William Kilpatrick
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2016
[Catholic Thing] Like most Americans, I didn’t know a great deal about Islam prior to 9/11. So, for a while anyway, I accepted the formula that “Islam” means “peace.”
That’s what President Bush and other world leaders assured us, and they also insisted that the 9/11 terrorists represented only a tiny minority of Muslims. The most compelling argument for me, however, was that the Catholic Church seemed to hold the same view – that Islam was a religion of peace.
The linchpin of that positive assessment of Islam was the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate. The section on the Church’s relationship with Muslims states that Muslims “adore the one God,” “revere Jesus,” “honor Mary,” and “value the moral life.” Their religion, in other words, was just like ours.
If that was the case, then it stood to reason that Islam, like Catholicism, was a peaceful religion and that terrorists, therefore, misunderstood their own faith.
