Last night, on a Catholic television network, a leading Catholic intellectual described the difficulty of dealing with Moslems. “There’s no one to talk to. There is no intellectual representative who can speak for the Moslem community. They are increasingly violent, increasingly uneducated, and, well, there’s just no one there with whom we can have a dialogue to establish mutual respect.”
Many people come to this conclusion. They are living in a world constructed out of their own wishes. It is as if they are saying, “We like to reason things out, so they do, too. We know they really are like us, we just can’t find anyone among them with any authority to discuss things and make decisions that are binding on the rest of them.”
As these pages have periodically mentioned, the Sons of Ishmael are best described by their ancestor, Ishmael. He was bitter and angry that Sarah had him and his mother thrown out of Abraham’s wealthy household. So, Genesis, 25; 18 tells us, “He (Ishmael) set himself against his brothers.”
His descendants still set themselves against us. They wish no dialogue. They desire no mutual respect. Ishmaelites are, throughout history, “set against us”. If we do not understand what God’s Scripture tells us, we cannot even begin to deal effectively with an increasingly dangerous situation.
