September 11, 2001 made it clear that the third millennium will be a clash of civilizations insofar as civilizations are cultures and cultures are driven by cults determined by creeds. This may be a painful lesson far an ever more secularist Western world, but it cannot ignore the fearsome exclamation marks into which a handful of Muslim fundamentalists turned the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Hopefully, those desperados mirror the sentiments of only a fraction of Muslims who harbor much resentment against the West. Having exchanged Christian morality for secularist immorality, the West cannot comprehend the measure of that resentment. Nor can a West, having grown oblivious to Christian dogmas, appreciate the significance of Muslim antagonism to faith in Jesus' divinity. Herein lies a rub both far the West and for Islam in an age of science. Obsessed as it is with its science, the West is woefully ignorant of the fact that belief in that divinity sparked the rise of science in the Western world. Desperately trying to industrialize, the Muslim world will have to develop respect for the facts of nature. From there it may advance to respect for the facts of history, of which none is greater than the fact of Jesus. Herein lies the supreme challenge posed to Islam by a science which is Western, though the West prefers to ignore the real reason of the Western origin of science.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 978-1-892548-20-7  •  32 pages  •  softcover