Ganz recht hat er nicht

The Atlantic Monthly bringt in seiner Unbound-Sektion ein Interview mit Stephen Schwartz, dem Autor eines Buches mit dem Titel "Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror". Er bemerkt zu einer notwendigen islamischen Reformation Folgendes:

»Question: What sort of comparisons would you draw between Wahhabi Islam and puritanical branches of Christianity and Judaism? Are there any similar motivations behind them?

Schwartz: Absolutely. This is an extremely complex and paradoxical issue. In Islam, there has always been the argument that Wahhabism arose directly as an imitation of Protestant Christianity. And there are Wahhabis who do make this comparison. They say, "We are creating a Protestant Islam." I used to respond to this by saying to Wahhabis, "If you're looking for models from the Christian world, the Catholics are much better models." If I went to Jerry Falwell and asked him how he thinks the poetry of William Blake relates to theology, it is very doubtful he would even know what I was talking about. If I were to go to Pat Robertson and ask him what he thought of John Milton as a representative of Protestant culture, it's very doubtful he would have an intelligent comment. But I can go to a Catholic priest anywhere in the Catholic world and talk about philosophy and poetry, literature and art, because Catholicism is a whole civilization. If you want a Protestant-style Islam, fine, I can't stop you from wanting that, but Protestantism begins with John Milton and ends with Jimmy Swaggart. A Protestant-style Islam would be stripped down, with no spirituality, no sense of Islam as a civilization or a culture, no love of poetry, of mysticism, of religious philosophy, no beautiful mosques. When you look at Protestantism versus Catholicism, or Wahhabism versus traditional Islam, these are the striking parallels. It's a big cliché in the West: "Islam needs a Reformation." No, Islam does not need a reformation. If Islam needs anything comparable to developments in Christian history, it needs a Counter-Reformation. That is, what the Catholics did. You reaffirm faith, you reaffirm tradition, but you adjust the day-to-day functioning of the Church to the realities of a modern society.«

Daß ich überall in der katholischen Welt zu einem Priester gehen und mit ihm über Philosophie, Dichtung, Literatur, Kunst reden kann? Ich weiß ja nicht.