a human, that he was a millionnaire playboy) were secondary criteria.

This is the way conversations work when we are talking to someone in person: The person we are talking to is the one who satisfies the primary criterion we have in mind–usually “that person over there”–even if none of the secondary criteria we have in mind apply to that person.

Upon discovering that none of the secondary criteria apply, we may say “Oh! I wasn’t talking to you!” but we refer in this case to who we intended to talk to, not who we were talking to. If I discover that the person I have been talking to is not who I thought he was, that doesn’t change the fact that I was talking to him.

So we’ve got a handle on how conversations work in person, but what about conversations with people who aren’t physically present and we can’t think of as “that person over there”?

In this case, it seems to me, we have to decide which criteria we are going to treat as primary and which as secondary.

Suppose that I am a person who is unsure whether Christianity is true. I believe that God exists and that he created the world, but I am not sure whether he is a Trinity or whether he incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth. So I pray, “God, please guide me so that I realize the truth about you and whether I should become a Christian.”

In this case, the primary criterion of who I am addressing would presumably be “Creator of the Universe” or something like that, and thus the Creator of the Universe would understand that I was addressing him, even though I am uncertain about other things concerning him.

Suppose, though, that I was a person who really hated Christians and was unwilling to address their God, even if he exists. In this case the criteria I am applying to the person I am addressing might be something like “the Creator of the Universe as long as he isn’t the Christian God.”

In this case my prayer would be addressed to no one because, in fact, the Creator of the Universe is in fact the Christian God. Up in heaven, God would say, “Sorry, but if you’re really determined not to talk to the Christian God then you’re not talking to me. You’re talking to the void.”

Now suppose that I believe that the Creator of the Universe isn’t the Christian God, but I’m willing to talk to him if he is. In this case my primary criterion is “Creator of the Universe” but “is not the Christian God” is a secondary criterion. As long as this is the case, I’m still going to be talking to God. Up in heaven, God will say, “Okay, you’re wrong about me not being the Christian God, but you’re still willing to talk to me even if I am, and so your prayers are addressed to a real Being.”

If we’re going to ask about the prayers of Muslims in particular and whether they are addressed to God, I would say that it depends on the Muslim in question. Some Muslims may be so anti-Christian that they would be unwilling to talk to God–to Allah–if it turned out that he was the God of the Christians. Those Muslims would not be talking to God because there is no being that corresponds to the description “the true God who is not the God of the Christians.” They would be talking to the void.

But the vast majority of Muslims don’t seem to be in that condition. They may not believe that God is a Trinity or that he incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, but they are still directing their prayers to something like “Creator of the Universe” or “God who appeared to Abraham” or “the one true God” or something like that.

This is what enables the Catechism to state that Muslims “acknowledge the Creator” and that “together with us
they adore the one, merciful God” (CCC 841).

Whew!

Okay, that ended up being longer than I meant it to, but I hope it sketches some of the philosophical basis for how a person can genuinely talk to someone (including God) about whom one has false beliefs.

That’s something we need to happen because, no matter who we are, at some point in our lives all of us have entertained false beliefs about God–even from misunderstanding perfectly orthodox catechesis in childhood–and we still need God to answer our prayers in those times and to guide us toward a correct understanding of him.

More On The Flying Imams

THEY WERE FAKING.

Or so it appears.

EXCERPTS:

Pauline revealed to Pajamas Media that the six imams were doing things far more suspicious than praying – an Arabic-speaking passenger heard them repeatedly invoke “bin Laden,” and “terrorism,” a gate attendant told the captain that she did not want to fly with them, and that bomb-sniffing dogs were brought aboard. Other Muslim passengers were left undisturbed and later joined in a round of applause for the U.S. Airways crew. “It wasn’t that they were Muslim. It was all of the suspicious things they did,” Pauline said.

Another passenger, not the note writer, was an Arabic speaker sitting near two of the imams in the plane’s tail. That passenger pulled a flight attendant aside, and in a whisper, translated what the men were saying. They were invoking “bin Laden” and condemning America for “killing Saddam,” according to police reports.

Meanwhile an imam seated in first class asked for a seat-belt extension, even though according to both an on-duty flight attendant and another deadheading flight attendant, he looked too thin to need one. Hours later, when the passengers were being evacuated, the seat-belt extension was found on the floor near the imam’s seat, police reports confirm. The U.S. Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader said she did not dispute the report, but said the airline’s internal investigation cannot yet account for the seat-belt extension request or its subsequent use.

A seat-belt extension can easily be used as a weapon, by wrapping the open-end of the belt around your fist and swinging the heavy metal buckle.

Still, it seemed like just another annoying development, typical when flying the friendly skies. Days after the incident, the imam would claim that the steward helped him attach the device. Pauline said he is lying. Hours later, when the police was being evacuated, the steward asked Pauline to hand him the seat-belt extension, which the imam did not attach, but placed on the floor. “I know he is lying,” Pauline said, “I had it [seat belt extension] in my hand.”

Other factors were also considered: All six imams had boarded together, with the first-class passengers – even though only one of them had a first-class ticket. Three had one-way tickets. Between the six men, only one had checked a bag.

And, Pauline said, they spread out just like the 9-11 hijackers. Two sat in first, two in the middle, and two back in the economy section. Pauline’s account is confirmed by the police report. The airline spokeswoman added that some seemed to be sitting in seats not assigned to them.

One thing that no one seemed to consider at the time, perhaps due to lack of familiarity with Islamic practice, is that the men prayed both at the gate and on the plane. Observant Muslims pray only once at sundown, not twice.

“It was almost as if they were intentionally trying to get kicked off the flight,” Pauline said.