Australian Missionary of the Sacred Heart priest, Fr Paul Stenhouse MSC released his final book, titled Islam: Context and Complexity shortly before his death in November 2019. Acclaimed UK novelist, historian and biographer, Piers Paul Read offers his review of the title.
Book cover of Islam: Context and complexity, by Paul Stenhouse
Piers Paul Read. Paul Stenhouse. Islam. Context and Complexity. Pamphleteer. Australian Scholarly Publishing.
Historians talk of the Seven Years War, the Thirty Years War, and the Hundred Years War but rarely of the Fourteen Hundred Years War that has been waged by the followers of the Prophet Mahomed against those who reject their religion, Islam. After the spectacular success of the Arab armies led by Mahomed’s father-in-law Umar after the Prophet’s death, the jihad or Holy War was waged among others by Seljuk Turks, then Ottoman Turks, and today violently by extra-national self-appointed bands of Islamists such as Al Quaida and ISIS; or peaceably with petro-dollars by the Wahabi Saudis, guardians of the Holy Shrines in Mecca where it all began.
For the first thousand years of this long war, Islam’s chief antagonists were the Byzantine and Latin Christians, led by their emperors or, in the case of the Latins, galvanised by popes. More recently, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the European nations triumphed and absorbed Muslim nations into their empires but they were no longer particularly Christian, motivated not by a militant faith but the pursuit of their commercial and political interests. These western interventions are nonetheless referred to by aggrieved Muslims as `crusades’, even though the Cross has long since been replaced by the union jack, the tricolor, and now the stars and stripes.
Moreover, as Paul Stenhouse makes clear in this final publication before his death, Islam. Context and Complexity, the First Crusade preached by Blessed Pope Urban II was not a precursor of European imperialism but a response to a plea for help from the Byzantine Emperor, Alexius Comnenus. `For the Christian states bordering the Mediterranean, the period between the death of Muhammad and the First Crusade had been a 463 nightmare: a period of regular, disorganised (and occasionally well organized) bloody incursions by Muslim - mainly Arab and Berber - land and sea forces.’
Paul Stenhouse notes that his researching that schismatic group of Israelites, the Samaritans introduced him to the subject of his book. `During the long period of my involvement with Samaritan history and traditions,’ he writes in his preface, `the intellectual and literary paths I trod were continually crisscrossed by Islam and its Qur’an, along with Islamic Law and Islamic history’.
Readers of Annals have long appreciated the great learning and lucid expositions of its editor, particularly on the subject of Islam about which there is considerable confusion. We are told that it is a religion of peace by Pope Francis, and the former British Prime Minister, David Cameron; yet there are regular atrocities in our cities perpetrated by Muslims inspired by verses in the Qur’an. Paul Stenhouse unravels the complexity in this series of essays which first appeared as articles in Annals. Some deal with the past, others with the present. He makes a distinction between religious Islam and political Islam, explaining how the astonishing success of the Arab armies under Umar was a result of both Byzantine and Persian armies’ exhaustion after long wars of attrition; but also the long-running disputes between the Byzantine emperors and the peoples of their outlying provinces who `felt no loyalty to Constantinople, and were relieved to have seen the last of the Byzantines.’ The gates of Damascus were opened to the Muslim armies in 635 by, among others, the grandfather of Saint John Damascene.
Initially, the all-conquering Arab armies were more interested in power and booty than conversion; a tax, the jizya, enabled the `peoples of the book’, Jews and Christian - dhimmis -to continue to practise their religion; but pressure was put on them to submit (Islam means `submission’); and although `the majority of Christians in Arabia, Roman Syria, North Africa, Persia and Spain, remained Christians despite intolerable restrictions on their freedom for quite some years after the Arab invasion, the number of Christian bishops in North Africa declined from seven hundred in the fifth century to forty in the tenth century and by 1050 there were only five left. Christians in Islamic states such as the Caliphate of Cordova `were not second-class citizens: dhimmis were non-citizens’.
The author reminds his readers that Muhammad, the founder of the supposed `religion of peace’, was capable of great cruelty, at one time ordering his enemies’ `hands and feet to be cut off, and their eyes branded with a hot iron, before abandoning them in the desert until they died’. He acknowledges that Muhammad and `the Caliphs who succeeded him…and the Arab tribesmen who fought their jihads with such reckless abandon, were children of their times and of their desert milieu and tribal and nomadic custom’; but it is his example, and precepts found in the Qur’an, that inspire and justify comparable atrocities today committed by ISIS.
Those, such as this reviewer, who were fortunate enough to have known Paul Stenhouse, will remember him as a holy and gentle man, but these qualities do not impede him from delivering harsh judgements on today’s jihadis and the moderate Muslims who are slow to condemn them. `Can a halt be made,’ he asks, `to the preaching of hatred and the acts of violence and inhumanity by fanatical Islamists in the name of Allah against non-Muslims, and other Muslims regarded as “unfaithful to Islam”’? He is pessimistic. Unlike the Catholics’ pope, Islam has no accepted authority to rule that the barbaric practices of seventh century marauders are indefensible in modern times. He is scornful of the policy of Western nations towards Islam, particularly the United States. He describes in detail how the Americans deliberately drew the Soviets into the `Afghan trap’ by arming and financing the mujahidin who in due course turned against them, and embroiled them in the longest war in their history.
The author also criticises those in the west `who since 2011 have been `cheering on the political and media pack clamouring for Bashar al-Assad in Syria “to go” and who welcomed the foreign `opposition’ mujahidin as their numbers grew into many tens of thousands…’ resulting in `unspeakable violence and destruction unleashed on Syria’ and `prepared the ground for ISIS’. Above all, he laments the lack of a clear riposte to Islamism. He concurs with the Italian senator Marcello Pera that `the fibre of the West’ is `permeated by a mixture of timidity, prudence, convenience , reluctance and fear’. The political correctness which paralyses us may stem from a desire to atone for our nations’ past misdeeds, but no good is done if it is based on the kind of historical distortions exposed in Paul Stenhouse’s admirable book.
About the author:
Piers Paul Read is the author of works of fiction, reportage, history, biography and journalism. He is best known for Alive. The Story of the Andes Survivors published in 1974 but has won a number of literary awards for his novels.
Islam: Context and Complexity is available to purchase here.