I'm very happy to learn this, thank you Jordan! All this anti rhetoric has always felt tribalist and one sided, because Muslims and Muslim culture can be stunningly beautiful, like frankly everyone, but we color them wrong when extremists and ideologies disrupt humanity, and Christians have our own fair share of all that too.
Thanks for writing this, Jordan. It was really nice reading this from your perspective as a practicing Catholic and one who has studied Islam. You're like the 21st century John Esposito ;) Was he your advisor? I assume he was
Dr. Esposito was one of my first professors and also my first boss. So I’ve certainly been influenced by him. That’s very kind. We need to do our fall phone call!!
Thank you for writing this with such care. As a Catholic who reflects through what I call the Concordian perspective, I want to offer a fraternal word of clarity, so that admiration for our Muslim neighbors does not drift into confusion or error.
What strikes me first is Galatians 6:2: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Catholic life is not escape from difficulty but fidelity under weight — carrying our own cross, and helping carry the crosses of others.
Jesus Himself set this pattern. In the Sermon on the Mount, He declared blessed not the powerful or the comfortable, but the meek, the merciful, the pure of heart, and those enduring persecution. These are not abstract ideals but ways of carrying life’s burdens in union with Him. In Matthew 10, He warned His apostles that they would be rejected, persecuted, even hated — but to bear this burden of witness without fear, knowing fidelity to Him is worth more than life itself. This is the radical ethic of burden-bearing: life in Christ is weight faithfully carried, not ease secured.
Here lies the Catholic difference. Islam has its own burdens and virtues, and many Muslims bear them with sincerity. But the Catholic sees all merely human systems — politics, cultures, sciences, even religions apart from Christ — as ouroboros loops: thought circling endlessly on itself. We give these loops names: myth, law, philosophy, nation, economy. They organize human striving, but none saves or breaks free. In fact, society often becomes a tower of loops — teaching each generation to walk the same circles, sometimes deceiving people into serving the system itself. Those at the top learn how to manipulate these loops for their own advantage, remaining “above” while others remain crushed “beneath.”
This is why Babel is more than an ancient story. It names the truth of every human system without grace: striving upward, collapsing, scattering, enslaving. Pentecost, by contrast, is descent: God’s Word, His Spirit, His grace, breaking into history. Truth does not emerge from our endless reasoning but is given in Christ. Babel is ascent without God; Pentecost is descent with God.
This is the anchor Catholics cannot compromise. The Prophet of Islam may be admired for certain virtues, but Islam as a system remains a tower of Babel — coherent, disciplined, but ultimately thought without Incarnation, without Cross, without Eucharist. It has weight, but not the Cross that redeems, and so it does not save. It remembers, but it cannot consecrate silence into communion with the living God. Catholics kneel not before words alone, but before Christ truly present, Body and Blood, in the Eucharist. That is what consecrates our silence and transfigures our burdens.
The Concordian Catholic perspective can be summed up like this:
The mind left to itself becomes a serpent.
Burdens left to ourselves become crushing.
But in Christ, our burdens are taken up into His Cross, and our minds are anchored in His revelation.
This vision is already given in the Psalms. Psalm 1 shows the descent of thought into sin: first walking in the counsel of the wicked, then standing in the way of sinners, then sitting in the seat of scoffers. This is how sin grows — a thought entertained, then dwelt upon, then enthroned. The blessed one is the opposite: he rejects this logic and instead delights in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night, becoming rooted like a tree by streams of water.
Psalm 2 then pleads with the nations: do not plot in vain, do not rage against the Lord and His Anointed. To persist in self-made systems is to perish by one’s own thinking, divorcing oneself from God’s grace. The psalm ends with a call: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” This is not coercion, but invitation — for people of every nation and religion to submit in love to Christ, lest their towers fall, and their thoughts consume them.
So yes — let us admire what is beautiful in our Muslim neighbors, and learn to see the sincerity with which they live their devotion. But we must never confuse Babel with Pentecost. Truth is not discovered by comparing prophets or systems; it is received in Christ, in His revelation, and in the sacramental life of His Church.
Thank you so much for your reply and for reading this piece. You bring up some important aspects that I don’t touch on in this brief piece, but that I do tackle in my dissertation. I’m planning to publish it in the next few years and to share pared down versions of the arguments I make on my Substack. I hope we can stay engaged on this!
Thank you for your kind reply. I’m glad to hear that your dissertation will take these questions further, and I look forward to learning more from your work. I’m especially interested in how you present the Muslim faith with clarity, since understanding how others see themselves helps us and other catholics remain both charitable and firmly rooted in tradition.
I live in Sweden, and in time I do hope to do work similar to what you are doing, once I finish a few projects of my own. Your reply has reassured me that your heart and mind are in the right place, and you can consider me a kindred spirit in the desire to foster dialogue between Catholics and Muslims—while also giving testimony to Christ. I only discovered your Substack a few hours ago, but your response has already settled my initial concerns. I look forward to reading more of your work in the foreseeable future and staying engaged with your writing as you continue to share more.
But i can't scroll past without mentioning that Mawlid (celebrating the prophet's birthday) is not a religious practice and rather a clutural one stemming from South Asia if I'm not wrong.
This is bid'ah ie. innovation that's not from the teachings of the Qur’an, Hadith or Sunnah (way of life of the prophet and his companions) and therefore a sin.
I'm very happy to learn this, thank you Jordan! All this anti rhetoric has always felt tribalist and one sided, because Muslims and Muslim culture can be stunningly beautiful, like frankly everyone, but we color them wrong when extremists and ideologies disrupt humanity, and Christians have our own fair share of all that too.
One of the eye openings book for me in recent years is John Tolan’s Faces of Muhammad. It’s full of gems: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167060/faces-of-muhammad?srsltid=AfmBOoqQXFkFMRb95qp3rVS49vMwrPUeag2zbK_qx9QlrfQAO26pa1tv
Thanks for writing this, Jordan. It was really nice reading this from your perspective as a practicing Catholic and one who has studied Islam. You're like the 21st century John Esposito ;) Was he your advisor? I assume he was
Dr. Esposito was one of my first professors and also my first boss. So I’ve certainly been influenced by him. That’s very kind. We need to do our fall phone call!!
Thank you for writing this with such care. As a Catholic who reflects through what I call the Concordian perspective, I want to offer a fraternal word of clarity, so that admiration for our Muslim neighbors does not drift into confusion or error.
What strikes me first is Galatians 6:2: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Catholic life is not escape from difficulty but fidelity under weight — carrying our own cross, and helping carry the crosses of others.
Jesus Himself set this pattern. In the Sermon on the Mount, He declared blessed not the powerful or the comfortable, but the meek, the merciful, the pure of heart, and those enduring persecution. These are not abstract ideals but ways of carrying life’s burdens in union with Him. In Matthew 10, He warned His apostles that they would be rejected, persecuted, even hated — but to bear this burden of witness without fear, knowing fidelity to Him is worth more than life itself. This is the radical ethic of burden-bearing: life in Christ is weight faithfully carried, not ease secured.
Here lies the Catholic difference. Islam has its own burdens and virtues, and many Muslims bear them with sincerity. But the Catholic sees all merely human systems — politics, cultures, sciences, even religions apart from Christ — as ouroboros loops: thought circling endlessly on itself. We give these loops names: myth, law, philosophy, nation, economy. They organize human striving, but none saves or breaks free. In fact, society often becomes a tower of loops — teaching each generation to walk the same circles, sometimes deceiving people into serving the system itself. Those at the top learn how to manipulate these loops for their own advantage, remaining “above” while others remain crushed “beneath.”
This is why Babel is more than an ancient story. It names the truth of every human system without grace: striving upward, collapsing, scattering, enslaving. Pentecost, by contrast, is descent: God’s Word, His Spirit, His grace, breaking into history. Truth does not emerge from our endless reasoning but is given in Christ. Babel is ascent without God; Pentecost is descent with God.
This is the anchor Catholics cannot compromise. The Prophet of Islam may be admired for certain virtues, but Islam as a system remains a tower of Babel — coherent, disciplined, but ultimately thought without Incarnation, without Cross, without Eucharist. It has weight, but not the Cross that redeems, and so it does not save. It remembers, but it cannot consecrate silence into communion with the living God. Catholics kneel not before words alone, but before Christ truly present, Body and Blood, in the Eucharist. That is what consecrates our silence and transfigures our burdens.
The Concordian Catholic perspective can be summed up like this:
The mind left to itself becomes a serpent.
Burdens left to ourselves become crushing.
But in Christ, our burdens are taken up into His Cross, and our minds are anchored in His revelation.
This vision is already given in the Psalms. Psalm 1 shows the descent of thought into sin: first walking in the counsel of the wicked, then standing in the way of sinners, then sitting in the seat of scoffers. This is how sin grows — a thought entertained, then dwelt upon, then enthroned. The blessed one is the opposite: he rejects this logic and instead delights in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night, becoming rooted like a tree by streams of water.
Psalm 2 then pleads with the nations: do not plot in vain, do not rage against the Lord and His Anointed. To persist in self-made systems is to perish by one’s own thinking, divorcing oneself from God’s grace. The psalm ends with a call: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” This is not coercion, but invitation — for people of every nation and religion to submit in love to Christ, lest their towers fall, and their thoughts consume them.
So yes — let us admire what is beautiful in our Muslim neighbors, and learn to see the sincerity with which they live their devotion. But we must never confuse Babel with Pentecost. Truth is not discovered by comparing prophets or systems; it is received in Christ, in His revelation, and in the sacramental life of His Church.
Thank you so much for your reply and for reading this piece. You bring up some important aspects that I don’t touch on in this brief piece, but that I do tackle in my dissertation. I’m planning to publish it in the next few years and to share pared down versions of the arguments I make on my Substack. I hope we can stay engaged on this!
Thank you for your kind reply. I’m glad to hear that your dissertation will take these questions further, and I look forward to learning more from your work. I’m especially interested in how you present the Muslim faith with clarity, since understanding how others see themselves helps us and other catholics remain both charitable and firmly rooted in tradition.
I live in Sweden, and in time I do hope to do work similar to what you are doing, once I finish a few projects of my own. Your reply has reassured me that your heart and mind are in the right place, and you can consider me a kindred spirit in the desire to foster dialogue between Catholics and Muslims—while also giving testimony to Christ. I only discovered your Substack a few hours ago, but your response has already settled my initial concerns. I look forward to reading more of your work in the foreseeable future and staying engaged with your writing as you continue to share more.
As a Muslim thank you for writing this
But i can't scroll past without mentioning that Mawlid (celebrating the prophet's birthday) is not a religious practice and rather a clutural one stemming from South Asia if I'm not wrong.
This is bid'ah ie. innovation that's not from the teachings of the Qur’an, Hadith or Sunnah (way of life of the prophet and his companions) and therefore a sin.
Just a FYI to my fellow muslims to beware of what you celebrate <3
Thank you! 🙏🏾🫰🏻🫶🏽