Two There Are: The Church, the State and the Dangers of Political Islam

To the secularists, Catholics are the enemy of the state and unreliable citizens.  To political Islam, Catholics, and indeed all Christians and Jews, are the enemy of God and must be treated as second-class citizens, as dhimmi.  Like Christ, our Lord, we are "despised and rejected by men," Isaiah 53:3, Islamists on one side and secularists on the other. 

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - In our prior article, we reflected on the Christo-Gelasian teaching of the two powers, "duo sunt," and how secularist liberalism rejects the notion and limits political reality to one plain, one dimension, relegating God to the private square only.  The public square is to be occupied only by them.
Resurgent Islam falls into the same trap as secularistic liberals.  They deny the duo sunt, but from another angle than the moral relativistic and secularistic liberal who shuts himself from God.  For Islam, the Ummah-the Islamic "nation/church" for lack of a better word-is all there is.
 
Islam is composed of "three ds," din, dunya, and dawla-religion, social life, and state; there is nothing outside of it.  In traditional Islam, there is no division of church and state.  Islam is comprehensive.  In Islam, like in the modern secular state, unus est, "one there is." 

Both the secularist State and resurgent, traditional Islam seem therefore to have divided the world between themselves.  One wants to be victorious through military power and advanced technology.  The other wants to become victorious (since they do not yet hold the reins of power) like their alleged prophet Muhammad purportedly said in one hadith, "through terror." (Sahih Bukhari, 4.52.220)

Both secularist and Islamist refuse the Christo-Gelasian truth of duo sunt.  In rejecting the duo sunt, and in accepting the unus est as the only reality, each has succumbed to its particular temptation.

The secularists have fallen prey to the temptation "you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." (Gen. 3:5)  It is the temptation of Satan which, as Milton put it in his Paradise Lost, was enshrined in the political motto "evil be thou my good."

The Islamist-as heir to Muhammad's clumsy fall to the temptation of the kingdoms of this world that Christ nimbly sidestepped-has succumbed to the temptation to rule all the kingdoms of this world in the name of Allah.  The early Muslim historian at-Tabari relates the instance of Muhammad summoning his tribesmen the Quraysh to accept his message that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is his messenger.

It is this message, Muhammad argues to his fellow tribesmen, "through which the Arabs will submit to them and they will rule over the non-Arabs," which is to say all other nations.  Rejected in Mecca by his tribesmen the Quraysh, Muhammad was offered political power by the non-Jewish tribes of Medina.  What Christ rejected as something offered by the voice of Satan, Muhammad took as something offered by the voice of Allah.  Muhammad wanted the kingdoms of this world.  And Islam has been burdened by the falsehood of unus est ever since, and probably ever shall be, despite the valiant efforts of Muslim reformers whose work of the last two generations appears to have unraveled in the so-called "Arab Spring."

To the secularists, Catholics are the enemy of the state and unreliable citizens.  To political Islam, Catholics, and indeed all Christians and Jews, are the enemy of God and must be treated as second-class citizens, as dhimmi.  Like Christ, our Lord, we are "despised and rejected by men," Isaiah 53:3, Islamists on one side and secularists on the other.  This ought not to surprise us.  "And you shall be hated by all men for my name's sake." Matt. 10:22. " Remember the word I spoke to you, 'No slave is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you." They will persecute us because we insist in the truth: Duo sunt.

To the pompous and bombastic voice of the secular State-Caesar divinized, divus Caesar-the Catholic, like Ulysses responding to the voice of the Sirens beckoning him unto shipwreck on the rocky shores of the three small islands of the Sirenum Scopuli, will either put wax in his ears or will tie himself to the mast of Peter's barque so as to reject the siren songs of unus est which lead to the tyranny of relativism, and hold fast to the truth that will spare him shipwreck, the truth of duo sunt.

To the triumphalistic and irrational entreaty of the radical Muslim's da'wah, like Orpheus and his Argonauts, who faced the same temptation as Ulysses in another time and place, the Catholic will take out his Psalter and, like Pope Benedict XVI did in Regensburg, sing the hymns of duo sunt so loudly as to drown out the opposing voices of the Muslims who sing the false songs of unus est.  They sing of a tyrannous God who is not Father, who did not become one of us, and indeed could not become one of us, did not die on the Cross, and so is a God of a different kind entirely. 

And while the radical Muslims sing simplex, they slaughter or oppress their adversaries--such as the Chaldean Catholics in Iraq and Iran, the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Nigeria or Sudan--who sing duplex believing (since they only hear one voice) they have warrant for it.  Muslim nations, we were recently reminded by the 2012 World Watch List report by Open Doors, made up nine out of the top ten countries where Christians face the "most severe" persecution.

The moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre ends his splendid book After Virtue by noting that we are not waiting for a secular, relativistic and ultimately meaningless Godot, but rather for a new St. Benedict.  But in this respect MacIntyre has got it wrong, or, more accurately, only partly right.

What Catholics and indeed all Christians-who confront both dogmatic secularism on one side and dogmatic Islamists on the other-need is not only a new St. Benedict, but also a new Charlemagne.

We need both a St. Benedict and a Charlemagne.  Why?

Because we know the political song has two voices. 

Because political reality is not unus est, but duo sunt.

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Andrew M. Greenwell is an attorney licensed to practice law in Texas, practicing in Corpus Christi, Texas.  He is married with three children.  He maintains a blog entirely devoted to the natural law called Lex Christianorum.  You can contact Andrew at agreenwell@harris-greenwell.com.

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