TheDuke's Domain

I know it's taken me some time, but my thoughts on the whole "Danish Cartoon" flap were fermenting for a while and I just haven't taken the appropriate time out to post on them. I apologize for the untimeliness of it all, but I think there are some things that need to be said that haven't been said enough in the fallout from the publication of the cartoons. Back in the beginning of this month, Jim Geraghty noted here that many serious American thinkers had grown impatient with Islam and thus were willing to blame Islam itself, a position he and Hugh Hewitt rejected as an inappropriate and counterproductive position to take. I have to disagree with Hewitt slightly here because as this link, this link, this link, and this link all help demonstrate is that Islam is a problem because it gets the basics about God and man wrong from the word "go".

In the end, what the reaction in much of the Middle East has demonstrated, that Islam has a fundamental defect that can only be addressed in a limited manner with the tools currently being employed by the secular world. The issue is one of theology, not sociology or economics or politics or other "sciences". If we want to truly understand the situation in the Middle East let us remember that Christ had to suffer humiliation for salvation to be effectual and comprehensive. Without this, true grace cannot be possible. God's grace makes a difference in how people view acts of humiliation and how they react to them. Theology matters, let us not forget this as we watch events in that tempestuous part of the world unfold.