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It seems that everything corresponds to what Samuel P. Huntington called “the clash of civilizations”. Powder kegs are exploding just about everywhere, at the slightest provocation. The satirical cartoons of Mahomet were wholly out of place we say so again but the reactions are disproportionate. Political recovery is urgent and clear to us all, no one denies it. The Moslem world, which preserves the memory of its own glorious past, is profoundly humiliated today following colonization and global imbalance: wars such as that of Iraq or the one that still continues in the Middle East keep these wounds open. Moreover, if passages of the Koran that preach the virtue of tolerance can be cited in Islamic lands, it’s also easy to use the same text to justify violence. Contrasting with this world with raw nerves are a Europe that religion is no longer able to move and a USA tempted by a fundamentalism of evangelical and often Manichean type. So, on the one hand, we have a very confused world in which modernity may embrace the Middle Ages and which does not hesitate to have recourse of the violence of the kamikaze or to demonstrations that too easily degenerate into violence; on the other, a Western world that plays with freedom, especially with freedom of expression, as if with a toy for children. If we need to prevent Islam from being reduced to Islamism, we also need to be able to make Muslims understand that their enemy is not Christianity but the economic interests of someone. And these interests have always been very skilful in hiding behind others, in using others to achieve their own goals. The destruction of Christian places of worship in various parts of the world clearly shows a total confusion. Against this desolate background, Catholics, faithful to Vatican Council II, do not renounce dialogue. To recur to a well-known image, is this is not a clash between a metal vase and a terracotta vase? On the one hand, we have a religion whose prophet the only one among the founders of religions did not hesitate to have recourse to arms to defend his own message; on the other, a rabbi who did not retract in the face of death and patiently suffered his fate to the bitter end. The tragedy is that there are those who appeal to this Jesus in their own speeches but who ended up by unleashing a war that is disapproved by everyone and that shows no signs of ever ending. It’s a difficult dialogue, in truth, but we need to continue to believe in it.
