We all know that the Wahhabis, like their Taliban pupils, are fanatical iconoclasts. But it's rarely noted that they have always been fanatical iconoclasts. In 1925 Ibn Saud, the patriarch of the current Saudi dynasty, ordered the destruction of all the tombs, monuments, and shrines in Mecca and Medina. Crowds of fanatics destroyed the graves of Mohammed's family and even his house. Mosques were torched. Traditional Muslims barely stopped the Wahhabis from destroying Mohammed's grave itself.
This runs completely against the stereotype of "conservative" Saudi Arabia, until you think of mobs of similar "reformers" burning Catholic churches and artwork all across Europe (though I can't see Christians of any denomination seeking to destroy Christ's tomb).
[b]WHY A CATHOLIC CHURCH?[/b]
Wahhabism and similar movements arose in response to the decadence of the Ottoman Empire and the sense that Islam was being overtaken by the West because Muslims had "lost their way." Obviously that's a complicated and long story.
But the immediate point is that the Ottoman Empire was no Catholic Church, and Islam is not Christianity. Christianity had, from the beginning, an understanding of the distinction between what St. Augustine termed the City of God and the City of Man. Jesus himself declared that one should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Christianity also began as a persecuted religion; Islam was "born of the sword." Imagine how different Christianity would be if Jesus had been a conquering general who beheaded his enemies and if the apostles had expanded his military victories into a far-flung empire. (In this sense Judaism and Islam have some similarities — all that Old Testament smiting and wrath — but Judaism learned some humility, thanks to 2,000 years of persecution.)
These are important differences, and one can recognize them with or without forming judgments about their comparative worth. But I think it's fair to say that the Islamic world would benefit greatly from the equivalent of a Catholic Church. As a conservative, what I love about the Catholic Church is that it is old. Conservatives of all stripes should know intuitively what I mean. Old institutions, like old friends, cannot be created anew.
And — like old friends — old institutions are more, not less, flexible than new ones. Old friends understand when to forgive and when to draw a line. The Catholic Church predates democracy by more than a thousand years. It understands when it needs to lead people and when it is best to restrain them. Its timing isn't always perfect, and it has failed on more occasions than any of us would like. But, like any lasting institution, it learned from its mistakes and has — more often than not — played an invaluable role as both moral pragmatist and moral conscience for Western civilization.
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