On Faith Panelists Blog

April 6, 2011

For bullies bent on violence, apologies are never enough

By Colleen Carroll Campbell

Q: Muslim leaders are often asked to condemn the actions of Islam’s radical fringe. Should Christians condemn the inflammatory actions of Pastor Terry Jones?

 

Pastor Terry Jones’ irresponsible antics should be condemned by Christians. It only takes a cursory glance at the beatitudes – “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said – to know that Jones’ deliberately incendiary approach to confronting radical Islam runs counter to Gospel values, not to mention common sense. The pastor of a 30-member worship center that doubles as a used-furniture outlet is a walking, talking reminder the perils of do-it-yourself Christianity unmoored from the discipline of a larger church structure that can reign in its fringe elements. He’s also a testament to the dark side of our Internet age, where any crank with a microphone can cause an international incident.

With all that said, though, I think it’s too easy to dwell on the dangers of Terry Jones and the need for Christians to denounce his actions. For starters, plenty of Christian leaders already have done so, as have President Barack Obama, General David Petraeus and just about every pundit on television, all to no avail. Radical Islamists bent on hating America and killing innocent Western bystanders do not need Jones and his Quran burning to justify their violence. Any old provocation will do.

Consider a few of the recent ones that sparked similarly violent reactions. There was the Danish cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb ticking in his turban, the passing reference to a 600-year-old quote from a Byzantine emperor in a papal speech, the two-part South Park episode featuring Mohammed disguised in a bear suit and the Seattle cartoonist’s tongue-in-cheek call for an “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” The offenses can be roundly condemned, even censored, by Western media gatekeepers – most American newspapers refused to reprint the Danish cartoons and officials at the normally fearless Comedy Central network censored the second half of the South Park episode, bleeping out every mention of Mohammed’s name, along with a concluding speech about the need to resist intimidation. And what good did it do? The threats and the mob violence keep coming, and the more America’s political, media and religious elites seek to assuage radical Islamist anger, the more it festers and explodes.

That’s how bullies work. Appeasing them only emboldens them. Just when you think you finally have met all of their demands – say, by unconstitutionally muzzling odious characters like Jones following the fuzzy logic of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said recently that “Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war” – you find out the cruel truth: The bullies still will bully you, because that’s what bullies do.

Muslims are right to be angry about Jones’ offensive acts, just as Christians are right to condemn those acts. But neither peace-loving Muslims nor Jones-bashing Christians should delude themselves into believing that an America purged of Terry Joneses would be an America that radical Islamists no longer loved to hate. Experience tells us that’s simply not true.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is author of “The New Faithful,” an ex-presidential speechwriter, op-ed columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and host of “Faith & Culture,” a TV and radio show on EWTN.