Rowan Williams: Morally and Intellectually Retarded

Via Dhimmi Watch, I find the latest display of completely indescribable stupidity from Rowan Williams:

The Archbishop of Canterbury used the eve of the anniversary of the September 11 attacks on America yesterday to defend religion against claims that it promotes division and violence.

Dr Rowan Williams said that although Islam and Christianity had histories scarred with violence, they carried the “seeds of non-violence and non possessive witness.”

Jihad, or holy war, could nowadays be interpreted as a “struggle of the heart” rather than the defence of the Muslim community against its enemies, he said.

Well, he may interpret it that way, but Yusuf al-Qaradawi does not. He interprets it as meaning that one can wage violent war against those living in Dar al-Harb ("the domain of war", i.e. non-Islamic lands). Al-Qaradawi is seen by Muslims as one of the greatest contemporary Islamic scholars. Rowan Williams, by contrast, is seen by Muslims as a useful idiot, and by everyone else as simply an idiot. Which one do you think knows more about Koranic interpretation?

He added that both faiths could offer society an ideal of peaceful co-existence despite their violent histories because they were guided by beliefs that transcended human conflict.

Note the moral equivalency between Christians and Muslims. Williams appears not to regard Christianity as in any way superior to Islam: both offer an equally good vision of peaceful co-existence. Now that's a pretty odd position for an Archbishop of Canterbury to adopt. Not an unexpected one from this particular Archbishop, though.

The Archbishop’s lecture to a Christian Muslim Forum conference in Cambridge follows mounting criticism of religion as dangerous and destabilising.

While there are some who attack all religion in this manner, I can think of one religion which has carried out more than its fair share of dangerous and destabilising actions, and which consequently tends to get rather a lot of (richly deserved) criticism. Can you guess which one I mean? Because Rowan Williams can't.

But Dr Williams argued that religion should not be judged by the failures of its adherents but on its vision of a social order that is “without fear, oppression, the violence of exclusion and the search for scapegoats”.

He compared the “act of nightmare violence” six years ago, when extremists flew aeroplanes into the twin towers in New York, with the birth of Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent protest movement on September 11, 1906, in Johannesburg.

He said that Gandhi’s movement showed it was possible to reject a response to oppression that “simply mirrors what has been done by the oppressor.”

Now, this is the real low point. As Robert Spencer at Dhimmi Watch points out, Williams actually appears to be saying that the 9/11 terrorists had a just cause, but simply went about expressing their justified grievance against violent US "oppression" in the wrong way. To say this at all is indicative of a severely dysfunctional moral compass. To say it on the eve of the anniversary of the attacks themselves is simply reprehensible.

Idiotic Clergyman of the Year competition hots up!

As I've said many times before, anyone who attempts to find common ground with Muslims is being idiotic. The common ground is simply not to be found: the Muslims are not here to be friendly, to be good neighbours, or to sit around taking tea with gullible vicars. They are here to conquer, and to dominate. Anyone who seeks to reach an understanding with them will become their dupe.

Not, of course, that this deters Rowan Williams. After the recent displays of idiocy from Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, for the Catholic Church, and Williams' fellow Anglican primate Dr John Sentamu, it appeared that his prospects of winning the coveted Idiotic Clergyman of the Year award for a record sixth time were looking slim. However, his chances have revived after it was revealed that he has been busily grovelling before/extending the hand of friendship to Muslims. Unfortunately, as with the recent attempt of some liberal Norwegian priests to do the same, things didn't go quite according to plan:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has suffered a serious setback in his attempts to foster Muslim-Christian dialogue after the Malaysian Government banned an interfaith conference he was due to be chairing this week.

Christian and Muslim scholars from around the world had bought air tickets, written papers and begun to pack their bags for the Building Bridges conference, the sixth in a series intended to foster dialogue between the two religions. It was cancelled with just two weeks notice.

The three-day conference was set up in the wake of September 11 and meant to be an annual get-together of Christian and Muslim academics in an attempt to find theological understandings that might help prevent future terrorist attacks.

Theological understandings? Well, I suppose that paying the jizya could be considered a form of theological understanding.

At the first conference, at Lambeth Palace in London six years ago, Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, fêted Tony Blair. In return, the Prime Minister invited the Muslim and Christian scholars to a high-profile reception at Downing Street.

Since then the scholars have met in New York, Qatar and Sarajevo. This year’s seminar in Malaysia was to signal a breakthrough in Muslim-Christian relations in a region where they are particularly delicate.

By which is meant, "where Muslims routinely persecute Christians".

However, it is understood that some influential Muslims believe that Christianity is “not a heavenly religion” and therefore they frown on interreligious dialogue.

Well, fancy that. These Muslims don't like Christians. Rowan Williams appears to be quite astonished by this development, commenting that:

We must keep our bridges in good repair, the bridges for listening and sympathy, hearing the truth from one another, learning what the other’s experience is like.

Which is, like most things he says, essentially meaningless.

The point here is that the Muslims who come out openly and say that they do not like Christianity are the honest ones. They are the ones expressing the views of Muslims in Islamic countries, where Christians are generally subjected to regular violence and discrimination. The ones who come in the guise of "moderates" and profess to be keen on inter-faith harmony, etc, are, to be blunt, usually lying, and we should be especially wary of them.