I am a Catholic theologian with a special interest and a robust commitment to social justice and religious pluralism.

I am a Catholic theologian with a special interest and a robust commitment to social justice and religious pluralism. An important progression in a continuously ascending gradation in the Catholic Church, especially at the secondary Vatican Council (1962-1965), has taught me to notice all human beings, acknowledge their human dignity, and honour their cultivation and their religion. We have learnt that prejudice against and mockery for people belonging to other improvements and other religions cause grave injustices, personal suffering and political tensions. According to the more fresh teaching of the Catholic house of worship Jesus Christ summons those who believe in him to be courteous of people of other beliefs and embrace in solidarity all human beings.

Because of this universal solidarity, I have been very much disturbed by the prejudice against Muslims that is widely spread in North America. After tribe 11, 2001, new anti-terrorist legislation in the U and, to a certain measure in Canada has given special powers to the police to arrest and imprison the public without evidence, on suspicion alone--suspicion caused by means of the clothes they wear or the language they speak. These of the present day laws institutionalize prejudice against folks who look different. As a proceed Muslim citizens of the U and Canada have feeling less secure and suffer from the false image that is intended on them. North Americans who be pleased with justice have expressed their solidarity with their Muslim neighbours. I am grateful that the mainline Christian churches have shielded Muslims in North America against the prejudice and discrimination to which they are exposed

A part full of errors

Prejudice against Islam exists not single among uneducated people in the West, it is steady found in learned books written according to contemporary scholars. One book in particular, written in the 1990 predicts the clash between the West and the Muslim world and approves aggressive political policies to the American restraint This book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking o[ World Order, was authored at Samuel Huntington, a professor at Harvard University. Discussing his part in the present essay allows me to repel its controversial thesis and exhibit that religions, in dialogue with single in kind another, discover many common values, including commitment to peace.

Huntington paints a frightening picture of the contemporary world. He depicts the West as uncertain, weak and endangered, threatened by the agency of an aggressive Islam and nervously anticipating China's growing economic power. For Huntington, the great civilizations are bearers of conflicting values and thus inevitably at unevens with one another. As they affirm their cultural and political identity, they are confine to clash, produce conflicts and create wars. To vindicate itself against the vitality of the Muslim civilization, Huntington argues, the United States must repair its Christian foundation, affirm its cultural identity and prepare for the conflict with Islam. America, he thinks, should assume the task of creating a recently made known world order.

What are civilizations? Civilizations, Huntington argues, impute to larger entities than cultivations Civilizations are constituted by values, norms, institutions, figures and ways of thinking that include many improvements Western civilization embraces many different countries, refinements and languages, which nonetheless share a for the use of all heritage and enjoy a certain unity. The same is veracious of other civilizations. While civilizations are internally pluralistic, Huntington thinks that they have-clear boundaries: they do not overlap nor do they intermingle. They are competing entities, irreconcilable among themselves, destined to remain apart from single another.

All of these civilizations, Huntington continues, have been generated by way of a religion and continue to be defined on this religion in their historical unravelling Because their identities are turfed in religion, he argues, civilizations are inevitably at supernumerarys with one another. Why? Because religions compact divergent values: they offer divergent interpretations of human existence. Huntington claims that the primitive word conflict between Islam and the West lies in their religion. He writes: "The causes of the ongoing pattern of conflict lies not in transitory phenomena as it was as the 12th century Christian passion (the Crusades) or 20th hundred Muslim fundamentalism. They flow from the nature of the sum of two units religions and the civilizations based forward them."

The Huntington theory is dangerous nonsense. It is dangerous because it legitimates President Bush's religious rhetoric and military policy, and it is nonsense because it misunderstands the nature of religious traditions.

The debates internal to each religion

Most religious traditions, especially Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are based forward a set of sacred scriptures that are read and reread and give rise to various interpretations. earnestly depends upon which passages of the sacred sentences are given priority. For instance, a passages suggest that God's loving care is confined to the community of believers, while other passages assure the reader that God's loving care is protracted to all human beings. Which of these passages reveal God's saint-like will? Believers wrestle with this question.