By Christina Huh

Pope Benedict XVI seems an unlikely candidate to bridge the gap between Catholics and Muslims. He is the fellow who, quoting a medieval text, said that the Prophet Muhammad brought “things only evil and inhuman.” However, John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, believes Pope Benedict could be the “unlikely soul mate” to Muslims.

The key, according to Allen in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, is the distaste both Catholicism and Islam have for sexual promiscuity and atheism. He parallels the anti-American manifesto “The America I have seen” written by Egyptian poet and essayist Sayyid Qutb with Pope Benedict’s pre-papal writings. Qutb, who wrote the essay in the 1950s, said that American society is “rotten and ill.” Things hadn’t really changed by the early 1990s, according to Joseph Ratzinger who wrote in his book In the Beginning that in western society “the good and the moral no longer count.” Allen also writes that the pope sees the clash of cultures today “not between Islam and the West but between belief and unbelief.”

According to Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, cultural commonalities are overcoming ideological differences. And these commonalities are less mutable than economic and political differences. Evidence of this is already apparent. For example, American Protestants support of Israel. Similarly, a large number of Christians, Jews, and Muslims all are opposed to the encroachment of secular ideas in society and the glorification of promiscuous sex.

However, what will make union among the three monotheistic faith unlikely is the fact that religion and state are deeply entwined in many Middle Eastern countries, more so than Christianity and Judaism. It is more difficult to realize the cultural commonalities when some Muslims, who are not representative of the general Muslim population but have the most airtime, call for the complete destruction of Israel and the death of Westerners in the name of God. Strides are being made for greater interfaith dialogue within the United States, but it will take much longer for the commonalities to penetrate the conservative fundamentalists of each faith.

So will this mutual hate of pre-marital sex and promiscuity lead to greater harmony between Catholics and Muslims? Perhaps, but I hope neither Allen nor Pope Benedict is holding his breath.

Christina Huh is a student at the University of Southern California.