RUTHFULLY YOURS

The “link the report makes between Catholic media, Catholic book publishers, and Islamophobia needs to be severed,” stated ethics professor can Catholic priest Drew Christiansen at a September 12 Georgetown University presentation. He referenced a new report by Georgetown’s Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) that presents new censorship dangers to Catholic “Islamophobes” who speak critically of Islam.

The report by ACMCU’s Bridge Initiative, Danger & Dialogue: What American Catholics Think and Write about Islam, found that “Catholic media outlets discuss Islam negatively overall” despite Islam’s supposedly benign nature. A Pope Francis quotation asserted “it’s not fair to identify Islam with violence” and hackneyed apologetics for Islamic law stated that sharia, rather than uniformly endangering human rights, “has been interpreted in diverse ways.” By contrast, “[t]hose surveyed who consume content from Catholic media outlets have more unfavorable views of Muslims than those who don’t.”

Surveyed Catholic views on Islam in Danger & Dialogue were correspondingly negative. In all, “[n]early half of Catholics (45%) believe Islam ‘encourages violence more than other religions around the world.'” “Catholics more often identified Muslims’ potential shortcomings or faults as major obstacles to good relations, than they mentioned Catholics’ faults,” the report stated in an accusatory tone without specifying such Catholic faults. Yet brutal realism justified that “[t]hree-quarters (75%) of Catholics felt that violence and terrorism committed by Muslims was ‘very much’ or ‘somewhat’ of an obstacle to better relations.”

As a contributing cause to these findings, Danger & Dialogue focused on how the “Islamophobia industry sometimes influences the production of Catholic content on Islam.” The report reiterated well-worn accusations from leftwing, George Soros-funded organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Center for American Progress (CAP) concerning “Islamophobes” in Catholic media. Muslim reformer Zuhdi Jasser, Donald Trump’s Catholic presidential campaign adviser Walid Phares, and Catholic academic William Kilpatrick all received critical citations. The report noted that books by the best-selling Catholic writer on Islam, Robert Spencer, a supposed “anti-Muslim hate group” leader and “misinformation expert,” are available in Washington, DC, area Catholic bookstores.

Such individuals were anathema to the panelists who presented Danger & Dialogue in Georgetown’s Riggs Library. The university’s well-known Islam apologist, Professor John Esposito, echoed the report by stating that “Islamophobia is growing exponentially in the US and Europe….Many would say it is at an all-time high.” ACMCU board member and Catholic Theological Union professor Scott Alexander in turn contrasted that Esposito, “one of my most faithful and treasured mentors,” belongs among Islam scholars to the “Islamophilic category, a category to which I unapologetically place myself.”