Israel welcomes Donald Trump to Judaism’s holiest site. Analogously, the same for the Vatican. Islam’s denial of that right is not a mere idiosyncrasy of Islam.
The president of the United States wants to visit Jerusalem. No problem. He wants to go to the Western Wall. No problem. He wants to pray in Jerusalem, any part of it under Israeli control (East, West, Jewish, Christian, Islamic), no problem.
Ditto, Rome.
Mecca? What? A non-Muslim wants to visit Mecca, or pray there? Problem. The president of the US might be Catholic or Protestant or just “Christian,” it makes no difference. In Mecca, he is not welcome. It would be the same were the president of the United States Jewish, atheist, agnostic, Mormon, Hindu, Druze, Baha’i or Buddhist — it’s just that we haven’t had a president of these religious convictions (yet). But if we did, the sign hanging in Mecca would be the same: “No non-Muslims allowed.”
Intrinsically, we have no problem with this. If a religion wants its sacred spaces to be private, that’s its right.
However, exclusion of non-believers from Mecca is not an innocent, strictly spiritual, purely internal matter. It is symbolic of the authoritarian, absolutely non-pluralistic character of Islam, or at least of that branch of Islam that controls its holiest places. It is not right to deny its adherents basic civil rights, such as the right to belong to another religion without putting one’s life in danger. This is the crux: not the privacy of Islam, but its belief and policy of denying the right to life to Muslims who convert out. That’s the ultimate message of the “No non-Muslims allowed” sign at Mecca.
We have here the same symbolism that denies Saudi Arabian women the right to drive. The same symbolism that values, fosters and implements “honor killings.” The same symbolism that would impose Sharia law in the entire world, if it could. The most potent symbol remains the prescription of death to Muslims who convert out.
Needless to say, all religions are authoritarian in doctrine. Religions by nature make absolutist truth claims. There is, however, a radical difference between claiming exclusive access to absolute truth and between denying basic civil rights to those who disagree. The history of Christianity is riddled with campaigns of mass murder of those who denied the theological claims of Christianity. Take the Crusades or the Inquisition, for example, whose taragets were primarily Jews.
The analogy here is strictly historical, since Christianity has advanced way beyond its medieval practices. Islam has not. That is the meaning of the denial of access to the president to Mecca.
Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News
