FACE EAST OR FACE WEST?

In picking new pope, a key issue is Islam (Ian Fisher, International Herald Tribune, April 12th, 2005)

John Paul reached out to Muslims like no other pope: He was the first on record to step inside a mosque, in Damascus in 2001, and issued an apology for past misdeeds of the church that many have read to include the Crusades. In scores of speeches to Muslims, he emphasized not arcane theological differences but similar beliefs.

In Morocco in 1986 he said, "We believe in the same God, the only God, the living God, the God that creates worlds and brings its creatures to perfection."

But his reaching out worried some church officials as veering toward "relativism," that no religion is intrinsically truer than another. And on Islam specifically, some critics in or close to the church often suggested that Islam was essentially a warlike and evangelizing religion, which no amount of dialogue would change.

Renzo Guolo, an Italian author and expert on Islam in Europe, said that John Paul's moral authority blocked a fuller discussion on Islam inside the church.

"The successor of the pope will have to confront this issue," he said.

To some degree, the central figure in the debate - as with many other questions facing the church - is the influential Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Ratzinger, 77, head of church doctrine under Pope John Paul II, is one of the most conservative voices in the church - a possible pope, but certainly someone whose views will be heard in the conclave that selects the new pope starting on April 18.

And inside the church, he represents a skeptical faction, one that sees the relationship between Christianity and Islam more in competition. [...]

Cardinal Francis Arinze, 72, from Nigeria, was for 18 years the head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, which directed John Paul's broad efforts to reach out to other religions. As such, his views hew closely to John Paul's, though of the possible candidates for pope, he has by far the most direct experience living with Muslims. Nigeria is roughly half Christian, half Muslim.

Like John Paul, he has often spoken of one specific rationale for reaching out to other faiths, Islam included: that believers, of whatever faith, have a duty to fight against a secularism that he says has sapped Christians of their spiritual strength.

"God can speak to us through other believers," he told an interviewer several years ago.

"From sincere Muslims, Christians can learn, for example, the courage of sincere prayer. They pray five times a day, and no matter where they are - be it the railway station or the airport - they will do it.

"Whereas many Christians are ashamed of making the sign of the cross in a restaurant or pulling out a rosary on a train."

It would be fascinating to see the results of a worldwide poll of Christians as to whether they thought secularism or Islam was the greater threat.