There is a fire burning in the house of Islam. Those within the religion may smell the smoke and dismiss it while those in the secular world may look for an arsonist outside the house. Today’s WSJ opinion piece explores this idea.
Is the pope wrong to imply–in a rather roundabout way–that there is today something amiss inside Islam, as a community of believers sharing one faith and a long, common cultural tradition? There probably isn’t a single liberal editor at a major American or European paper who doesn’t think that there is something a little dysfunctional–a disposition that tolerates, if not encourages and admires, violence as expression of religious outrage–among young Muslim males from Northern Europe to Indonesia. We might not be able to put our finger precisely on it–the problems of a radicalized British Muslim of Pakistani ancestry are not the same as a Sunni Iraqi suicide bomber who blows up Jordanian and Palestinian women and children–but we know there is something wrong within Islam’s global house, something that cannot be blamed exclusively on Western prejudice, bigotry, military actions or colonialism.
