Exactly What Is a Religion Of Peace?
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

When I received the invitation from Opus Dei’s communications director to attend a meeting with Prelate Bishop Javier Echevarria, who was visiting from Rome, my first thought was: “Uh oh, they’re trying to recruit me.” Even though I knew this lay organization was nothing like the sinister sect depicted in Dan Brown’s “The DaVinci Code,” I had convinced myself that the prelature was too heavy-duty religious for an imperfect Catholic like me.
The meeting turned out to be a jam-packed gathering of more than 3,700 faithful at the Hammerstein Ballroom. No tickets were needed, no collection was taken.
The crowd was a melting pot with representatives of every continent and every age group, including those in strollers and wheelchairs. The relative lack of clergy was not surprising, as Opus Dei is a lay organization. These were just ordinary people gathering, like at a family get-together, which is what it turned out to be.
People just call him “Father,” and the man who worked with a saint for 22 years came on the stage to greet what he calls his children. There was no singing, no choir — just chit chat that began with Father explaining that Opus Dei was founded by St. Josemaria Escriva, who was canonized by John Paul II in 2002, to teach us how to seek God wherever we are — in our jobs, in our family, with our friends.
That’s essentially the message of Opus Dei — including God in every phase of our lives, no matter where we are, and inviting Him to share our daily existence. How many of us take time to do that? After this brief explanation, the Father took questions from the audience, made a few jokes, and that was it. There were no ushers signing up potential members. It was all quite lovely. I’m sure that as we exited the ballroom on 34th Street the passersby wondered who we were. All of us were Catholics, coming peaceably from a sweet yet spiritual hour.
The pope is our spiritual leader and the vicar of Jesus Christ, who founded our religion, so it was very alarming to see the next day news that Muslim leaders were demanding an apology for remarks he made at a conference in Germany. The newspapers carried pictures of Muslim mobs, their faces contorted in anger. Other photographs in the press and on the Internet and television showed angry Muslims burning an effigy of the pope and waving sticks and posters with English-language condemnations of the pope’s remarks. Five churches were attacked by Palestinians. So what exactly did Pope Benedict XVI say?
In a speech calling for dialogue with other religions, the pope on Tuesday repeated criticism of Mohammad by a 14th century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Palaeologus, who said everything the prophet brought was evil — “such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The Pope was explaining that the early Muslims were spreading their religion through violence, which is what prompted the emperor’s remarks. Somehow, his message was taken out of context, and we have to start asking why.
We constantly have Muslim leaders insisting that Islam is a religion of peace, yet all we see are demonstrations that refute that claim. To non-Muslims around the world, that peaceful epithet is a lie. We can log most all of the terrorist activity around the world and trace it to Islamic jihadists, so why should we pay any attention to Muslims insisting that we have their religion wrong? Who’s at fault here? Is it the naïve journalists who publicize these jihadists threats and hatred, or is it that this small faction of Islam has cowed the moderate Muslims and hijacked what really is a religion of peace for its own vision of world dominance?
I know what peace looks like. I’ve been in a synagogue with thousands of people warmly greeting one another in love and reverence for God; I’ve been in a Mormon temple where serenity and a meditative calm reigns; likewise, Buddhist temples exude the same aura of peace and tranquility; Christian churches of all denominations range in opulence from the bare to the ornate and yet remain houses of worship to a loving God. If any of them preached the overthrow of our nation, it would be goodbye tax exemption!
Meanwhile, not only do we tolerate hate speech from extremist imams, we bend over backwards to avoid offending them. While angry Muslims around the world work themselves into a murderous frenzy and give credence to the emperor’s words, defenders of the religion of peace and liberal editors demand that the pope apologize for asking for dialogue.
The world has indeed gone mad.