The Church, Islam and politics

Dr Joseph Fava's Article about "Understanding Islam" basically offers one single conclusion: Islam is a failed religion because it is not like Christianity. Islam, the article maintains, crippled itself when its founder, unlike the founder of Christianity, merged religion with politics. In doing so, Islam's founder "compromised and debased his prophetic message".

However, even a cursory perusal of the careers of Old Testament prophets will show that merging religion with politics was the norm. Were they all failed prophets? Is Judaism a compromised and debased religion?

In fact, Christ was the exception to the norm when he sought to separate the two? As a result, Christ's mission was verging on total failure - there was a mass desertion of his disciples at the most crucial moment, followed by a diaspora of his followers.

The only thing that presented his religion from becoming equivalent to a cult promoted by bands of wandering gypsies was when it was adopted by a political figure, namely Emperor Constantine. By establishing Christianity as the official religion of his empire, Constantine lent his political power to protect and sustain the religion (and safeguard his own rule in the process). He politically empowered Christianity - precisely what the Prophet Mohammed and other Old Testament prophets sought to do.

What is the Church of Rome if not a political body? If it doesn't meddle in politics, then pray explain why, for example, the Church in Malta imposed spiritual sanctions on members of the MLP executive in the Sixties, and warned Catholics against voting Labour? Why do American presidential candidates use their Mr Upright Christian card to secure votes?

Surely, in a secular state, Christian values should be circumstantial and have no bearing on the eligibility of a candidate to political office. Before the secularisation of Europe and the disintegration of the feudal order, wasn't the Church of Rome the largest landowner and used its feudal power to influence political decisions? Priests may not run for political office today but nonetheless the Church wields tremendous political power.

Mohammed's pre-Hegira period can be equated to Christ's passive mission and the post-Hegira period to that, for example, of King David's active judicial and executive leadership. Did David, or Moses for that matter, renounce "the sublime role of the unhonoured prophet" by becoming "commonplace" statesmen as Mohammed did, according to the article?

I'm afraid I don't know Latin (and I wonder how many readers do) so I missed Dr Fava's final punchline. But I presume it was underlining his article's thesis - that the founder of Islam compromised himself and fell victim to the temptation of worldliness by "encumbering" Islam with a political agenda.

By arguing that Islam would have become "something different from and spiritually higher than, what it has become in fact", Dr Fava is in one fell swoop dismissing Islam's centuries-old track record of successful progress in all fields of human enlightenment.

And please note, Islam's Golden Age prevailed when Islam had a centralised politico-religious leadership in the form of the Khalifate, which can be loosely equated to the role of the Bishop of Rome. The irony is that the Islamic world has currently gone to the dogs largely as a result of the demise of the Khalifate in the early 20th century.

Personally, while I am by no means a diehard loyalist nor do I comprehensively support every aspect of Islam, I think that to paint Mohammed as a spiritually compromised, debased prophet simply because he engaged in government is to ignore the spiritually enlightened paradigm he set for political leadership.

He exercised extreme frugality throughout his rule; he never used his position for personal aggrandisement; he never accepted bribes; he was never found guilty of not practising what he preached; he died poor after holding office for ten years. In my book, that's a politician of the highest spiritual and moral order. How many secular politicians can claim the same?