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well the 20th century was the worst
century for Christian martyrs what I
mean is there were more Christian
martyrs in the 20th century than in all
the previous 19th centuries combined we
think of you know maybe the early days
are the time of martyrs but the 20th
century by far had more Christian
martyrs than any other and the sad news
to me is the 21st century seems to be
continuing this trend there's no
question but that Christianity is the
most aggressed and persecuted religion
in the planet on the planet today and to
speak bluntly about it to some degree
Buddhists and Hindus attack Christians
but in Asia in Africa especially in the
Middle East its militant forms of Islam
that are aggressing Christians the most
recent examples you know in burkina faso
very recently and in sri lanka so
radical islamist attacking and killing
christians now i'm saying all this kind
of bluntly because i think there's a
tendency especially in the West
especially among the cultural elite to
downplay the properly religious
dimension of this problem it was almost
comical the way in the wake of a Sri
Lankan
bombings that both Hillary Clinton and
Barack Obama referred to the victims as
Easter worshippers strange phrase in
itself but though they couldn't bring
themselves to use the word Christian
these were Christians being attacked
precisely for their religion indeed on
Easter Sunday the holiest day of the
Christian year and they were being
attacked precisely for their faith now
you know part of this problem is the
result of what they call the
secularization hypothesis this goes back
to the 19th century at least people like
Colt and Nietzsche and and Marx and many
others the view namely that you know
religion is fading away religions it's
this old Dino obsession of primitive
people and
it's fading away and so religion is
never what's really going on religion
look at Marx you know was a super
structural sort of cover for what's
really going on so when something like
anti-christian violence happens people
tend to read it not religiously but they
read it as well it's part as an economic
matter it's a political matter it's
because people you know are repressed
they're resentful etc etc and and read
anything in most Western you know
journals and newspapers and and high
commentary you'll find precisely that
sort of secularization hypothesis but
you know if I can invoke a theologian I
rarely agree with but he's right and
this is Hans küng Hans küng has argued
for years that there will be no peace
among the nations until there's peace
among the religions well that's right it
seems to me and if you ignore the
religious dimension or you marginalize
it then we're not gonna find peace among
the nations well to continue in that
line how do you find some peace among
the religions is there some sort of
common ground that we can appeal to now
I know prima facie a it looks that as
though that's not the case to take our
our you know most vivid example now of
Islamic and Christian you know warfare
you know aren't they just to separate
revelational systems so so one claims
this revelation the other claims that
revelation they both say we're
absolutely right and there's no way we
can find common ground well I wonder if
I can go back to a place in history that
I often go back to namely the 13th
century and when my hero Thomas Aquinas
was operating Thomas Aquinas of course
used a lot of biblical sources he used
the the Church Fathers to a great extent
he used pagan thinkers like like Cicero
and Aristotle and many others but what I
find fascinating is Thomas Aquinas was
very liberal in his use of Islamic
sources people like a very ways and
Hassan
have a Sieber on and and al-farabi many
others in fact Thomas Aquinas is
metaphysics and theology is unthinkable
apart from these Islamic sources many of
his key metaphysical themes come from
these Islamic sources Thomas found at a
time when Christianity and Islam were
indeed in conflict
he found intellectually common ground
precisely in reason now go from the 13th
century now to our time and I know it's
a little bit dangerous even to bring
this up but the famous speech that Pope
Benedict the 16th gave it Regensburg and
you know from his admittedly awkward use
of a historical analogy he got into a
lot of trouble but the central theme of
that speech was and is very important
because it's the point I'm making right
now namely appealing to the logos
tradition within Christianity and
implicitly in Islam we can find
something like a common ground when
Christians say that Jesus is the
incarnation of the law Gosse of God that
opens the door to the use of Reason the
use of logic and see logic allows us
then to find points of contact with any
and all other systems of thought here's
the paradox it's become a beautiful
paradox that the more we stress Jesus
the incarnation of the law goes the more
room we have for a rational dialogue
with other points of view and indeed
other religions what Benedict put his
finger on it and I'm trying to put my
finger on in a more minor key is that
it's the waning of the philosophical
tradition within Islam that has led to
difficulties the very fact that of
varies Avicenna Emma C Brown those
figures are more marginalized within
Islam that's allowed a very
voluntaristic and positivistic form of
Islam to emerge that doesn't have room
for this more rational mode of
conversation
I think if we look back to the 13th
century and see it as a kind of distant
mirror we can actually find a way
forward not the secularization
hypothesis by which yellow religion is
that's not important and that's not
what's really going on no it is what's
really going on
we really are dealing with with
religious forms of aggression but can we
find a path forward and I think the
answer is yes precisely by appealing to
this element within the Christian
theological tradition the path of law
goes to find a path similar to the one
found by Thomas Aquinas as he dialogue
with the Islam of his own time
perhaps I give the last word to a
prophet revered by both a Christianity
and Islam namely the prophet Isaiah who
said quite simply come let us reason
together
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