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September 18, 2006
About The Insanity Of That Muslim Lawyer Saying The Pope Must Die - And Our Tolerating It
Has the world gone completely mad?
Well, part of one world has - that segment of the Muslim world still living in the 14th Century. Take for example the Muslim lawyer in London today who says that the Pope must Die. We who live in the real world see the Pope quoting a barbed medieval criticism of Islamic violence in the course of a scholarly discourse, and subsequently watch Muslims all over the world go into an outrage - churches are firebombed, and Muslims are calling for holy war until the world is ruled by Islam, and Islam or die.
Of course this isn't anything unusual from a people who are always in an outrage about one thing or another, even cartoons, but when do we in the West say enough is enough. What in the hell is so sacrosanct about Islam and Muhammed that they should be beyond criticism? No problem for the Muslims and the media to attack Christianity, Judism, paint the Virgin Mary in fecal matter, and worse, but let the Pope say that violence and religion are against the nature of God and of the soul, and that Muhammed did have some teachings that are evil, and the entire Muslim world, at the direction of their leaders, violently riots, committs murder, and the rest of a litany of violent acts that we have all come accustomed to seeing committed in the name of Islam.
The answer of course is nothing is or should be sacrosanct about Islam, any more or less than any other religion. However, Muslims have traditionally been forbidden to think for themselves or to question Islam in any way whatsoever. They are not to question why Muhammed encouraged conversion by the sword or the context within which it was taught, or even the violence done in the name of their religion. But what about the rest of the world, have we lost our freedom to question Islam? Are we not to question the violence in Islam, or what appears to be blind faith without any semblance of reason, is suicide bombing reasonable? Is threatening to kill someone because they say what you don't want to hear, reasonable? Why shouldn't the Pope say what all of the modern world know to be the truth - that violence in the name of religion is not only unreasonable, it is against the nature of man and of the soul, and forced conversion of faith is not only unreasonable, it's down right evil and archaic.
However, given the Muslim community's propensity for being outraged easily and reacting violently to even cartoons, why did Pope Benedict say what he did in Regensburg? Is he "naive to Muslim sensitivities," or was it simply "an aberration for the spiritual leader of more than a billion Catholics to use words such as "evil and inhuman" to describe the prophet of more than a billion Muslims."? Like Dan Johnson at the NY Sun says, "Was it not inconsistent, to say the least, to preach tolerance while accusing Islam of intolerance?" Johnson says - no:
... The passage that has aroused the ire of the ayatollahs was not a faux pas, still less an aberration. And Benedict is nothing if not consistent. From his earliest days, he has been true to his vocation as a priest and as an intellectual. In the words of Milton's "Paradise Lost," he set out to justify the ways of God to men, and he realized from the outset that he could do this only by appealing to reason.You definately want to read all of Johnson's artcle, "Understanding Benedict."... This is not the kind of Christian who fudges issues or asks, like Pontius Pilate: "What is truth?" On the contrary, Benedict is secure enough in his beliefs and intellectually confident enough to be able to engage in lively debate with such hostile interlocutors as the postmodernist philosopher Jürgen Habermas.
... Benedict believes passionately that people of faith in general, and Catholics in particular, must either fight for their corner in the intellectual arena or shut up shop. Jewish or Christian morality and theology deserve a prominent place in the public square, not merely in private life.
... Just as John Paul II was not afraid to take on the godless ideology of communism, so Benedict XVI is not afraid to denounce the fanaticism of Islamo-fascism. Yesterday he called for a "frank dialogue, with mutual respect." Though he was at pains to remove misunderstandings, there was no hint of a retraction.
... what was the pope really saying in that lecture he gave in Regensburg, his old stamping ground in Bavaria? It was a rich and elegant reflection on the rationality of faith, couched in the erudite language of a very German philosophical discourse.
... But the message was, at heart, a straightforward one. The Jewish or Christian God acts in accordance with reason: In the beginning was the Word, the Logos. Benedict emphasizes that this new, logocentric understanding of God is already present in the Hebrew Bible, long before the fusion of Jerusalem and Athens in the New Testament. Our knowledge of God -- the God of Israel or the God of Christianity -- emerges in the unfolding of the encounter between faith and reason.
[...] the Pope was saying that there is an alternative to the Jewish or Christian God: the God of medieval Islam. Allah is "absolutely transcendent," above even rationality. Benedict cites a Muslim authority to the effect that "God is not bound even by his own word."
It is in this context that the pope invokes the Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, who recorded his dialogue with a learned Persian Muslim about the year 1400. Byzantium would finally succumb to Turkish conquest only half a century later, and Manuel wants to know how the doctrine of jihad can be justified, given that it is incompatible with God as Logos. For this Hellenic Christian, Muhammad's command to spread Islam by the sword must indeed be "evil and inhuman."
No, this pope is not naïve. It is our liberal, theologically illiterate politicians who are naïve. We are already at war -- a holy war, which we may lose.
Nor is he inconsistent. The Ratzinger of old, his skill in disputation honed over many years of patiently defending Catholic orthodoxy against liberal or secular opponents, was never going to duck the long-postponed doctrinal confrontation with Islam. In his subtle, scholarly way, he is urging the rest of us to face the fact that if we have no faith, we cannot hope to withstand the onslaught of a resurgent Islam.
So which is it folks, are we all going to jump up and convert to Islam, or are we going to stand up and tell the Muslim world thanks but no thanks its your job to step into the modern world, not ours to go back to the Middle Ages. This, while we wake up to the fact that if we have no faith of our own, we have no chance of withstanding the onslaught of a resurgent, devious, deceitful (al-taqiyya) and violent Islam.
As much as we all recognize the insanity of ordering the murder of the Pope, firebombing churches, killing nuns, murder by suicide, and all the other Islamic acts of violence witnessed by the world on any given day, isn't just as insane to sit back and just let it happen? Isn't it time that we demand from our leaders and the media something more than appeasement?
Let's be aware that as you read this, mainstream Muslim leaders are calling for jihad against Islam and Islamic control of the world, or else)? I choose else! What about you?
Suggest related reading:
Dr. Sanity - AUDACITY, REALITY, TRUTH, AND INSIGHT
Pajamas Media - Pope Benedict under fire: the speech, the apologies, and the aftermath
Blue Crab Boulevard - Losing The Ability To Discriminate
Dean's World - Horrorism
Confederate Yankee - Noting the Differences
BBC - In pictures: Fresh anti-Pope protests
Cross posted from Hyscience
Posted by Richard at September 18, 2006 5:20 PM
