In recent days German officials have been alarmed by a campaign launched by the radical fundamentalist Salafist Muslims to distribute 300,000 Korans free of charge. But, as the Roman Catholic priest Dr. Wolfgang Beck pointed out in the ARD program Das Wort am Sonntag the Salafists are no different from fundamentalist Christian sects in their simple-minded worldviews:
Egal, ob Piusbrüder, ob evangelikale Gruppierungen oder muslimische Salafisten, denen wir in diesen Wochen in den Fußgängerzonen begegnen können: Sie alle haben mehr gemeinsam, als ihnen wahrscheinlich lieb ist: Vor allem dieses Bemühen um größtmögliche Eindeutigkeit. Alle Kraft wird da hinein gesetzt, dass das Leben völlig übereinstimmt mit dem, was gepredigt wird. Das beeindruckt mich manchmal, und daneben sehe ich mit meinen Kompromissen meist recht schwach aus.
(Whether it's the Pius Brothers or evangelical groups or Muslim Salafists that we run into in the shopping zones in the past weeks: they all have more in common than they are willing to admit: above all the striving for the greatest possible clarity. All the energy is is invested in making life totally consistent with the teachings. Sometimes I'm very impressed by this and see my own tendencies towards compromise as a sign of weakness.)
But, as Father Beck, continues, self-confessed weakness is preferable to fundamentalist certainty:
Und so schwach ich neben ihnen mit all meinen Kompromissen vielleicht aussehe, ich weiß zumindest, ich lasse mich wenigstens anfragen und irritieren. Das ist nicht so wenig.
(And as weak as I perhaps seem next to them with all my compromises, I know that I at least allow myself to question and irritate. And that is something.)
Needless to say, the evangelical Christian groups were outraged to be put in the same basket as radical Muslims and have issued a formal complaint to the ARD television network. Meanwhile Pope Benedict XVI is planning on a formal reconciliation with the Holocaust-denying Pius Brothers.
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