I made a comment yesterday that I don’t understand what kind of religion could allow these Muslim riots. But thinking it through, I realize that if I don’t understand the religion, I can at least understand the context a little. And if I play devil’s advocate with myself, I would have to admit that the way Muslims act reminds me a lot of the people in the Old Testament. Western societies are in the Church age (whether they want to be or not); Muslim societies are still living under the Abrahamic covenant, with a couple later bells and whistles added.

I wouldn’t mind people talking about a culture clash if that wasn’t usually a preamble to moral relativism. (”We send diplomats; they send suicide bombers. It’s a small world after all.”) I think that’s the kind of “understanding” that the Muslims might actually be right in attempting to dodge. The clash seems to me to be one of an entire society that doesn’t want to be dragged into the modern world. They want their desert god, and they don’t want the soullessness of industrial society. Better a hierarchical theocracy than to just be another country where everyone is about the same and nothing means much. Better to believe in causes worth dying for than to believe that there is no such thing. Better to eat roasted rat than McDonald’s. Or so I imagine. And if I imagine it this way, I can sympathize. Which is helpful, though I don’t put as much of a store on it.

The problem for them (assuming for a minute that that idea is correct) is that they don’t know what they’re up against. The forces that pulled Westerners into this existence are myriad, but IMHO resistance is futile. I don’t think that’s a good thing — in fact, I think it’s probably one of the things that keeps me invested in the Church, since the only way out is to transcend human society entirely — but in any case, I gave up a long time ago on blaming liberals, Big Government, Big Business or any other imagined sector for the swift downward slide. Nobody’s driving this bus, but there’s no stopping it.

But blowing things up and trying to throw your weight around is ultimately self-destructive. You can’t eliminate the avarice and materialism that will bring the Muslim world to heel at the prospect of Western goods, services and false gods any more than anyone else could. Or any more than we can claw our way back out, now that we’ve realized that almost everyone is ultimately dissatisfied and that this modern life is sucking the life out of our bodies. I only know of one force that’s strong enough and true enough to do it, and until that Light dawns, there’s nothing.