Whether we like it or not, Islam has certainly emerged as one of the most critical issues - if not the most critical issue - on the international scene today.

The governments of practically all the nations on earth with Muslim majorities advocate a militant Islam, which insists that everything in life and society must be done according to the Quran (Koran), their Holy Book (believed to be entirely the Word of God, as revealed to Muhammad, his prophet) and the entire body of law called sharia based on the Quran.

In the past half-century, we have come to associate Islamic militancy with indiscriminate killing and violence committed by terrorists in the name of Allah. But the case of the Afghan who converted to Catholicism and could have been executed unless he became Muslim again has brought a new and, if possible, even more frightening dimension to Islamic militancy.

It highlights the absolute intolerance professed by Islamic militants to any other religion but Islam. It further jeopardizes the small Christian communities in predominantly Muslim countries which do not allow freedom of religion.

For this reason, where NEWS OF THE CHURCH will continue to accommodate items about other churches and their relations with the Catholic Church, it is necessary to devote a thread to discussion of the Muslim issue and any other informative reports or analysis regarding Islam.
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Here, to begin with, is an article written by a Jesuit with an Arab name, for Asia News on
www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=5761

29 March, 2006
Islam humiliates
religious freedom of Christians
and human rights of Muslims.
It’s time for change.
by Samir Khalil Samir, SJ

The ordeal of Abdul Rahman of Afghanistan is shared by many converts from Islam and poses the problem of Islam’s systematic violation of human rights. If Sharia kills a man who changes religion, it is to be condemned and cannot be the principle inspiring law, in that it destroys any ideal of coexistence and contradicts the UN declaration on human rights, approved in 1948 by almost all Muslim countries.

Rome (AsiaNews) – Abdul Rahman, the Afghan who converted from Islam to Christianity, was released from prison with a juridical ploy: deemed to be mentally unfit and thus incapable of undergoing trial, he was able to avoid the death penalty foreseen by sharia in the case of apostasy.

But his ordeal is just one case in tens of thousands each year. In Egypt alone there are at least 10,000 Muslims who convert to Christianity each year. At the same time, there are at least 12,000 Christians who become Muslim.

This phenomenon of conversions from Christianity to Islam is rampant throughout the Middle East and in the world. Fundamentalist violence that currently characterizes the Muslim world brings many to ask themselves: can such a violent religion truly come from God? But what is the lot of former Muslims? That of having to flee, hide, emigrate.

A friend of mine who wanted to be baptized was forced to flee from his university friends because one day they found a pocket-sized Gospel in his room. They began to threaten him with death and he fled, abandoning his university studies.

The solution found in Afghanistan is the best one, but is a compromise. It must serve to lead us to a radical question: what takes precedence in Islam? Internationally recognized human rights or Islamic sharia? And if sharia runs counters to human rights, is it not time that the international community condemns it?

And if sharia is inscribed – as fundamentalists maintain – in the Koran, there are two things to consider: either the Koran denies human rights, or it must be re-read to purge it of false and violent incrustations.

Islam: politics or religion?
According to Afghan law, Abdul Rahman was to have been killed for his apostasy. Sharia is based on the Koran and on the Islamic tradition of the Hadith (Mohammad’s sayings). There are 14 verses in the Koran which speak of those who recant Islamic faith. In 7 of these cases, there is no mention of punishment; the other 7 allude to punishment, not however in this life, but in heaven. One verse speaks of eternal flames; another of the curse of God, angels and men; another speaks of a “painful” punishment. Only one of the Koran’s verses (that of “penitence” 9, 74) call for a painful punishment in this world and the next.

According to Muslim jurists, the death penalty can be decreed only if the Koran explicitly foresees it (hudud). Lacking this, one turns to Mohammad’s sayings. One of these sayings – and just one – states that death is required in 3 cases of sin, one of which is apostasy.

Historically speaking, the term “apostasy” is used for the first time, ambiguously, after Mohammad’s death. Certain Arab tribes which had submitted (islamo, in Arabic) to the new faith, decided to “back out” (irqed, the same verb that refers to apostasy).

Abu Bakr, the first successor, attempts to stop these tribes, fearing that others will “back out” as well, and battles them. Many of the Prophet’s companions disapproved of this. But once Abu Bakr brings these rebel tribes back to the Islamic fold, he gains general approval. Since then, this ambiguous term, “to back out, to draw back”, is applied to all those who seek to abandon the fold, the Islam family.

There are several verses from the Koran (Ch. II, 191-193) that everyone uses in such cases, verse 191 containing very dangerous words. “Kill [God’s enemies] wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, for” – and here one finds the dangerous word – “subversion is severer than slaughter.” And then, in verse 193, “And fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for God.” This keyword, “subversion” (in Arabic fitnah), is the word used in all cases to justify a killing. In Iran, it is also used against homosexuals. To kill a subversive is considered a “lesser evil” with respect to “subversion” which, by spreading, can become a dangerous phenomenon.

Muhammad Chalabi, the head of Al Ahzar in the 1950s, used to say “We do not force the apostate to return to Islam, so as to not contradict the word of God which prohibits any constriction on faith. But we leave him the opportunity to return voluntarily. If he does not return, he must be killed because he is an instrument of subversion (fitnah) and opens the door to pagans to attack Islam and to sow doubt among Muslims. The apostate is therefore declaredly at war with Islam even if he does not lift a sword against Muslims.” This is the usual thinking in Islam.

Last week in Cairo, I was speaking to some Muslims about the Abdul Rahman question. And they told me that Westerners too do the same thing. “Let’s suppose,” they say, “that one of you passes over to the enemy’s side and relays state secrets to the enemy. Do you not kill him? Does he not deserve a radical punishment? The apostate betrays the community!” My answer: What you say applies to the political domain, not the religious. Plus, we Christians are not terribly in favour of the death penalty.”

My Muslim friends conclude. “The Umma must be defended from attacks against Islam.” I answer, “But Abdul Rahman did not condemn anyone. He is a peaceful man.” They reply with the same words as the head of Al Ahzar. “Even if he does not lift a sword, the apostate is a subversive.”

It is worth noting that:

a) Islam presents itself as one-way street: one can enter but one cannot exit;

b) the Islamic world is not at all concerned with the question of freedom of conscience;

c) Islam reasons on itself in political terms.

But this gives rise to an enormous question: if Islam is a political project, a movement that uses even the most extreme violence, then it must be fought politically. And, most of all, it would be necessary to no longer call it a religion, a spiritual movement that helps man to create peace.

There is in fact in Islam a strong ambiguity to which attention must be drawn: at times, Muslims speak in spiritual terms [“Islam means peace (salam), coexistence, tolerance etc…”]; other times, they act politically, justifying violent choices.

Sharia is against human rights

If sharia kills a man who changes religion, then it must be condemned and cannot be placed at the basis of national constitutions. If sharia is the principle inspiring law, any ideal of coexistence is destroyed and, even more, there will be a contradiction with the U.N. declaration on human rights, approved in 1948 by almost all Muslim countries.

Article 18 of the declaration states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

Well then, let’s have a look at the news that is arriving from Muslim countries: this article is violated every day, as AsiaNews’ records often show. House churches are destroyed in Indonesia; in Algeria, there is a prohibition against public manifestations of faith; anyone who invites anyone to leave Islam is threatened with death in all Muslim countries.

There is excitement at the moment in the West for the successful outcome in Abdul Rahman’s case, but the compromise that was reached masks the real problem: the roots of violence vis-à-vis apostasy is contained in the Koran and in Islamic tradition, so much so that one can speak of the incompatibility between human rights and rights foreseen by the Koran.

The conclusion is that a choice is needed in the Islamic world, between (on the one hand) saying that traditional texts and the Koran are unacceptable documents, contrary to human dignity, and on the other, reinterpreting the Koran, by dropping the violent aspects which are tied to outmoded situations.

We cannot keep silent or continue to speak of Islam in an ambiguous fashion, defining Islam as a religion that “speaks of peace and tolerance,” hiding the verses that encourage violence and brutal killings. Such an ambiguous behaviour is shameful to those who adopt it and to those who keep silent.

The West must not keep silent
I say this out of affection and sympathy towards Muslims. Many Muslim friends find themselves at difficulty with the texts of Islam and do not know what to say. If they dare criticize texts they are immediately accused of apostasy and blasphemy.

There are tens of thousands of cases in the Arab and Islamic world: Salman Rushdie, Talima Nazrin, Sarag Foda (Egyptian agnostic who had criticized Islam and was murdered); Naguib Mahfuz [Egyptian Nobek Prize winner in literature], who risked death in 1995 for apostasy, so he had to recant.

Then there is the case of Nasr Abu Zaid, who was removed from his university teaching post and even had his wife taken from him: she was forced to divorce from him, as he could no longer be married to a Muslim woman, having been condemned for apostasy. They both eventually fled to Holland.

We cannot overlook all these aberrations by saying: it takes patience, Islam was born many centuries after Christianity; it still has a lot of road to cover… This would be like saying that Islam is a religion of the disabled! Instead, Muslims include in their ranks great figures, scientists, intellectuals.

The fact is that the time has come for the West to speak truthfully for the sake of Muslims themselves. The West cites human rights every day, but when it runs up to cases such as these, where the highest offense to human rights is at play – life and freedom of conscience – Western governments keep silent.

The most typical case is that of Saudi Arabia, which tramples all human rights, even those of its own people, and no one says anything. The West has lost a lot of credibility in the Islamic world, due to acts contrary to human rights, such as preventive wars, economic injustices, the immorality of Western laws, etc.

The time has come for a choice. If there is incompatibility between human rights and the rights set out in the Koran, then – I’m sorry to say – the Koran must be condemned; or else it must be said that our understanding of the Koran puts us against human rights and freedom of conscience, and so the interpretation must change. One thing is certain: we can no longer keep silent.

The European bishops decided in recent days to dedicate the forthcoming year to studying the problems of Islam in Europe and Islam in the world, relations of European Union countries with Muslim-majority countries, from the perspective of international justice and reciprocity. But if European countries keep silent, reciprocity can never be requested.

Muslims alone cannot change anything. If Afghanistan were an isolated country, with no relations with the West, Abdul Rahman would have been killed. Muslims with a profound awareness of human rights are a minority. The Egyptian branch of Amnesty International, for example, publishes two monthly magazines in Arabic, but it not able to counterbalance the fundamentalist trend.

It is necessary that the international community intervenes with external pressure. In the case of human rights, it is by no means a question of intrusion. It is necessary to arrive at serious measures: exclusion from the U.N. of those who do not respect the Charter on human rights, economic boycotts, etc. Perhaps, with a boycott, certain countries could initially take any even harder line, but in the long run countries and hundreds of millions of people could be saved from terrible oppression.

The human rights problem in the Islamic world is not tied only to apostasy. Even people who want to go on living in Islam are subjected to extraordinary social pressure. An example: many young women who live in Egypt today wear headscarves. It is said that they do so willingly. But social pressure is such that, if a girl goes out without a headscarf, all her neighbours begin to say: aren’t you ashamed? Your daughter has no shame. Thus even Christian women in the end say: we prefer to put on a headscarf for the sake of peace and quiet!

Apostasy is just the tip of the iceberg of an enormous problem: to this very day, there are a billion people in the Islamic world constrained in an ideological-religious prison, which denies their fundamental human rights. This deformation is pushing a lot of people away from Islamic faith. In Teheran, young people are distancing themselves ever more from Islam, looking for truth in other religions: they can no longer put up with this justification for violence. It is perhaps for this reason that, in Iran, all Christian web-sites are censured or blacked out.

The suffering of the Islamic world is increased by globalized information. Thanks to television, radio and internet, the ideas of freedom, human rights are spreading and this increases the desire and frustration of Muslims, who see “no future” for themselves or their families.

It is necessary that those who live in Islamic countries find not only bread, but also human rights. If Europe does not work for this, all the lectures on globalization are just chatter. Keeping silent is an injustice against millions of people. The time has come to speak out, not for attacking, but for love.
----------------------------------------------------------------

The problem of "dialog" with Islam is to identify who to speak to. There is no central arbiter in Islam. Mecca, unlike Rome, is a place of worship, nothing more. Though all Muslims say the Quran and Muhammad's sayings should be the final word on anything, governments as well as individuals have their own diverse interpretations of Islamic texts and law. There is no central Muslim magisterium to impose a uniform interpretation.

And what about the governments of predominantly Muslim nations? For the record, it appears that only Jordan's King Abdullah has come out unequivocally as a voice of moderation. But Jordan is one of the smallest Muslim countries on earth - a speck in Islam compared to say, Indonesia and Pakistan, which each have easily more than 100 million Muslims. The Presidents of both countries may be moderates at heart, but they are not free to articulate any views that are contrary to what their militant activists proclaim, on pain of losing their jobs! Even the democratic process in the predominantly Muslim countries has been coopted.

Pope Benedict so far has spoken to King Adbullah and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak. (He also spoke to Palestine's Abu Mazen but that was before Hamas won control of the Palestinian government.) He will be speaking to the head of the Turkish government in November. He has sent the Vatican's recognized #1 Islamic expert, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, to be the permanent representative of the Holy See to the Arab League. He is doing what he can as the world's top moral authority, but militant Islam at this point sees no moral but its own.

It still remains for the governments of the threatened West to act decisively and in concert to concretely neutralize the venom of militant Islam. But, for instance, has the European Union adopted - or is it even thinking of adopting - a continental strategy for meeting the Islamic threat head on?

After decades of allowing millions of Muslims to immigrate into their countries, ignoring the majority lack of interest in being assimilated into European society and allowing virtual Muslim enclaves to develop within their national societies, what can they do now to remedy a face-off between cultures (if one wants to avoid using the loaded word "clash") that may well be fatal for one of these cultures (guess which!) and certainly tragic for both?

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/03/2006 23.21]

Now that we have this new thread, I have removed this post from NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH to re-post here.

Interview With Lawrence Cunningham of Notre Dame
www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=86827

SOUTH BEND, Indiana, MARCH 29, 2006 (Zenit.org).- In the 13th century, St. Francis of Assisi ventured into Muslim territory to visit the caliph of Egypt and preach the Gospel.

His example may provide a good role model for modern interreligious dialogue today, according to one scholar.

Lawrence Cunningham is a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame and the author of "Francis of Assisi: Performing the Gospel of Life" (Eerdmans).

He shared with ZENIT how St. Francis (c. 1181-1226) considered himself to be a spiritual crusader, and how his peaceful and truthful approach helped in his outreach to Muslims.

How did the average Christian view Islam and Muslims during St. Francis' time? Where might St. Francis have learned about Islam?
Generally, Muslims were considered to be a huge external enemy, fueled by rhetoric coming from the Crusade that began at the end of the 11th century.

People who were aware of what was going on in the world -- excluding large slices of peasantry -- knew about Muslims through the stories men brought back from fighting in the Crusades. That's probably how Francis learned about them.

The idea of converting Muslims seemed to be in the air for many saints. Francis tried to go to Morocco once, but he became ill when he got to Spain. Teresa of Avila also shared the common impulse; as a child she and her brother wanted to go to the Muslim lands to be martyrs.

St. Anthony of Padua was taken by the bravery of Franciscan friars martyred in Morocco; he wanted to be a Franciscan and go to North Africa because of their sacrifice. Anthony eventually ended up in Sicily where there was a huge Islamic influence.

Did St. Francis view Muslims as Christian heretics or infidels? What was his understanding of Islam in the scheme of Providence?
We don't know for certain what St. Francis thought of Muslims. We have very little in the form of writing from him and most is not terribly theological. My educated guess is that Francis thought Muslims, like the Jews, needed to be converted to Christianity.

Also, any theologian in Francis' time that knew anything about Muslims would know the Koran explicitly denies the doctrine of the Trinity; "ipso facto," that makes them heretical.

If you could extrapolate from a famous writer a few generations later, Dante Alighieri, he places Mohammed in the circle of hell with the schismatics that broke the unity of the church. Mohammed's punishment was to be chained to the floor with his body split lengthwise because he split the Church. The punishment fit the crime.

What was the relationship between St. Francis' trips to the Holy Land and Egypt, and the Crusades? Did he see himself as a different type of Crusader, or was he in opposition to the Crusades?
When Francis converts to the evangelical life -- when he strips his clothes in front of Bishop Guido and dons a peasant's robe -- he chalks a cross on his back; in that sense becomes a "cross bearer," literally, a Crusader.

Earlier in his life Francis had given up the idea of being a solider, so later he became a spiritual crusader -- a warrior without arms. He saw himself and his friars as Knights of the Round Table fighting a spiritual crusade.

We do know that he made it to Damietta in Egypt where there were Crusaders fighting Muslims. He and Brother Pacifico crossed the Crusader lines to visit and have an audience with the caliph.

My book mentions an Arabic inscription in stone in a Cairo museum that recounts the caliph spoke to Western holy men. You also can see in Assisi a gift from the caliph to Francis: a piece of ivory horn on a gold stand.

Legend embroiders their conversation, saying that Francis was willing to undergo trial by fire to prove the truth of Christianity to the caliph, and the caliph became a secret Christian. We don't know if any of that is true.

The caliph did receive him kindly; he may have been a Sufi -- a Muslim mystic -- who want to identify mystically with the love of Allah. Thus, the caliph may have had an instinctual sympathy for Francis, whom he probably saw as a holy man.

Francis wasn't a 20th-century ecumenist -- he probably tried to convert the caliph. We don't know the character of the conversation. We do know that he went peacefully in an attempt to engage the caliph face to face and possibly stop the killing and fighting.

Francis certainly wanted his own friars to not engage in violence and warfare. He probably was a realist and knew it would happen, but he didn't want it that way.

One interesting aspect about Francis that doesn't get much attention is that during his years of active ministry one of the most important things he did was go into towns in Italy and stop civil strife. An eyewitness account of a student in Bologna reports he saw Francis preaching about angels and demons in the town square and reconciled warring families.

He did that in Assisi and Arezzo and many other towns. It's an element of his ministry that has not been highlighted enough.

St. Francis is often declared as a model of interreligious dialogue, yet he attempted to convert the caliph of Egypt and the other Muslims he encountered to the Catholic faith. In what ways does St. Francis provide a model for Christian-Muslim dialogue?
I would say there's been a lot of water under the historical bridge. But I think that Francis is a model in the sense he comes nonviolently, nonbelligerently and honestly.

I think interreligious dialogue can only function effectively if people say truthfully and nonbelligerently what they believe and why.

Also, Francis comes as a genuine contemplative; he speaks not only from intellectual knowledge but deep spiritual experience. I think that's a good model for dialogue with believers of any religious tradition.

During St. Francis' life, the Franciscans sent missionaries to Islamic lands. Can you describe the nature of their missions?
The most conspicuous thing Francis did, after he met with the caliph, was go to the Holy Land; there have been Franciscan friars there ever since. All the major Christian shrines today -- from Judea to the Galilee -- are all manned by the Franciscans.

The Franciscans serve three functions there: maintain shrines, be hospitable to pilgrims and work with Catholic peoples in the Holy Land.

If you go to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, next to it is the parish church of St. Catherine for the Latin-rite Catholics, where there are Franciscans.

Did St. Francis believe that martyrdom would be the most likely outcome of his and his brothers' missionary work? Was he disappointed by this?
We don't know if he was disappointed; but we know he knew that if you went to North Africa, there was a chance you would die if you evangelized.

There's a fair history of his friars being martyred, besides the five in Morocco. The friars were aggressive missionaries; after Francis' time, they made their way to China, to the court of the Mongols and to Armenia.

Does the Franciscan order continue to live its tradition of evangelizing Muslims?
They certainly have continued the tradition of living in Muslim lands; they are still located in North Africa and the Holy Land. They have to be very careful. For a Muslim to convert in some strongholds is to invite the death penalty.

I think the Franciscan outreach to Muslims today is an outreach of presence.

Teresa-Benedetta, thank you very much for this article and this thread. It is most informative and gives a much more up to date summary of the whole issue than the book I've just finished reading on this subject. One can't help agreeing with the "Jesuit with an Arab name". Your own contribution above touches, i.a., on the potential European time bomb, ticking away, while a (seemingly?) paralyzed leadership looks on: perhaps one of the results of the European love affair with relativism and a naïve humanism, divorced from Christian roots. Let's pray it is not too late for a solution to all this. The suggestions of the Jesuit makes sense. Is there any alternative?

Afghan Christian spirited to safety thanks to the Pope

From Anthony Browne in Brussels and Richard Owen in Rome
The Times Online.UK

THE Afghan apostate threatened with execution finally found sanctuary yesterday when the Italian Government granted him fast-track asylum on the ground of “religious persecution”.

Abdul Rahman who had been secretly spirited from Kabul to an undisclosed “secure location” near Rome on Tuesday night, spoke yesterday of his gratitude to Italy and Pope Benedict.

In an interview aired by two Italian television channels, Mr Rahman said he would certainly have been killed if he had stayed in Kabul: “If you are not a Muslim in an Islamic country like mine they kill you, there are no doubts.”

He said he was worried about his family, even though they had denounced him as an “apostate”. “On the streets you still have Taleban, and they kill those who are not Muslims,” Mr Rahman said. “I’m a father. My children are still there.”

In the interview, recorded at a police station, Mr Rahman was shown only from behind. Speaking in English, he said he had converted “because I read the Bible and I became convinced of the goodness of this religion.” He added: “I thank the Pope, the Italian Government and all those who have been involved in my case. I am happy to be here.”

Although the Christian convert has escaped the threat to his life, his extraordinary transformation from unemployed nurse a month ago to international symbol of religious freedom has left in its wake renewed doubts about the invasion of Afghanistan, serious embarrassment for President Bush and mounting anger against the Afghan Government.

Italian officials are preparing to give Mr Rahman a new identity and said he would be given economic help, as well as an interpreter and “counselling”. He will eventually be able to decide whether to stay in Italy or move to Germany, where he lived for nine years after converting to Christianity, and where his brother still lives.

Mr Rahman, 41, returned to Afghanistan in 2003 after failing to gain asylum in Europe, but immediately entered a custody battle with his family over his two daughters.

His family denounced him to the authorities and he was charged with apostasy when the police discovered that he owned a Bible. However, Afghan judges dropped the charges against him on Sunday after Western leaders and the Pope pleaded for his release. Relatives said that he was insane, the only allowable defence under Sharia, which is enshrined in the Afghan Constitution.

His release from Pul-e-Charki prison on Monday provoked protests, with demonstrators chanting “Death to Christians” and several Muslim clerics inciting Afghans to kill Mr Rahman. The next day he was flown on a UN cargo plane to the United Arab Emirates, where he was transferred to an Italian military Falcon jet. “There was very high risk of an attempt on his life to stop him leaving Afghanistan, ” one official told the Italian media.

In Afghanistan his secretive escape fuelled anger against the Government of President Karzai, who held a series of meetings to help to broker the release after his Western backers, including the US, Britain and Italy, demanded action.

Muhammad Hanif, a purported spokesman for the hardline Taleban, denounced the President as a puppet and called for a jihad against him. He said in a statement: “We condemn this crime of the puppet administration. We ask our Muslim brothers to take their position against this offence by the enemies of Islam and to act, based on their responsibility to their religion and God, and to start jihad against Karzai’s administration.”

The Afghan parliament overwhelmingly backed a resolution banning Mr Rahman from leaving the country, but he had left by the time it was passed. Parliament then said that it would hold an inquiry into Western interference.

The affair has thrown the US Administration on the defensive after it was deluged with criticism questioning the point of removing the Taleban Government if Aghans still faced death because of their religious beliefs. Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, was forced to admit: “If I were grading, I would say we probably deserve a D or a D-plus as a country as to how well we’re doing in the battle of ideas.”

Mr Rahman believes that the war has been effectively lost. Before he was whisked away, he said: “If I flee it would mean my country hasn’t changed. Without human rights, without respect for other religions, the Taleban have won.”

[I thought this sounded hopeful.]

Chaldean patriarch thanks pope for sharing Iraq’s “anguish and suffering”

Emmanuel Delly, Chaldean patriarch, thanked Benedict XVI for supporting two days of prayer and fasting for peace and security in Iraq. The country’s Muslims have also joined in the appeal. Hundreds of people are killed every day across Iraq.

Baghdad (AsiaNews) – His Beatitude Emmanuel III Delly is above all grateful to Pope Benedict XVI for joining in two days of prayer and fasting for peace and security in Iraq. And he has stressed that this move he proposed is also shared and spread by the country’s Schiite and Sunni communities who are making the event known through the media in Iraq and the Arab world. In an interview with AsiaNews, the Chaldean patriarch said that at the end of the two days of fasting, he will celebrate Mass in the cathedral, in the presence of Muslim figures who “want to pray with us”.

“We don’t have any other way to arrive at peace in the Iraqi family,” said the patriarch. In recent months, after the positive launch of the constitution and parliamentary elections, after the return of the Sunni boycott, a series of killings and religiously motivated terrorist attacks between Sunnis and Shiites make the formation of an Iraqi government difficult. “How many dead, how many murders every day!” said Patriarch Delly. “We cannot keep going on like this.” According to official statistics, 900 Iraqis were killed in March. The insecurity, especially in the capital and in mixed areas, has prompted around 35,000 people to flee to other parts of the country. Below is the interview of Patriarch Delly with AsiaNews in full.

Beatitude, what is the meaning behind these two days of prayer and fasting?

We have no other way to arrive at peace in the Iraqi family, if not by prayer and fasting. All the other paths are closed because of particular interests. We want to turn to the Lord because he gives us peace and security. How many dead, how many murders in one day! Every day, hundreds of people are killed. We cannot keep going on like this. So I turned to the Lord and I planned these two days, 3 and 4 April, to pray and fast for Iraq and also for the rest of the world. I thank the Holy Father from my heart because he wanted to share our sufferings and our anguish.

Is your gesture also shared by the Muslim and Schiite communities?

We proposed this gesture, but it pleased all our brothers and sisters in Iraq, Christians and Muslims. The message is being spread by all television broadcasts and newspapers in Iraq and outside.

Have you received a specific sign of appreciation from the Muslims?

All Muslims have welcomed and are spreading the idea. The day after tomorrow, when the two days of prayer and fasting are over, a Mass will be held in the Cathedral, and Christians will attend as well as Muslim personalities. The Muslims want to pray with us too.

What is Iraq’s most urgent need?

The most urgent need for all Iraqis, Christians and Muslims, is security. All nations are helping us by offering us plenty of food aid and more, but we need peace and security. Otherwise, every time we go out of the house, we don’t know if we will come back alive or dead.

What can we westerners do?

Do everything possible to guarantee security for us and work for peace in the world. Continue to pray: today we are in need; tomorrow another country may be in need. Mankind is one whole family.

How Will Rome Face Mecca?

By Joseph D'Hippolito
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 5, 2006

One of the Catholic Church's most controversial figures inflamed public debate in Italy with a typically off-handed comment -- and inadvertently exposed the Vatican's problems in crafting a coherent, comprehensive response to Islamic imperialism.

Cardinal Renato Martino -- the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the Vatican's former ambassador to the United Nations -- said that the Italian government should allow the Koran to be taught during the hour mandated for Catholic religious instruction.

"If there are 100 Muslim children in a school, I don't see why they shouldn't be taught their religion," Martino said in a press conference March 9. "If we said 'no' until we saw equivalent treatment for the Christian minorities in Muslim countries, I would say that we were placing ourselves on their level."

Martino's comments came as campaigning in Italy's April 9 general election entered its final push. Two significant issues are the effect of massive Muslim immigration on Italian society and the ensuing place for government-sponsored Catholic religious education, mandated by the 1929 concordat between the Vatican and Italy that was renewed in 1984.

Two days before Martino's press conference, the president of Italy's largest Muslim group -- the Community of Islamic Organizations in Italy, which controls that country's mosques and has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood -- asked the government to substitute Muslim instruction for Catholic instruction where appropriate.

That president, Mohammed Nour Dachan, also refused to sign a document in which Muslims pledged to accept Italy's constitution, denounce terrorism and recognize Israel's right to exist. His organization demands Islamic schools, Islamic banks and clerical supervision of textbooks.

"The impression was the Cardinal Martino, in the name of 'dialogue,' was uncritically accepting Nour Dachan's request for a separate place for Islam in Italy," wrote Sandro Magister, who has covered the Vatican for more than 25 years for the Milan magazine, L'Espresso.

Enhancing the controversy are remarks Pope Benedict XVI made while greeting Morocco's new ambassador to the Vatican on Feb. 20. During the audience, the pope advocated religious freedom "in a reciprocal manner in all societies," a reference to oppressed Christian minorities in Muslim nations.

"But for Cardinal Martino," Magister wrote, "this reciprocity would seem to be irrelevant."

Reaction was swift and fierce. Wrote Ernesto Galli della Loggia in a front-page editorial for the Milan daily Corriere della Sera on March 10:

"The words of Cardinal Martino on a host of highly important questions constitute a position clearly antithetical to the one repeatedly and vigorously marked out by Benedict XVI. One could even say that these words form a sort of embroidered design of a real and proper anti-Ratzingerian manifesto."

Another front-page editorial in Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, stated March 11 that Martino's proposal contradicted Italy's constitution and Catholicism's place in Italian culture.

Martino was so embarrassed that he had to appear on Vatican Radio on March 10 to control the damage. On March 13, the Paris daily Le Figaro quoted Martino as saying that his off-hand proposal was a "sign of respect" toward Islam that would encourage Muslim nations to relieve persecution of Christian minorities.

Nevertheless, the Italian bishops' conference continued its campaign. On March 16, Avvenire published an overview of European religious education by Carlo Cardia, a non-Catholic professor of ecclesiastical law and a consultant for a major left-wing party. Cardia concluded thus:

"There does not exist in Italy an organized Islamic confession that is recognized by the state. There are various groups, which are not infrequently in conflict among themselves. And this prevents the implementation of teaching that would not be based on any community, institution, or confessional hierarchy.

"And then, one cannot ignore the potential conflict between some of the features of Islamism in its present state and fundamental questions for our society – the matter of human rights, beginning with religious freedom, the principles of equality between men and women, the monogamous structure of matrimony – which constitute the most valuable heritage of the secular-Christian tradition of Italy and the West.

"At a moment when Islamic fundamentalism constitutes a concrete reality in many countries from which immigration comes into Europe, it would be a mistake not to take note of the risk that a hasty legitimization in the sensitive channels of the schools could let in subjects capable of transmitting other messages, creating ambiguous connections, and placing at risk values that are fundamental for civil life.

"These are some of the obstacles that make an organic presence of Islam in the Italian schools unfeasible and not worthy of entertaining."

On March 20 Cardinal Camilio Ruini, papal vicar for the Archdiocese of Rome, addressed the conference's spring session:

“In particular, (it is necessary) that there not be any conflict in the content with respect to our constitution, for example with regard to civil rights, from religious freedom to the equality between man and woman to marriage. Concretely, until now there has been no representative body for Islam that would be capable of establishing such an accord with the Italian state. Furthermore, we must assure ourselves that the teaching of the Islamic religion would not give rise to socially dangerous indoctrination."

Martino, whom Magister described as "a cardinal out of control," has a well-deserved reputation as a self-promoting loose cannon. One month before the invasion of Iraq, Martino blamed the West for the Muslim world's plight:

"Not only the United States but the entire West should make an examination of conscience of how we oppress the rest of the world -- unkept promises, spreading ways of life that are not moral or acceptable to the rest of the world (Reuters, Feb. 6, 2003)."

When American forces captured Saddam Hussein, Martino offered these thoughts:

"I feel pity to see this man destroyed, being treated like a cow as they checked his teeth (Dec. 16, 2003)."

Six days before commenting on Muslim education, Martino talked about his recent trip to Cuba, where he met Fidel Castro:

"Castro knows the social doctrine of the church. The times when the church was persecuted in Cuba are water under the bridge (ANSA news agency, March 3)."

But Martino's most recent comments also reflect the weight of outmoded policies and attitudes that Catholic leaders must shed as Benedict forges his own policy regarding Islam.

Pope John Paul II viewed Islam as a useful ally against Communism and secularism. Front Page Magazine's "The Vatican's Pro-Saddam Tilt?" also chronicled how the late pope sought to engage Islam to promote world peace through ecumenism, even at the expense of Christian minorities in Muslim nations. But Benedict XVI subtly announced a radical change from the outset.

At his installation Mass, the new pope welcomed fellow Catholics, other Christians and Jews in his greeting, but not Muslims. Later, two selected speakers delivered intercessory prayers for oppressed Christians. One prayer was in Arabic.

However, Benedict and his bishops must confront what French historian Alain Besancon called the "indulgent ecumenicism" that dominates the Christian response to Islam, whether through Martino's superficial multiculturalism or through the wistful yearning for traditionalist transcendence that Besancon described in Commentary magazine:

"Contributing to the partiality toward Islam is an underlying dissatisfaction with modernity, and with our liberal, capitalist individualistic arrangements.... Alarmed by the ebbing of religious faith in the Christian West, and particularly in Europe, these writers cannot but admire Muslim devoutness.... Surely, they reason, it is better to believe in something than in nothing, and since these Muslims believe in something, they must believe in the same thing we do."

Influencing that attitude was the work of European scholar Louis Massignon, who popularized the ideas of the Koran as a kind of biblical revelation and of Muslims as being among Abraham's spiritual children.

"An entire literature favorable to Islam has grown up in Europe," Besancon wrote, "much of it the work of Catholic priests under the sway of Massignon's ideas."

Europe is not the only place where such indulgent ecumenism holds sway. Cardinal Bernard Law, the disgraced former Archbishop of Boston, created controversy in November 2002 when he bowed toward Mecca and prayed to Allah in a suburban mosque during a Ramadan service. Afterward, he told the congregants:

"I feel very much at home with my fellow fundamentalists here, who are convinced that God must be at the center of our lives (Boston Globe, Nov. 25, 2002)."

Such sentimentality, however, ignores the irreconcilable differences between Christianity, Judaism and Islam that Besancon described in his Commentary article, "What Kind Of Religion is Islam?"

Though all three faiths are monotheistic, Islam rejects the doctrines of atonement and redemption that define Christianity and Judaism. Moreover, no concept of a covenant between God and humanity exists in Islam. Instead, Allah decrees his law "by means of a unilateral pact, in an act of sublime condescension (that) precludes any notion of imitating God as is urged in the Bible," Besancon wrote.

Islam also rejects the Christian doctrines of original sin and the necessity of mediation between God and humanity. In the Koran, Jesus "appears... out of place and out of time, without reference to the landscape of Israel," Besancon wrote.

Most importantly, Judeo-Christian and Muslim concepts of divinity revolve around one irreconcilable difference:

"Although Muslims like to enumerate the 99 names of God, missing from the list, but central to the Jewish and even more so to the Christian conception of God, is 'Father' - i.e., a personal god capable of a reciprocal and loving relation with men," Besancon wrote. "The one God of the Koran, the God Who demands submission is a distant God; to call him 'Father' would be an anthropomorphic sacrilege."

Sentimental ecumenism and John Paul II's geopolitical agenda also prevented the Catholic Church from effectively confronting barbarism in Allah's name. Oriana Fallaci excoriated the church in a 2002 editorial in Corriere della Sera. Some excerpts:

"I find it shameful that the Catholic Church should permit a bishop (Hilarion Capucci), one with lodgings in the Vatican no less, a saintly man who was found in Jerusalem with an arsenal of arms and explosives hidden in the secret compartments of his sacred Mercedes, to...plant himself in front of a microphone to thank in the name of God the suicide bombers who massacre the Jews in pizzerias and supermarkets. To call them 'martyrs who go to their deaths as to a party.'

"I find it shameful that L'Osservatore Romano, the newspaper of the Pope--a Pope who not long ago left in the Wailing Wall a letter of apology for the Jews--accuses of extermination a people who were exterminated in the millions by Christians. By Europeans. I find it shameful that this newspaper denies to the survivors of that people (survivors who still have numbers tattooed on their arms) the right to react, to defend themselves, to not be exterminated again [parentheses in original].

"I find it shameful that in the name of Jesus Christ (a Jew without whom they would all be unemployed), the priests of our parishes or Social Centers or whatever they are flirt with the assassins of those in Jerusalem who cannot go to eat a pizza or buy some eggs without being blown up [parentheses in original].

"I find it shameful that they are on the side of the very ones who inaugurated terrorism, killing us on airplanes, in airports, at the Olympics, and who today entertain themselves by killing western journalists. By shooting them, abducting them, cutting their throats, decapitating them.

In her most recently translated work, The Force of Reason, Fallaci blamed the Catholic Church's lax policies on immigration and ecumenism for the disintegration of Europe's identity:

"This Catholic Church...gets on so well with Islam because not few of its priests and prelates are the first collaborators of Islam. The first traitors. This Catholic Church, without whose imprimatur the Euro-Arab dialogue could neither have begun nor gone ahead for 30 years. This Catholic Church without which the Islamization of Europe, the degeneration of Europe in Eurabia, could never have developed. This Catholic Church...remains silent even when the crucifix gets insulted derided, expelled from the hospitals. This Catholic Church...never roars against (Muslims') polygamy and wife-repudiation and slavery...."

Even Benedict's call for reciprocity fails to address adequately the totalitarian nature of Islamic societies, as the ordeal of Afghan convert Abdul Rahman and Algeria's parliament illustrate.

On March 21, Algeria passed a law forbidding members of religions other than Islam to seek converts or to worship in public without a license. Violators would face imprisonment of up to five years and a fine of up to 10,000 Euros.

If Benedict wishes to develop an effective response to Islam, he must do more than demand reciprocity. He must forthrightly challenge the entrenched attitudes Catholic leaders have regarding Islam. He should start by publicly disciplining an obnoxious cardinal who can never resist a camera, a microphone or a notepad.

This article was published online with the deliberately attention-getting title "Oriana Fallaci Has Enrolled in the Society of Jesus" but do not be put off or misled by the cheap trick.

In the article found on www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=48741&eng=y -
Sandro Magister calls attention to an article by one of the Jesuit editors of La Civiltà Cattolica "which makes an extremely critical analysis of Islam, one very similar to that of the famous author – whose work Benedict XVI reads with admiration".

Even in the excerpt presented here, this is one of the best, most cohesive presentations I have read about what I call "the world's problem with Islam". It is also the most chilling. A must-read...
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Analyzing the Islamic question
by Sandro Magister

ROMA, April 10, 2006 – One of the four topics considered by Benedict XVI and the cardinals during their day “of reflection and prayer” at the last consistory, on March 23, was Islam.

Or, more precisely: “the position of the Catholic Church, and of the Holy See, in the face of Islam today.”

The discussion was held in private, but some of the cardinals afterward remarked that much more concern was shown than in the past over the challenge that Islam presents to Christianity and the West, and that there was general agreement with Benedict XVI’s energetic opposition to terrorism and the violation of religious liberty.

One month earlier, on February 20, Pope Joseph Ratzinger received Morocco’s new ambassador to the Holy See, Ali Achour, and made a vigorous appeal for the rejection of violence and for full respect for religious liberty, “in a reciprocal manner in all societies.”

And on March 22, on the eve of the consistory, the pope, acting through his secretary of state Angelo Sodano, had sent to the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, an urgent request for the liberation of Abdul Rahman, an Afghan citizen condemned to death for converting to Christianity.

Rahman was in fact freed and transferred to Italy under protective custody. And he has Benedict XVI to thank for that.

But can this more energetic approach to the question of Islam also be found in the analysis the Church makes of the phenomenon?

The answer is yes. One outstanding proof of this is an essay that appeared in the most recent edition of Studium, an authoritative Italian bimonthly journal on Catholic culture founded in 1906, which is printed by the publishing house of the same name and directed by two scholars of great prestige: Vincenzo Cappelletti, a philosopher of science and director of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia, and Francesco Paolo Casavola, a jurist and former president of the constitutional court. The dedicated collaborators of Studium have included Giovanni Battista Montini, who became pope under the name of Paul VI.

The essay is entitled “The Islamic Question,” and occupies 30 pages of the journal. It is accompanied by extensive footnotes, and is featured prominently beginning with the cover, which depicts a minaret standing out among the skyscrapers of a Western city.

But the really interesting thing about the article is its authors, Roberto A.M. Bertacchini and Piersandro Vanzan, and in particular the latter of these. Vanzan is a Jesuit, a professor of pastoral theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and above all he is part of the college of writers for La Civiltà Cattolica, the magazine of the Rome Jesuits that is printed with the inspection and authorization of the Vatican authorities.

Because of its explosive contents, it was unthinkable that the essay by Bertacchini and Vanzan would be published in a magazine strictly connected to the Holy See by statute, and representative of its official stance.

But the fact that the essay’s principal author is a Jesuit from La Civiltà Cattolica, and that it was published by an authoritative Catholic journal like Studium, are still important indications.

Those who have read “La rabbia e l’orgoglio [Rage and Pride]” and other writings on Islam by Oriana Fallaci – an author of worldwide fame who has lived in New York for many years – will find many points in common with hers in the essay by Bertacchini and Vanzan.

Oriana Fallaci is an extremely harsh critic of the religious and cultural factors that, in her view, feed into the Muslim world’s challenge against the West and Christianity, which she fiercely defends in spite of being a declared atheist.

She is a great admirer of Benedict XVI, who has read a number of her books and received her in a private audience last August 1 at Castel Gandolfo.

The only substantial point that separates Oriana Fallaci’s analysis from that of Bertacchini and Vanzan is that, while she maintains that Islam is incapable of reform and incompatible with the Christian West, the other two acknowledge that an integration of the two civilizations is possible, albeit extremely difficult.

And Benedict XVI is also known to acknowledge this last possibility.

Here is an extract from the much more extensive essay published in the January-February 2006 issue of Studium:


The Islamic Question
by Roberto A.M. Bertacchini and Piersandro Vanzan S.J.


Islamic terrorism is a rather complex response to the confrontation with the West, which Islam sees as a devastating, deadly threat.

At the end of the 1980’s, there was a pitched battle within the Islamist camp between the positions of Abdullah Azzam and the more extremist positions of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, a true ideologue of jihad in the form it has taken today, which includes in the category of enemy the “Herodians,” or those who collaborate with the West. On November 24, 1989, Azzam was assassinated in Peshawar, and Al-Zawahiri had an open field.

For the zealots, everything that comes from the outside is like poison to their traditional ways of life, so they hold that there is only one way to avert cultural catastrophe: expel the invader and hermetically seal off the borders, so nothing can pollute or corrupt their miniature world. This is, in part, the position of Osama Bin Laden, who is opposed to the American presence, not only in Iraq, but also in Saudi Arabia.

But this defensive program would never work against Western civilization. Unlike all previous civilizations, it is not localized or territorially circumscribed. The pervasiveness of the global village is such that there is only one way to escape its grasp: destroy it. And this is Al-Zawahiri’s ideological program, which he pursues with a complex strategy. For the formula of “modernizing Islam,” he substitutes another: “Islamizing modernity,” and therefore the West.

Within the Muslim world, Islamization means de-Westernizing everything: from political and cultural institutions to economic ones, even to the point of rethinking banking operations. On the outside, it means spreading Islam through vigorous missionary activity, in both Europe and the United States: this activity is supported above all by Saudia Arabia. But according to the most radical interpretations, Islamizing the West means violently attacking its political and economic power, without sparing the civilian population.

This pan-Islamist program might make some smirk, just as many smirked at Hitler before his political ascent. But this is a real program, which is being carried out according to a clear plan, and although it is working slowly, it is producing results.

That this is a real program can be seen in many ways.

The first piece of macroscopic data is that from Afghanistan to Kashmir to Chechnya to Ossetia to the Philippines to Saudi Arabia to Bosnia to Kosovo to Palestine to Egypt to Algeria to Morocco, sizeable groups have unleashed a war against the West. It is impossible to think that these attacks are completely independent from each other.

The second piece of macroscopic data is terrorism, especially if one has the patience to follow the thread that extends from July 7, 2005 to 1969, and the airplane from the Rome Fiumicino airport that Leila Khaled hijacked and blew up in Damascus.

1972 was the year of the Olympics in Munich and the massacre that happened there. But before that, on August 16 of that same year, an airplane headed for Tel Aviv was blown up by a record player rigged with explosives that a couple of English tourists had received from two Arabic men who had been romancing them.

Thinking about it today brings chills: Al-Qaeda is a new and closely related phenomenon. Courting two women in order to carry out an attack means being deeply steeped in ideology.

And it means that there is a connection between ideology and organization – you can’t just pick up an exploding record player at the local hardware store. Unless two Arabs happened to meet two tourists going to Tel Aviv, and then happened to get the idea of carrying out an attack, and again happened to have a friend at the ready to provide them with the surprise package. But already in 1970, six airplanes had been hijacked or blown up on the ground or during flight.

The conditions for carrying out the attack of August 16, 1972, were so complex that they required a plan constructed over years, assisted by excellent propaganda systems and economic and human resources of the highest caliber. People’s sense of morality cannot be altered in the blink of an eye. The young women were probably attractive, and there may have been some tenderness in them.

Placing this episode side by side with the massacre at the school in Beslan in 2004, with one hundred fifty children killed, with those three days of torment in the gymnasium and the torture of withholding water, with the girls who were first raped and then killed, we see a ferocity at work that is so opposed to the common sense of morality that it must be sustained by an absolute ideological commitment. And such an ideology, which has religious foundations, requires that the theologians themselves weave together the theoretical justifications for terror.

The third piece of evidence is anti-Zionism. Let’s take a look at the sequence of events. Anti-Zionism is evident in the first attacks of the 1970’s: the episode in Munich makes this utterly clear. In 1973, we had the war of Yom Kippur, which again saw the Islamic countries forced to concede defeat.

But on October 16 and 17 of that year, during the Syro-Egyptian war against Israel, OPEC held a conference in Kuwait City that established: a) the quadrupling of the price of crude oil; b) the embargo against the United States, Denmark, and Holland; c) the progressive reduction of the amount of oil extracted; d) the effort to extend the embargo to countries that would not accept their conditions; e) including among their political conditions the acceptance of the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories on the part of their economic partners, the recognition of the Palestinians, the presence of the PLO at the peace negotiations, and the application of UN resolution 242.

It is fact that the Islamic countries did not recognize the newly established state of Israel. And Saddam Hussein’s hostility towards Israel was evident to the very end. So there is a clear convergence of economic, military, and terrorist policies. After the attacks on New York, Madrid, London, and Sharm El Sheik, one would have to be blind not to see the almost maniacal sense of coordination and timing in this form of Islam.

But there was also coordination between the OPEC conference and the war of Yom Kippur. This sense of timing and coordination is a cultural message directed toward the Muslim world itself, an eminent means of asserting that Islam is united and coordinated.

The fourth indication is missionary activity, and the fifth is immigration. Aisha Farina, an Italian woman from Milan who converted to Islam and has publicly expressed her veneration for Bin Laden as for a reliable guide, said this: “Maybe all the Italians will end up converting. In any case, we will conquer you peacefully, because our numbers double every generation, but you are at zero growth.”

But Islam is advancing in other ways, too. In Mazara del Vallo in Sicily, since the end of the 1970’s there has been a Tunisian community that obtained permission to preserve its identity in all respects, with Tunisian schools, teachers sent from Tunisia, Tunisian laws, etc. So although polygamy is illegal there, it is tolerated.

In other places, Muslims open unauthorized schools, but no intervention is made. Infibulation is practiced on women, but no one is put on trial. On the whole, this creates an asymmetry among citizens before the law, by virtue of which some minorities are first protected, but then become privileged. And this proves the incompatibility of radical multiculturalism and the rule of law.

But there is an obstacle to this strategy: the American troops on Islamic soil. From this are derived two political stances that differ not according to the result they seek, but according to the strategies they employ. In fact, Bin Laden – but also Iran, and perhaps Pakistan – thinks that the oil pump will, in the end, be less influential than the nuclear trigger.

Two reasons are given for why blackmail using oil supplies cannot last for long: one is that if the price of crude is raised too high, other sources of energy will become more economically attractive.

The other is that, when the West is really put into a bind, it will react with force. That is why a different strategy is necessary, which, by bringing the war into the heart of Europe and America, blocks the use of nuclear weapons. But doing this requires an enormous amount of money and control of the political power that is now in the hands of less radical Muslims.

So the terrorist political approach proceeds along two parallel guidelines: fighting the “moderate” Islamic regimes and carrying out spectacular attacks in the West, in order to reinforce its own prestige in the eyes of the Muslim world and establish itself as a legitimate guide. If these are the plausible scenarios, the politics of George W. Bush also takes on an entirely different meaning. It is the politics of the “countertrigger.” The validity of this option is yet to be verified.

The sixth and final piece of evidence is the feelings of joy expressed by the Islamic population in the public squares, on websites, and even in the press after September 11, 2001, and also after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which the Kuwait daily “Al’Siyassa” called “a soldier sent by God.”

If one comes to the point of rejoicing at horrible things, this joy breaks off natural human solidarity and sharpens the meaning of the expression “infidel dogs.” A massacre of dogs doesn’t affect me; they are not human. This is racism, and one must begin with calling it by its name, and then arrive at the appropriate consequences.

In short, the Islamization of the West is neither a phantasm nor merely something feared: it is an intention and a fact that emerges from an objective examination of the evidence.

Moderate Islam, properly so called, does not exist because there is no institutional and moderate form of Islamic theology. There are moderate Muslims, and some of them see things with a clear and long-term perspective. But Islam itself, or rather the institutional religious culture of the Muslims, has reacted in its encounter with modernity by entrenching itself in fundamentalist positions. And this is true not only in Iran or Pakistan, but also in Egypt.

There is, therefore, an objective convergence between the trend in Islamic theology and the ideology of the terrorists. Fortunately, not all the imams have the same zeal for jihad, but the problem is that there is no moderate Islam, or rather there does not exist an Islamic theology that has integrated modernity.

This is why it would not only be prudent, as cardinal Giacomo Biffi has suggested, to discourage Islamic immigration in Europe, it would be masochistic to encourage it without demanding reciprocation in terms of integration.

Islam is not compatible with liberal democracies for stronger and deeper reasons than those that usually come to mind: it is not only a question of polygamy, the veil, Friday religious observance, etc. That is, it is not only a problem of the rules of behavior, morals, and worship. It is seen in how Islam functions on its home turf.

In Iran, there are mullahs who are appointed to supervise morality. And apart from peering into the bedroom, many more of them scrutinize the cinema, the press, and books: this is the monitoring of the public expressions of thought, which are censured if they are not in conformity with shari’a or the Qur’an and its official interpretation. A professor cannot say what he likes at school, and if an intellectual publishes his own views, he is taking a risk.

By way of explaining this issue, it is true that the Church did not abolish the index of prohibited books until Vatican II, but before it was abolished this institution did not carry any weight in civil affairs. That’s not how it is in Islam.
Religious censure is “ipso facto” civil censure, because the religious authorities have civil authority, and vice versa.

The entire spectrum of these and other related facts calls for intellectual honesty on our part, because we cannot interpret them as isolated cases devoid of general significance. And if these are not isolated cases, only one conclusion can be drawn: the word “freedom” did not exist in Arabic for centuries because Islamic civilization simply makes no provision for it (it was introduced with the word “hurriyya,” meaning “entitlement,” only in 1774, and out of the necessity of signing treaties with Westerners).

So the absolutism of Saudi Arabia or other emirates, the legal inferiority of women and so forth, are not correctible eccentricities. They are the effects of a deep-rooted cause, which cannot be removed without destroying Islam. And this is why these eccentricities are so fiercely defended: because they have an intrinsic relationship with Muslim identity. And therefore integration can be achieved with Muslims on an individual basis, but not with Islam.

Unfortunately, open and liberal society becomes paralyzed when it encounters a closed and incompatible civilization. The problem of tolerance was worked out within Christian civilization in order to defuse its internal conflicts. But its introduction made sense, because tolerance was a value recognized by all parties, in that it was able to find a theological foundation.

But in Islam, there is no foundation for tolerance in the broad sense that characterizes our secular societies. Freedom of the press does not make sense. The Middle Ages had Boccaccio, and the Renaissance had Pietro Aretino. But in a much less offensive case, Islam censured the mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam (1048-1122) for talking about wine and drunkenness. And the fact that he was rehabilitated to some extent in Iran at the end of the twentieth century does not represent the sort of openness that one would like to believe it does.

In Saudi Arabia, Islam protects itself by banning even the visible wearing of a necklace with a cross. But how can it protect itself in Europe? It’s not just the problem of girls wearing jeans. It is the problem of schools, newspapers, labor unions, women in leadership roles, cinema, television, libraries: it is the West in the sum total of its institutions that is a threat to Islam. And not because it wants to be, but simply because it exists. Like Israel.

The necessity for extensive self-criticism on relations with Islam, one that would finally emerge from a blind and suicidal “niceness,” is therefore unavoidable.

Dialoguing with those who have, in the back of their minds, the idea of Islamizing us and reducing us to dhimmi status, as subjects of an inferior order, simply makes no sense. Dialogue with moderate Muslims should not only be pursued; it should be increased, and the moderates supported in every way possible, even more so than the support that was given to the anti-Soviet resistance.

But these forms of openness must be combined with a politics of distrust and suspicion, which would tighten the net as much as possible and utterly discourage the presence of the Islamizers in Europe. These are, in fact, the ideological column of terrorism: you cannot fight the one without opposing the other.

In order to enter the banquet, one must wear the wedding garment, which we must demand of those who knock on our door. It is a garment that makes acceptance dependant upon the observance of our laws. Otherwise we cannot prevent some mosques, centers of Islamic culture, and circuits of electronic preaching from cultivating hatred against us. And that’s just it, hatred – a sentiment toward which we have for too long shown a suicidal tolerance. It is a sentiment that renders social life impossible.

And anyway, it would be too sad if everything were to end this way. We should, instead, be the prophetic proponents of a phase of tolerance and integration.

From the point of view of intercultural relations, a certain reduction of the level of secularism in Western societies is probably necessary, and this will not happen without overcoming great resistance. But from the point of view of Islamic theology, the road ahead is not so obvious, in part because their cultural centers seem like fortresses that will be difficult to expunge.

One way that might be practicable is that of returning to the great mystics of the Muslim world: for example, Rabi’a or Al-Hallaji. But Al-Hallaji was martyred by a caliph, and not by the Christians. So this problem is connected with that of the theoretical and practical possibility for a pluralistic Islamic theology. We think that the problem is a an arduous one, but that it would be equally wrong to maintain either that it is insurmountable or that it does not exist.

And this also holds true on the political level. Today’s Islam presents Europe with the problem of the civil recognition of its identity. This is a serious problem, which Christianity has not been able to present on its own behalf with the same forcefulness.

Finding a solution on a basis of equity – of harmonizing and safeguarding the rights of all religious groups in the same way – will not be easy, but it is unthinkable that a Muslim minority would be granted the civil protection of its identity and the cultural recognition that the secularism sprung from the French Enlightenment presumes to withhold from the Christian majority.

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And Catholic liberals excoriate the Church for being old-fashioned and failing to "keep up with modernity"! If these self-righteous 'progressives' had been born into fundamentalist Muslim families, do you think the Muslim world would have seen a mass martyrdom of all these 'primacy of my conscience' advocates who would rather have risked death by expressing their consciences rather than go on living under an all-pervasive religion whose teachings they cannot accept? I don't think so!!!

Our foaming-at-the-mouth liberals can indulge their false rhetoric and flamboyant gestures of defiance all they want, only because they live in free and open Christian societies. If they really want to do something that counts - not this futile yapping at bimillenial doctrine and practices - why don't they go out and perform meaningful apostolate work in the Muslim nations to 'rescue' all the hundreds of millions of Muslims who are living under conditions that the Guantanamo-Abu Ghraib bleeding-heart hypocrites have not had the balls to denounce?????

If there were reincarnation, the best punishment one could hope for them is that they be reborn very soon in the heart of a fundamentalist Muslim family!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/04/2006 23.44]

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[C]And Catholic liberals excoriate the Church for being old-fashioned and failing to "keep up with modernity"! If these self-righteous 'progressives' had been born into fundamentalist Muslim families, do you think the Muslim world would have seen a mass martyrdom of all these 'primacy of my conscience' advocates who would rather have risked death by expressing their consciences rather than go on living under an all-pervasive religion whose teachings they cannot accept? I don't think so!!!

Our foaming-at-the-mouth liberals can indulge their false rhetoric and flamboyant gestures of defiance all they want, only because they live in free and open Christian societies. If they really want to do something that counts - not this futile yapping at bimillenial doctrine and practices - why don't they go out and perform meaningful apostolate work in the Muslim nations to 'rescue' all the hundreds of millions of Muslims who are living under conditions that the Guantanamo-Abu Ghraib bleeding-heart hypocrites have not had the balls to denounce?????

If there were reincarnation, the best punishment one could hope for them is that they be reborn very soon in the heart of a fundamentalist Muslim family! [/C]

<p><font class='xsmall'>[<i>Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/04/2006 23.44</i>]</font></p>[/DIM][/QUOTE]

Well said Teresa Benedetta !: this is a grea article ... please see also my comments to this in the main forum (ISLAM thread).

STUPOR-MUNDI: I did go to "Islam" in the main forum and have added my two-bits worth to your last discussion on that thread.

Meanwhile, here is another informative contribution to the discussion by the Arab Jesuit on AsiaNews at
www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=5915
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Debate on apostasy and political Islam
by Samir Khalil Samir, SJ

Rome (AsiaNews) – Abdul Rahman’s sin of apostasy, that nearly earned him the death penalty, was resolved diplomatically with his expatriation to Italy. But the episode of Rahman’s conversion to Christianity drew many reactions in the Muslim world. I had the opportunity to read hundreds of them in Arab-language forums, with comments coming from all over the world.

To put it more precisely, I read nearly 400 comments posted on the al-Arabiya website, based in Dubai, and the Arab site of the BBC, where hundreds of interventions were posted.

Glancing through the comments, one can see that around 50% uphold Rahman’s execution because this is what the Sharia says. For at least one out of four of these, the essential reason for the death penalty for apostates is: if conversion to another religion is allowed, this would be fitnah (sedition), it would prompt others to follow this path, and thus all would become Christians. To halt this trend, which is not considered “normal”, it is better to kill. The concept of “fitnah” is Koranic (mentioned more than 30 times in the Koran) and it often justifies violence.

But then there is a minority, around 15% that insists killing is not just, for reasons we are acquainted with (the Koran says nothing about this, there are only hadiths that mention the death penalty and so on); others say also it would not have been right to kill Rahman because this would go “against human rights”.

Only rarely was there mention of an obligation of reciprocity. Someone said: “We allow a Christian to convert to Islam, so it’s only logical that we should also accept the contrary”.

Many interventions however refuted this opinion, saying “Islam is the only true religion, the last revealed religion that cancelled everything said by other religions before it. Leaving Islam would be a step backwards into error.”

There was also a beautiful testimony by a woman who signed off as an “Egyptian Muslim believer”. In a well articulated article, this woman explained that there was freedom of choice in the Koran. In fact, there are passages which say “who wants to, believes, who does not want to, does not believe.” Or else: “Is it you [Muhammad] who forces people to people?”

But the woman takes her argument further: “If we force people to believe in Islam, then we would have hypocrites in our community, who do not believe, and this would do more harm than good. Then no one would know anymore what Islam is, it would be reduced to a political expedient.” She adds: “We don’t need to increase the number of Muslims who are so only by name, but who are not Muslims in their heart and actions.”

This debate highlights the prevalent perplexity in the Islamic world, not only as regards the question of apostasy, but about other points too: suicide bombers, terrorism, family law, love and so on.

There is always a very fundamentalist faction, especially imams, who defend Sharia, jihad, and who would not be averse to resorting to brutality. Then there are moderate Muslims who do not approve of such things and who are in disagreement on many points: the value of woman, marriage… this is the real and profound crisis facing Islam: people no longer know what the true Islam is, they don’t know what to believe in because there are so many interpretations of each faith element.

Solutions are sought, but the key problem lies in the clash between traditional beliefs – dating back to the IX-X centuries – that became harder through the centuries (in the Middle Ages, Islam was much more open than it is now) and the reality lived by Muslims in Arab countries, where an evolution of customs is under way.

The second reason for conflict is down to the immensity of the Muslim world that embraces poor and backward people as well as very modern populations. If you compared the member of a tribe in Afghanistan, to a man in Beirut or Tunis, you would be looking at two worlds that are very different one from the other.

All this causes a loss of confidence and identity in the Muslim world. The fact that Islamic countries are not among the leaders of the international community; the fact there is no one authority recognized by all Muslims since the end of the Caliphate (in 1924) at the hands of Kemal Ataturk.

Many solutions to uphold Islam have been generated, mindful that a large chunk of the Muslim world is in the Third World:

- The first attempt was Arab nationalism, launched by Nasser in 1954 and continued in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq. This did not yield economic or political results;

- Then there was pan-Islamism (in 1969, the International Organisation of Islamic countries was born), and this was completely inconclusive. We Arabs say Islamic countries agree about one thing only: that they don’t agree among themselves. This irony says much about our lack of confidence;

- In the 60s and 70s, there was a wave of socialism and this also failed and ended with the advent of the 90s.

In Islamic countries, opposition always tended more toward the right; it upheld that Islam is “always” and by nature socialist. Even these ideologies failed.

The state of Israel also contributed to the failure of Islamic pretensions: a small state has always managed to stand against the bloc of all Arab and Muslim countries.

From all these failures has emerged a quasi-desperate solution, the motto of the Muslim Brothers, of Hassan al-Banna: Islam is the solution (al-Islâm huwa al-hall). Whatever the problem highlighted, Islam is the solution.

Answers to political, economic, cultural, social and family problems are sought in the Koran and in tradition. This extremist brand of pan-Islamism has no vision other than to apply Islamic law as a way of making Islam triumph and to save it from drowning. This comeback of religion, especially resorting to religion as an ideological argument for politics, is a state of affairs that serves neither politics nor religion!

[G][/G] This piece gave me some fresh insights into the (for me) still puzzling and even frightening issue of Islam today. Something to print out and re-read. Thanks.

26 April, 2006

Benedict XVI and Islam
by Samir Khalil Samir, sj
AsiaNews

For Pope Ratzinger, religions should be compared on the basis of the cultures and civilizations they generate. To avoid a clash of civilizations, Islam should distance itself from terrorist violence; the west from secularist and atheistic violence. This is the analysis of a renowned expert, who last September participated in a meeting on Islam behind closed doors with the pontiff.


Beirut (AsiaNews) - Benedict XVI is probably one of the few figures to have profoundly understood the ambiguity in which contemporary Islam is being debated and its struggle to find a place in modern society. At the same time, he is proposing a way for Islam to work toward coexistence globally and with religions, based not on religious dialogue, but on dialogue between cultures and civilizations based on rationality and on a vision of man and human nature which comes before any ideology or religion. This choice to wager on cultural dialogue explains his decision to absorb the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue into the larger Pontifical Council for Culture.

While the Pope is asking Islam for dialogue based on culture, human rights, the refusal of violence, he is asking the West, at the same time, to go back to a vision of human nature and rationality in which the religious dimension is not excluded. In this way – and perhaps only in this way – a clash of civilizations can be avoided, transforming it instead into a dialogue between civilizations.

Islamic totalitarianism differs from Christianity

To understand Benedict XVI’s thinking and Islamic religion, we must go over their evolution. A truly essential document is found in his book (written in 1996, when he was still cardinal, together with Peter Seewald), entitled “The Salt of the Earth”, in which he makes certain considerations and highlights various differences between Islam and Christian religion and the West.

First of all, he shows that there is no orthodoxy in Islam, because there is no one authority, no common doctrinal magisterium. This makes dialogue difficult: when we engage in dialogue, it is not “with Islam”, but with groups.

But the key point that he tackles is that of sharia. He points out that:

“the Koran is a total religious law, which regulates the whole of political and social life and insists that the whole order of life be Islamic. Sharia shapes society from beginning to end. In this sense, it can exploit such freedoms as our constitutions give, but it cannot be its final goal to say: Yes, now we too are a body with rights, now we are present [in society] just like the Catholics and the Protestants. In such a situation, [Islam] would not achieve a status consistent with its inner nature; it would be in alienation from itself”, which could be resolved only through the total Islamization of society. When for example an Islamic finds himself in a Western society, he can benefit from or exploit certain elements, but he can never identify himself with the non-Muslim citizen, because he does not find himself in a Muslim society.

Thus Cardinal Ratzinger saw clearly an essential difficulty of socio-political relations with the Muslim world, which comes from the totalizing conception of Islamic religion, which is profoundly different from Christianity. For this reason, he insists in saying that we cannot try to project onto Islam the Christian vision of the relationship between politics and religion. This would be very difficult: Islam is a religion totally different from Christianity and Western society and this makes does not make coexistence easy.

In a closed-door seminar, held at Castelgandolfo (September 1-2, 2005), the Pope insisted on and stressed this same idea: the profound diversity between Islam and Christianity. On this occasion, he started from a theological point of view, taking into account the Islamic conception of revelation: the Koran “descended” upon Mohammad, it is not “inspired” to Mohammad. For this reason, a Muslim does not think himself authorized to interpret the Koran, but is tied to this text which emerged in Arabia in the 7th century. This brings to the same conclusions as before: the absolute nature of the Koran makes dialogue all the more difficult, because there is very little room for interpretation, if at all.

As we can see, his thinking as cardinal extends into his vision as Pontiff, which highlights the profound differences between Islam and Christianity.

On July 24, during his stay in the Italian Aosta Valley region, he was asked if Islam can be described as a religion of peace, to which he replied “I would not speak in generic terms, certainly Islam contains elements which are in favour of peace, as it contains other elements.” Even if not explicitly, Benedict XVI suggests that Islam suffers from ambiguity vis-à-vis violence, justifying it in various cases. And he added. “We must always strive to find the better elements.” Another person asked him then if terrorist attacks can be considered anti-Christian. He reply is clear-cut: “No, generally the intention seems to be much more general and not directed precisely at Christianity.”

Dialogue between cultures is more fruitful than inter-religious dialogue

On August 20 in Cologne, Pope Benedict XVI has his first big encounter with Islam, speaking with the representatives of Muslim communities. In a relatively long speech, he says,

“I am certain that I echo your own thoughts when I bring up one of our concerns as we notice the spread of terrorism.”

I like the way he involves Muslims here, telling them that we have the same concern. He then goes on to say: “I know that many of you have firmly rejected, also publicly, in particular any connection between your faith and terrorism and have condemned it.”

Further on, he says, “terrorism of any kind is a perverse and cruel [a word that he repeats 3 times] choice which shows contempt for the sacred right to life and undermines the very foundations of all civil coexistence.” Then, again, he involves the Islamic world:

“If together we can succeed in eliminating from hearts any trace of rancour, in resisting every form of intolerance and in opposing every manifestation of violence, we will turn back the wave of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people and hinders progress towards world peace. The task is difficult but not impossible and the believer can accomplish this.”

I liked very much the way he stressed “eliminating from hearts any trace of rancour”: Benedict XVI has understood that one of the causes of terrorism is this sentiment of rancour. And further on

“Dear friends, I am profoundly convinced that we must not yield to the negative pressures in our midst, but must affirm the values of mutual respect, solidarity and peace.”

Also,

“there is plenty of scope for us to act together in the service of fundamental moral values. The dignity of the person and the defence of the rights which that dignity confers must represent the goal of every social endeavour and of every effort to bring it to fruition.”

And here we find a crucial sentence:

“This message is conveyed to us unmistakably by the quiet but clear voice of conscience.” “Only through recognition of the centrality of the person,” the Pope goes on to say, “can a common basis for understanding be found, one which enables us to move beyond cultural conflicts and which neutralizes the disruptive power of ideologies.”

Thus, even before religion, there is the voice of conscience and we must all fight for moral values, for the dignity of the person, the defence of rights.

Therefore, for Benedict XVI, dialogue must be based on the centrality of the person, which overrides both cultural and ideological contrasts. And I think that, getting under ideologies, religions can also be understood. This is one of the pillars of the Pope’s vision: it also explains why he united the Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue and the Council for Culture, surprising everyone. This choice derives from a profound vision and is not, as the press would have it, to “get rid” of Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, who deserves much recognition. That may have been part of it, but it was not the purpose.

The essential idea is that dialogue with Islam and with other religions cannot be essentially a theological or religious dialogue, except in the broad terms of moral values; it must instead be a dialogue of cultures and civilizations.

It is worth recalling that already as far back as 1999, Cardinal Ratzinger took part in an encounter with Prince Hassan of Jordan, Metropolitan Damaskinos of Geneva, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, deceased in 2003, and the Grand Rabbi of France René Samuel Sirat. Muslims, Jews and Christians were invited by a foundation for inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue to create among them a pole for cultural dialogue.

This step towards cultural dialogue is of extreme importance. In any kind of dialogue that takes place with the Muslim world, as soon as talk begins on religious topics, discussion turns to the Palestinians, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, in other words all the questions of political and cultural conflict. An exquisitely theological discussion is never possible with Islam: one cannot speak of the Trinity, of Incarnation, etc. Once in Cordoba, in 1977, a conference was held on the notion of prophecy. After having dealt with the prophetic character of Christ as seen by Muslims, a Christian made a presentation on the prophetic character of Mohammad from the Christian point of view and dared to say that the Church cannot recognize him as prophet; at the most, it could define him as such but only in a generic sense, just as one says that Marx is “prophet” of modern times. The conclusion? This question became the topic of conversation for the following three days, pre-empting the original conference.

The discussions with the Muslim world that I have found most fruitful have been those in which interdisciplinary and intercultural questions were discussed. I have taken part various times, at the invitation of Muslims, in inter-religious meetings in various parts of the Muslim world: talk was always on the encounter of religions and civilizations, or cultures.

Two weeks ago, in Isfahan (Iran), the title was “meeting of civilizations and religions.” Next September 19, at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, there will be a conference organized by the Iranian Ministry of Culture along with Italian authorities, and this too will be on the encounter between cultures, and will include the participation of former president Khatami.

The Pope has understood this important aspect: discussions on theology can take place only among a few, but now is certainly not the time between Islam and Christianity. Instead, it is a question of tackling the question of coexistence in the concrete terms of politics, economy, history, culture, customs…

Rationality and Faith

Another fact seems to me important. In an exchange that took place on October 25, 2004, between Italian historian, Ernesto Galli della Loggia, and the then Cardinal Ratzinger, the latter, at a certain point, recalled the “seeds of the Word” and underscored the importance of rationality in Christian faith, seen by Church Fathers as the fulfilment of the search for truth found in philosophy. Galli della Loggia thus said: “Your hope which is identical to faith, brings with it a logos and this logos can become an apologia, a reply that can be communicated to others,” to everyone.

Cardinal Ratzinger replied:

“We do not want to create an empire of power, but we have something that can be communicated and towards which an expectation of our reason tends. It is communicable because it belongs to our shared human nature and there is a duty to communicate on the part of those who have found a treasure of truth and love. Rationality was therefore a postulate and condition of Christianity, which remains a European legacy for comparing ourselves peacefully and positively, with Islam and also the great Asian religions.”

Therefore, for the Pope, dialogue is at this level, i.e. founded on reason. He then went on to add that

“this rationality becomes dangerous and destructive for the human creature if it becomes positivist [and here he critiques the West], which reduces the great values of our being to subjectivity [to relativism] and thus becomes an amputation of the human creature. We do not wish to impose on anyone a faith that can only be freely accepted, but as a vivifying force of the rationality of Europe, it belongs to our identity.”

Then comes the essential part:

“it has been said that we must not speak of God in the European constitution, because we must not offend Muslims and the faithful of other religions. The opposite is true – Ratzinger points out – what offends Muslims and the faithful of other religions is not talking about God or our Christian roots, but rather the disdain for God and the sacred, that separates us from other cultures and does not create the opportunity for encounter, but expresses the arrogance of diminished, reduced reason, which provokes fundamentalist reactions.”

Benedict XVI admires in Islam the certainty based on faith, which contrasts with the West where everything is relativized; and he admires in Islam the sense of the sacred, which instead seems to have disappeared in the West. He has understood that a Muslim is not offended by the crucifix, by religious symbols: this is actually a laicist polemic that strives to eliminate the religious from society. Muslims are not offended by religious symbols, but by secularized culture, by the fact that God and the values that they associate with God are absent from this civilization.

This is also my experience, when I chat every once in a while with Muslims who live in Italy. They tell me: this country offers everything, we can live as we like, but unfortunately there are no “principles” (this is the word they use). This is felt very much by the Pope, who says: let’s go back to human nature, based on rationality, on conscience, which gives an idea of human rights; on the other hand, let’s not reduce rationality to something which is impoverished, but let’s integrate the religious in rationality; the religious is part of rationality.

In this, I think that Benedict XVI has stated more exactly the vision of John Paul II. For the previous Pope, dialogue with Islam needed to be open to collaboration on everything, even in prayer. Benedict is aiming at more essential points: theology is not what counts, at least not in this stage of history; what counts is the fact that Islam is the religion that is developing more and is becoming more and more a danger for the West and the world. The danger is not in Islam in general, but in a certain vision of Islam that does never openly renounces violence and generates terrorism, fanaticism. On the other hand, he does not want to reduce Islam to a social-political phenomenon. The Pope has profoundly understood the ambiguity of Islam, which is both one and the other, which at times plays on one or the other front. And his proposal is that, if we want to find a common basis, we must get out of religious dialogue to give humanistic foundations to this dialogue, because only these are universal and shared by all human beings. Humanism is a universal factor; faiths can be factors of clash and division.

Yes to reciprocity, no to “do-goodism”

The Pope’s position never falls into the justification of terrorism and violence. Sometimes, even when it comes to Church figures, people slip into a generic kind of relativism: after all, there’s violence in all religions, even among Christians; or, violence is justified as a reply to other violence… No, this Pope has never made allusions of this kind. But, on the other hand, he has never fallen into the behaviour found in certain Christian circles in the West marked by “do-goodism” and by guilt complexes. Recently, some Muslims have asked that the Pope ask forgiveness for the Crusades, colonialism, missionaries, cartoons, etc… He is not falling in this trap, because he knows that his words could be used not for building dialogue, but for destroying it. This is the experience that we have of the Muslim world: all such gestures, which are very generous and profoundly spiritual to ask for forgiveness for historical events of the past, are exploited and are presented by Muslims as a settling of accounts: here, they say, you recognize it even yourself: you’re guilty. Such gestures never spark any kind of reciprocity.

At this point, it is worth recalling the Pope’s address to the Moroccan Ambassador (February 20, 2006), when he alluded to “respect for the convictions and religious practices of others so that, in a reciprocal manner, the exercise of freely-chosen religion is truly assured to all in all societies.” These are two small but very important affirmations on the reciprocity of religious freedoms rights between Western and Islamic countries and on the freedom to change religion, something which is prohibited in Islam. The nice thing is that the Pope dared to say them: in the political and Church world, people are often afraid to mention such things. It’s enough to take note of the silence that reigns when it comes to the religious freedom violations that exist in Saudi Arabia.

I really like this Pope, his balance, his clearness. He makes no compromise: he continues to underline the need to announce the Gospel in the name of rationality and therefore he does not let himself be influenced by those who fear and speak out against would-be proselytism. The Pope asks always for guarantees that Christian faith can be “proposed” and that it can be “freely chosen.”

[QUOTE][DIM]7pt[=DIM]Scritto da: Samir Khalil Samir, sj

At this point, it is worth recalling the Pope’s address to the Moroccan Ambassador (February 20, 2006), when he alluded to “respect for the convictions and religious practices of others so that, in a reciprocal manner, the exercise of freely-chosen religion is truly assured to all in all societies.” These are two small but very important affirmations on the reciprocity of religious freedoms rights between Western and Islamic countries and on the freedom to change religion, something which is prohibited in Islam. The nice thing is that the Pope dared to say them: in the political and Church world, people are often afraid to mention such things. It’s enough to take note of the silence that reigns when it comes to the religious freedom violations that exist in Saudi Arabia.
[/DIM][/QUOTE]

[COLORE]FBFB00[=COLORE]I noted that the pope insisted on reciprocity after a series of murders of priests have occured in Muslim countries, especially that of Don Andrea Santoro in Turkey on Feb 5.

Reciprocity was also stressed in the meeting before the 24 March consistory.[/COLORE]
[QUOTE][DIM]7pt[=DIM]Scritto da: Samir Khalil Samir, sj

I really like this Pope, his balance, his clearness. He makes no compromise: he continues to underline the need to announce the Gospel in the name of rationality and therefore he does not let himself be influenced by those who fear and speak out against would-be proselytism. The Pope asks always for guarantees that Christian faith can be “proposed” and that it can be “freely chosen.”

[/DIM][/QUOTE]

[COLORE]FBFB00[=COLORE]Well said, and welcome to the club, Samir. [/COLORE]

@benafan : thanks for this article.

From an Australian newspaper, The Age -
www.theage.com.au/news/national/the-pope-a-catholic-adherents-of-all-faiths-should-be-glad-he-is/2006/04/18/1145344080...

The Pope a Catholic?
Adherents of all faiths
should be glad he is[
C]By Waleed Aly

A year ago today, white smoke wafted from the Sistine Chapel's chimney, signalling the appointment of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as successor to Pope John Paul II.

But amid much Catholic celebration, commentators internationally indulged in an inordinate amount of speculation on the damage Ratzinger's appointment might do to Catholic-Muslim relations.

On one level, it is absurd that such a significant concern surrounding the appointment of a new Catholic head would be his attitudes towards another faith. But on another, the importance is clear. These are the two largest religious communities on the planet, together constituting about 40 per cent of the world's population. They co-inhabit vast regions, particularly in Europe, Africa and Asia.

As long as religion remains a powerful tool in shaping attitudes and motivating action, it will possess both great constructive and destructive power. The world therefore has an interest in ensuring minimal friction in the Catholic-Muslim interface.

Indeed, that had been a central theme in John Paul's pontificate. No other pope in history has done so much to build harmonious bridges to the Muslim world. This was a man who apologised officially for the Crusades and the transgressions of colonialism.

In 1986 he visited Morocco, becoming the first pope to visit a Muslim country, and making conciliatory statements that echoed the Koranic message that Muslims and Christians believe in the same God. In a highly symbolic moment in 2001, he became the first pope to enter and pray in a mosque. The scene was equally symbolic: Damascus' famous Umayyad mosque, which for centuries had functioned as a mosque on Fridays and church on Sundays. Politically, he won many admirers throughout the Muslim world through his opposition to the Iraq war.

Such gestures resonated powerfully with Muslims, which explains the genuine, heartfelt sentiments of sadness and gratitude expressed by Muslim organisations across the world upon John Paul's passing.

But Joseph Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict XVI, was widely fancied to bring much of this work undone. Partly this was because, as a cardinal, he had not demonstrated the same passion for outreach to Muslims as other mooted candidates such as Venice's Angelo Scola, Milan's Dionigi Tettamanzi or Nigeria's Francis Arinze.

Partly, too, it stemmed from Ratzinger's opposition to Turkey's inclusion in what he called the "Christian-rooted EU".

Principally, however, this popular forecast of interfaith doom was based on Ratzinger's reputation as "God's rottweiler", a dogmatic defender of orthodoxy and the supremacy of Catholicism.

Here we were regularly reminded that Ratzinger had been the driving force behind a document entitled Dominus Iesus, published in 2000, which asserted unequivocally that Christianity alone was the truth.

Precisely why anyone thought this should pose a fatal problem is unclear. It is emphatically unremarkable that a cardinal would make an exclusive claim to truth on behalf of Christianity, which by definition implies deficiencies in other theologies. Indeed, as much is claimed by proponents of most great religious traditions.

Yet for the predominantly secular international commentariat, this made conflict inevitable. Such conventional pessimism simply served to demonstrate a comprehensive misunderstanding of the basis for interfaith dialogue. It assumes that fruitful and harmonious interfaith relationships can exist only in a world of postmodern relativism. This presents a false dichotomy: that people either agree or live in hostility.

But even John Paul was never a relativist. His acknowledgement of theological similarities never led him to deny differences or surrender his conviction of the exclusive truth of Christianity. If anything, this only made his interfaith engagement more meaningful.

If any of this needed demonstration, Benedict's first year has provided it. The very day after his installation Mass, in one of his first official acts as Pope, he made history by inviting Muslim leaders to the Vatican, pledging to build "bridges of friendship" between Catholics and Muslims. He even condemned the publication of now infamous cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in European newspapers.

Those searching for signs of antagonism will find little more from Benedict than his comments in response to a large Saudi-funded mosque being built in Rome, noting the absence of reciprocity in constructing churches in Saudi Arabia. Really, more an even-handed observation than vitriolic belligerence.

Few would expect Pope Benedict to match his predecessor's phenomenal efforts in interfaith relations. Even so, with no sign of relativism on the horizon, he has made an impressive start. Perhaps now we can feel comfortable with the fact that the Pope is Catholic.

Waleed Aly is a Melbourne lawyer and writer.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/04/2006 6.40]

[This article isn't about Islam but about a surprising foray by the Catholic Church in an Islamic country.]


Pakistan screens first-ever Catholic film; plans made to realize Catholic TV, radio

Karachi, May. 01, 2006 (CNA) - Pakistan screened its first-ever Catholic film this week. It “is a historical moment, not only for the Archdiocese of Karachi but for the whole of Pakistan; it is also a start of a new chapter of our history", said Archbishop Evarist Pinto.

The archbishop of Karachi was speaking to 450 guests at the premier of Muhjza [Miracle], held in St. Paul Parish in Mehmudabad, Karachi.

“The aim of Muhjza is to evangelize through the media and it is the first attempt, not only in this diocese but in the whole country,” he said. “The message is simple yet very profound.”

The 40-minute made-for-television movie is about two Catholic parents, who have problems with their two children. They succeed at opening a channel of dialogue through prayer and fasting, thus resolving the situation. Some private television stations have shown interest in showing the film “later on,” reported AsiaNews.

The project was realized thanks to the efforts of a diocesan priest, Fr. Arthur Charles.

“We feel we are a step closer to our dream to have a Catholic TV channel and radio station,” he said, according to AsiaNews. The priest has already named the two media Good News TV and FM 777.

Fr. Charles says he continues to work with “Muslim brothers and sisters” towards setting up the Catholic television and radio station.

“We are working on this, although we clearly need a long time. The only sure thing is that it will not be a channel for Catholics alone: it must be for all,” he said.

Great news, wow.... Thanks Benefan!

On www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=88377 and
www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=88448,
ZENIT ran this two-part interview with a Jesuit expert on Islam who is very blunt about certain immutable facts about Islam that the non-Islamic world must recognize and learn to cope with. The facts are frightening.
----------------------------------------------------------------

What the Islamic Riots Reveal
Interview With Father Mitch Pacwa

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama, MAY 2, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The recent riots related to the publication of anti-Muslim cartoons in Western newspapers were widely viewed as a popular religious reaction to offensive depictions of the prophet Mohammed.

But according to one expert on Islam, the riots were incited by governments to manipulate both the West and the Muslim world for political purposes.

Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa is a theologian, Middle East scholar and co-contributor to the "Islam and Christianity" DVD series.

He spoke with ZENIT about how the cartoon riots are part of radical Islam's attempt to seize control of the Muslim world -- and what it all means for the West.

Many observers see the rise of radical Islam as a response to a lack of economic opportunity or a defense against encroaching secular values from the West due to globalization.

But Fr. Pacwa sees the situation differently. An expert on Islam, he believes that the radical Muslim movements are reactions to the failed secular Arab nationalist states of the 20th century, whose leaders are vying to become the next Sultan or caliph who will restore an Islamic empire that will wage jihad.

What were your thoughts as Muslim riots over a cartoon of Mohammed erupted across Europe, the Middle East and Asia?
There are two thoughts that I would have.

First, a cartoon of Mohammed in itself is a grave insult to Islam. And so it is easy for Muslims to be stirred into action.

But that is my second thought: They were stirred into action apparently by the governments of Syria and Iran who want the attitude on the street to be one of incitement against the West.

Now the problem of course is that the people who did the cartoons were not representatives of Christianity. They were secular people who have a strong commitment, and perhaps even an absolute commitment, to freedom of speech in the way that the West is accustomed to it.

Unfortunately, the people on the street blamed Christians because they do not make the distinction between secularized Europeans and religious Christians.

So, one of the horrendous things that happened because of the instigation of the violence is that quite a number of Christians were killed, including at least two priests, one in Nigeria and one in Turkey.

This is a kind of lack of responsibility by secular press people over the results of their work. Should they have to be concerned about this type of freedom of speech? Should they worry about Muslim reactions?
In one sense they can say they are not responsible, but their lack of responsibility led to hundreds of deaths. I think they do need to be more responsible toward Muslim sensibilities.

On the other hand, in their reporting about this, they also need to pay attention to the Muslims themselves. They have to report the way Syria, Iran, perhaps al-Qaida, are instigating these riots for their purposes.

The results of these riots of course lead to nothing. They don't really produce any positive results, except maybe to bully the West into going along with Muslim sensitivities. But it is not going to really accomplish much.

What does this outburst reveal about the state of the Muslim world and its relationship with the West?
I think one first reaction to the state of the Muslim world and its relationship with the West is that the Muslim world has been affected still to this day by the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. And they have been making social experiments trying to cope with that collapse.

One attempt has been the forms of Arab nationalism -- the Baath party in Syria inspired by Michel Aflaq in the late 1920s; its branch, the Baath party in Iraq which is also a nationalist party, not a religious party, and which had also made overtures to national socialism in Germany, the Nazi party, and saw themselves as some sort of ally; the PLO, which is another nationalist group; and the followers of Egypt's former President Nasser. The nationalist party in Egypt once had great influence, but not as much anymore.

Those various nationalistic movements had tremendous impact on the Arab world as a way to try to achieve national identity where it had not existed before.

Prior to nationalism, Muslims saw themselves as primarily Muslims and members of the Ummah, the Muslim people. And the result is that nationalism took on as an idea to modernize the world and to give national identities to these new countries -- Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Jordan, though Jordan was not as affected by such nationalism.

So these were one style of reaction to the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. But they became far more oppressive than the Sultan had been.

So what you see now is a religious reaction against the nationalistic ideas, which are perceived as having been Western ideas imported to the Middle East. This outburst shows the use of religious sentiment as the motivating force attempting to go back to a religious identity, even though nation-states still exist.

One of the ways it is being developed is that a number of people in the Middle East are trying to regain an Islamic past ideal through a new Islamic state rather than a nationalist state.

And as a result, they are instigating followers and there are all kinds of sects, the leaders of which want to become the next Sultan. That is a part of the issue. It will be a serious question -- which sect or what individual will be able to lead the people and be the next caliph or the next Sultan.

That is partly underlying some of this tension. And different groups -- whether it be the Salafi party from Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt, al-Qaida, the Wahhabi sect in Arabia, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine, or the various movements going on in Iraq and Iran -- are all vying for that kind of control.

You also have Abu Sayyaf, which means father of the sword, in the Philippines; they are all making the same kind of move, and that is part of the present state of Islam.

The radical groups may represent only about 15% of Muslims but it is an extremely active part, while the great majority are generally unwilling or afraid to stand up to the radicals, because the radicals will kill them as being infidels. That is how bad it is gotten in many parts of the Muslim world. So it is a very risky situation.

Given the secularized, and sometimes anti-religious, stance of Western Europe today, what difficulties does that pose for the vast majority of Muslims who try to live in peace with the society around them?
The vast majority of Muslims do keep themselves away from the religious parties. But, the majority of that majority, while unwilling to fight in jihad, will protect those who do, and that is something that is very important to understand.

While it is only 15% of the population that is radicalized in Islam, you have the majority of the rest who are very willing to hide them, protect them, feed them, and even if they wouldn't actively join them, they would take care of them. This seems to be the study of Tony Blankley in his book the "The West's Last Chance." This is something that is very difficult.

The moderate Muslims who try to live in peace in the society around them still have a couple of difficulties.

For one, Islam is not prone to democracy or secularism. There is no such idea of a secular society within Islam. Everyone has to be in some way related to the religious reality and that is part of the understanding of God. So, the majority of Muslims will still not be able to fit into a secular society around them in Europe.

Also, they will have pressure put on them either to convert to radical Islam or to support them, which will be another tension. And that is why a number of the mullahs and the imams in the West and Europe say that Muslims may not vote -- the elections are not Islamic, so no Muslim should vote. They are getting some pressure not to participate.

Also they are encouraged not to marry non-Muslims, except for girls, who are encouraged to become Muslim along with the children. But they typically will send their children to their country of origin to marry Muslim girls.

So this is something that indicates how little moderate Muslims fit in to the non-Muslim world, and this is going to be a situation that is going to continue. And I think it is typical of Muslims that their commitment to Islam is stronger than their commitment to their local government.

The only group that would be different is the Druze. The Druze believe they are required to follow whatever leadership there is in the local government and give their allegiance to them.

But apart from the Druze -- by the way the Druze are a sect, and not considered very Muslim by the other Muslims -- the other Muslims will simply not feel themselves to be part of that world and that is going to be difficult.

Given the Muslim-Vatican cooperation at U.N. conferences in the past decade or so -- where they stood up against abortion and anti-family policies -- does the Catholic Church enjoy any special advantages in reaching out to Islam?
There are some special advantages that the Catholic Church does have because we've had Catholics and Eastern Orthodox living in the Muslim world for centuries.

And there is a certain type of relationship, usually one of getting along, but sometimes breaking out into violence as a reaction against Catholics.

But this kind of cooperation at U.N. conferences between Muslim countries and the Vatican is not seen as a way to make peace with each other, but instead to help each other attain their own ends.

And I don't think in the long term that the Muslims in the street are going to be able to say that "we should be friendlier with Catholics."

This is a key to understanding the Muslim world. They divide the world into two parts: the home of Islam, the "dar al-Islam"; and the "dar al-harb," the home of war.

If you are in a Muslim country where Shariah is the law and Muslims are the majority, you are in the home of Islam. If you are in a non-Muslim country, then you are in the home of war or the place of war. This distinction is a very, very basic one.

There will be polite cooperation and sometimes very positive cooperation at various levels and that can be marvelous. But we also have to keep in mind that that background of dividing the world into the home of Islam and the home of war is very ancient in Islam and is very basic, so I don't know about any special advantages in reaching out to Islam.

For instance, in Indonesia, where there are quite a few Muslim converts to Catholicism, you also have a great deal of persecution of Catholics and lots of Catholics are killed there.

And also in some places where Muslims become Christians, whether Orthodox or Catholic, they are subject to tremendous pressure, if not death, for doing so. I don't think that has changed and we have to be very realistic about that mentality.

An unusual question, if we may: Are there any lessons that the Church can learn from Islam today vis-à-vis the Muslims' entrance into Western society? For example, is there a positive side to keeping a bit distant from secular society?
Yes, this is one thing that we need to learn from Muslims. Is it possible for us to have a distance from Western society? We do not and should not judge the Gospel by the norms of secular society. Muslims certainly don't do that and they are wise in that.

We allow secular norms to invade the Gospel message at our own peril, and we allow too much of our secular society to influence us. We need to be able to stand up against modern society and not consider modernity inevitable.

Some of modernity needs to be turned back, and that has been one of the issues that Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have been talking about for a long time as well as others.

So we have to have our own identity, and that when it comes to the Gospel or the secular society, we stick with the Gospel of Christ just as the Muslims are very wise to stick to their own religious identity rather than the modern world.

What do you think is the best way for Catholics to respond to Muslims and Islam?
First, we must start out with a stance of respect for Muslims and their commitment to God. If we have no respect for them, then we cannot do anything helpful at all.

Second, I think that we also have to understand our own identity over and against Islam, and not be cowed or treated like the weak kid in the face of bullyism. And that is just what these riots are. When you have bullies you have to stand up to them and face them down.

So you show respect, you don't go looking for a fight, but neither do you back down from it when it is brought to your door.

So I think that we should engage in discussion about the problems in the Koran, what it says about Jesus and Mary, what it says about God and its mistaken notion of the Trinity.

For instance, the Koran understands the Trinity to be God, Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary; that is not what we believe. Let's make sure we clarify that we believe in one God in three Persons. Not three gods. And these are very basic things. We are going to have right-upfront disagreements.

For instance, the Koran apparently, at least in most ways that it is interpreted -- but not necessarily so -- indicates in Chapter 4 that Jesus did not die on the cross but another man died in his place.

We have to say look, we believe Jesus Christ truly died and the Blessed Mother and the Apostle John were witnesses to this, and the other apostles were witnesses to his resurrection.

The Koran also claims that Christians distorted the New Testament and the Gospel of Jesus. Please show us where we did that.

You can't just get away with making a statement that we changed the New Testament for personal gain, when in fact the ones who passed on the New Testament died for Jesus Christ and the Gospel that he gave them. They didn't make gains -- they suffered.

So this is the kind of thing that we have to make very clear and stand for without trying to pick an argument or pick a fight, but neither can we back down from the claims that Islam makes. And that is part of our own willingness to be adults and clear about our own identity and willing to proclaim the Gospel of Christ.

My own hope of course as a Christian is the same hope of Muslims. I hope that they will all become Christians. They of course hope that we become Muslims.

How are we going to deal with that difference and speak to each other honestly? Forthrightly and with a sense of absolute respect that God has chosen to love us all infinitely. The only way God knows how to love is infinitely. This is what the Lord commands us to do, to love with our whole being.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/05/2006 21.27]

This is an important post to read and digest, isn't it....
Thanks Teresa.

[Australia's cardinal is in hot water over Islam.]


PM stands by Pell after Islam comments
Date: 05/05/06
By Amy Coopes
From AAP

Prime Minister John Howard is standing by Australia's top Catholic, as Islamic and other groups question Cardinal George Pell's remarks about the intolerance of the Muslim faith and the Koran's "invocations to violence".

Dr Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, defended comments he made in an address to US Catholic business leaders in Florida in February, which were published this week.

In his speech, Cardinal Pell questioned the tolerance of Islam.

"Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited," Dr Pell said in the address.

He also said there were "so many" invocations to violence in the religion's holy text that he gave up counting after about 70 pages.

He stood by these remarks, saying the criticisms were "cliches, smokescreens" to distract and divert attention from the real issues.

"Islamic terrorists are not a figment of anyone's imagination and the history of relations with Islam is full of conflict," he said in a statement.

"We need a lot of continuing dialogue, based on truth, history and the current situation.

"I continue to be completely committed to dialogue with Muslims, to supporting moderate forces on all sides ... and recommend that people read the Koran ... and judge for themselves."

Islamic Council of NSW spokesman Ali Roude welcomed Dr Pell's recognition of the need for greater understanding of Islam, but urged him to exercise his leadership more carefully.

"We welcome (Dr) Pell's personal efforts to understand Islam but we caution him to avoid making statements that he cannot support with evidence, and that which is likely to reinforce tensions and disharmony within Australian communities," Mr Roude said.

Mr Howard said he knew for a fact that Cardinal Pell has been "a strong proponent of good relations between Christianity and Islam".

"I think any kind of analysis that somebody makes from his position, and he brings a great intellect to the analysis he makes ... I'm quite sure he is not trying to be unhelpful," Mr Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

Mr Roude called on Dr Pell to spread a message of love and understanding, and not of fear and hatred "in a climate full of mistrust (and) instability brought about by organised fear-mongering".

Peace, respect and understanding were the foundations laid by Pope John Paul II for interfaith dialogue, Mr Roude said.

"We reiterate the need to continue our life's journey of dialogue and engagement so that extreme views of any sort do not gain prominence in driving a wedge between all of God's creations," he said.

HOORAY FOR CARDINAL PELL WHO TELLS IT LIKE IT IS! YET ANOTHER REASON TO ADMIRE THIS CARDINAL - ONE OF PAPA'S STRONGEST SUPPORTERS.

I found the full text of Cardinal Pell's address on Islam - a scholarly paper, actually - on the site of the Archdiocese of Sydney http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/Addresses/200627_681.shtml
and it bears full reproduction (footnotes included) as an excellent historical and cultural overview of a phenomenon that is arguably the biggest threat today to civilization as we know it.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Islam and Western Democracies

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Legatus Summit, Naples, Florida U.S.A
4/2/2006



September 11 was a wake-up call for me personally. I recognised that I had to know more about Islam.

In the aftermath of the attack one thing was perplexing. Many commentators and apparently the governments of the “Coalition of the Willing” were claiming that Islam was essentially peaceful, and that the terrorist attacks were an aberration. On the other hand one or two people I met, who had lived in Pakistan and suffered there, claimed to me that the Koran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims.

Although I had possessed a copy of the Koran for 30 years, I decided then to read this book for myself as a first step to adjudicating conflicting claims. And I recommend that you too read this sacred text of the Muslims, because the challenge of Islam will be with us for the remainder of our lives – at least.

Can Islam and the Western democracies live together peacefully? What of Islamic minorities in Western countries? Views on this question range from näive optimism to bleakest pessimism.

Those tending to the optimistic side of the scale seize upon the assurance of specialists that jihad is primarily a matter of spiritual striving, and that the extension of this concept to terrorism is a distortion of koranic teaching[1].

They emphasise Islam’s self-understanding as a “religion of peace”. They point to the roots Islam has in common with Judaism and Christianity and the worship the three great monotheistic religions offer to the one true God.

There is also the common commitment that Muslims and Christians have to the family and to the defence of life, and the record of co-operation in recent decades between Muslim countries, the Holy See, and countries such as the United States in defending life and the family at the international level, particularly at the United Nations.

Many commentators draw attention to the diversity of Muslim life — sunni, shi’ite, sufi, and their myriad variations — and the different forms that Muslim devotion can take in places such as Indonesia and the Balkans on the one hand, and Iran and Nigeria on the other.

Stress is laid, quite rightly, on the widely divergent interpretations of the Koran and the shari’a, and the capacity Islam has shown throughout its history for developing new interpretations. Given the contemporary situation, the wahhabist interpretation at the heart of Saudi Islamism offers probably the most important example of this, but Muslim history also offers more hopeful examples, such as the re-interpretation of the shari’a after the fall of the Ottoman empire, and particularly after the end of the Second World War, which permitted Muslims to emigrate to non-Muslim countries[2].

Optimists also take heart from the cultural achievements of Islam in the Middle Ages, and the accounts of toleration extended to Jewish and Christian subjects of Muslim rule as “people of the Book”.

Some deny or minimise the importance of Islam as a source of terrorism, or of the problems that more generally afflict Muslim countries, blaming factors such as tribalism and inter-ethnic enmity; the long-term legacy of colonialism and Western domination; the way that oil revenues distort economic development in the rich Muslim states and sustain oligarchic rule; the poverty and political oppression in Muslim countries in Africa; the situation of the Palestinians, and the alleged “problem” of the state of Israel; and the way that globalisation has undermined or destroyed traditional life and imposed alien values on Muslims and others.

Indonesia and Turkey are pointed to as examples of successful democratisation in Muslim societies, and the success of countries such as Australia and the United States as “melting pots”, creating stable and successful societies while absorbing people from very different cultures and religions, is often invoked as a reason for trust and confidence in the growing Muslim populations in the West.

The phenomenal capacity of modernity to weaken gradually the attachment of individuals to family, religion and traditional ways of life, and to commodify and assimilate developments that originate in hostility to it (think of the way the anti-capitalist counter-culture of the 1960s and 70s was absorbed into the economic and political mainstream — and into consumerism), is also relied upon to “normalise” Muslims in Western countries, or at least to normalise them in the minds of the non-Muslim majority.

Reasons for optimism are also sometimes drawn from the totalitarian nature of Islamist ideology, and the brutality and rigidity of Islamist rule, exemplified in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Just as the secular totalitarianisms of the twentieth century (Nazism and Communism) ultimately proved unsustainable because of the enormous toll they exacted on human life and creativity, so too will the religious totalitarianism of radical Islam. This assessment draws on a more general underlying cause for optimism, or at least hope, for all of us, namely our common humanity, and the fruitfulness of dialogue when it is entered with good will on all sides. Most ordinary people, both Muslim and non-Muslim, share the desire for peace, stability and prosperity for themselves and their families.

On the pessimistic side of the equation, concern begins with the Koran itself. In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages.

I will return to the problems of Koranic interpretation later in this paper, but in coming to an appreciation of the true meaning of jihad, for example, it is important to bear in mind what the scholars tell us about the difference between the suras (or chapters) of the Koran written during Muhammad’s thirteen years in Mecca, and those that were written after he had based himself at Medina.

Irenic interpretations of the Koran typically draw heavily on the suras written in Mecca, when Muhammad was without military power and still hoped to win people, including Christians and Jews, to his revelation through preaching and religious activity. After emigrating to Medina, Muhammad formed an alliance with two Yemeni tribes and the spread of Islam through conquest and coercion began[3]. One calculation is that Muhammad engaged in 78 battles, only one of which, the Battle of the Ditch, was defensive[4]. The suras from the Medina period reflect this decisive change and are often held to abrogate suras from the Meccan period[5].

The predominant grammatical form in which jihad is used in the Koran carries the sense of fighting or waging war. A different form of the verb in Arabic means “striving” or “struggling”, and English translations sometimes use this form as a way of euphemistically rendering the Koran’s incitements to war against unbelievers[6].

But in any case, the so-called “verses of the sword” (sura 95 and 936)[7], coming as they do in what scholars generally believe to be one of the last suras revealed to Muhammad[8], are taken to abrogate a large number of earlier verses on the subject (over 140, according to one radical website[9]).

The suggestion that jihad is primarily a matter of spiritual striving is also contemptuously rejected by some Islamic writers on the subject. One writer warns that “the temptation to reinterpret both text and history to suit ‘politically correct’ requirements is the first trap to be avoided”, before going on to complain that “there are some Muslims today, for instance, who will convert jihad into a holy bath rather than a holy war, as if it is nothing more than an injunction to cleanse yourself from within” [10].

The abrogation of many of the Meccan suras by the later Medina suras affects Islam’s relations with those of other faiths, particularly Christians and Jews.

The Christian and Jewish sources underlying much of the Koran[11] are an important basis for dialogue and mutual understanding, although there are difficulties. Perhaps foremost among them is the understanding of God.

It is true that Christianity, Judaism and Islam claim Abraham as their Father and the God of Abraham as their God. I accept with reservations the claim that Jews, Christians and Muslims worship one god (Allah is simply the Arabic word for god) and there is only one true God available to be worshipped!

That they worship the same god has been disputed[12], not only by Catholics stressing the triune nature of God, but also by some evangelical Christians and by some Muslims[13]. It is difficult to recognise the God of the New Testament in the God of the Koran, and two very different concepts of the human person have emerged from the Christian and Muslim understandings of God.

Think, for example, of the Christian understanding of the person as a unity of reason, freedom and love, and the way these attributes characterise a Christian’s relationship with God. This has had significant consequences for the different cultures that Christianity and Islam have given rise to, and for the scope of what is possible within them. But these difficulties could be an impetus to dialogue, not a reason for giving up on it.

The history of relations between Muslims on the one hand and Christians and Jews on the other does not always offer reasons for optimism in the way that some people easily assume.

The claims of Muslim tolerance of Christian and Jewish minorities are largely mythical, as the history of Islamic conquest and domination in the Middle East, the Iberian peninsula and the Balkans makes abundantly clear.

In the territory of modern-day Spain and Portugal, which was ruled by Muslims from 716 and not finally cleared of Muslim rule until the surrender of Granada in 1491 (although over half the peninsula had been reclaimed by 1150, and all of the peninsula except the region surrounding Granada by 1300),

Christians and Jews were tolerated only as dhimmis[14], subject to punitive taxation, legal discrimination, and a range of minor and major humiliations. If a dhimmi harmed a Muslim, his entire community would forfeit protection and be freely subject to pillage, enslavement and murder.

Harsh reprisals, including mutilations, deportations and crucifixions, were imposed on Christians who appealed for help to the Christian kings or who were suspected of having converted to Islam opportunistically.

Raiding parties were sent out several times every year against the Spanish kingdoms in the north, and also against France and Italy, for loot and slaves.

The caliph in Andalusia maintained an army of tens of thousand of Christian slaves from all over Europe, and also kept a harem of captured Christian women.

The Jewish community in the Iberian peninsula suffered similar sorts of discriminations and penalties, including restrictions on how they could dress. A pogrom in Granada in 1066 annihilated the Jewish population there and killed over 5000 people.

Over the course of its history Muslim rule in the peninsula was characterised by outbreaks of violence and fanaticism as different factions assumed power, and as the Spanish gradually reclaimed territory[15].

Arab rule in Spain and Portugal was a disaster for Christians and Jews, as was Turkish rule in the Balkans. The Ottoman conquest of the Balkans commenced in the mid-fifteenth century, and was completed over the following two hundred years.

Churches were destroyed or converted into mosques, and the Jewish and Christians populations became subject to forcible relocation and slavery.

The extension or withdrawal of protection depended entirely on the disposition of the Ottoman ruler of the time. Christians who refused to apostatize were taxed and subject to conscript labour. Where the practice of the faith was not strictly prohibited, it was frustrated — for example, by making the only legal market day Sunday.

But violent persecution was also a constant shadow. One scholar estimates that up to the Greek War of Independence in 1828, the Ottomans executed eleven Patriarchs of Constantinople, nearly one hundred bishops and several thousand priests, deacons and monks.

Lay people were prohibited from practising certain professions and trades, even sometimes from riding a horse with a saddle, and right up until the early eighteenth century their adolescent sons lived under the threat of the military enslavement and forced conversion which provided possibly one million janissary soldiers to the Ottomans during their rule.

Under Byzantine rule the peninsula enjoyed a high level of economic productivity and cultural development. This was swept away by the Ottoman conquest and replaced with a general and protracted decline in productivity[16].

The history of Islam’s detrimental impact on economic and cultural development at certain times and in certain places returns us to the nature of Islam itself. For those of a pessimistic outlook this is probably the most intractable problem in considering Islam and democracy. What is the capacity for theological development within Islam?

In the Muslim understanding, the Koran comes directly from God, unmediated. Muhammad simply wrote down God’s eternal and immutable words as they were dictated to him by the Archangel Gabriel. It cannot be changed, and to make the Koran the subject of critical analysis and reflection is either to assert human authority over divine revelation (a blasphemy), or question its divine character.

The Bible, in contrast, is a product of human co-operation with divine inspiration. It arises from the encounter between God and man, an encounter characterised by reciprocity, which in Christianity is underscored by a Trinitarian understanding of God (an understanding Islam interprets as polytheism).

This gives Christianity a logic or dynamic which not only favours the development of doctrine within strict limits, but also requires both critical analysis and the application of its principles to changed circumstances. It also requires a teaching authority.

Of course, none of this has prevented the Koran from being subjected to the sort of textual analysis that the Bible and the sacred texts of other religions have undergone for over a century, although by comparison the discipline is in its infancy. Errors of fact, inconsistencies, anachronisms and other defects in the Koran are not unknown to scholars, but it is difficult for Muslims to discuss these matters openly.

In 2004 a scholar who writes under the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg published a book in German setting out detailed evidence that the original language of the Koran was a dialect of Aramaic known as Syriac. Syriac or Syro-Aramaic was the written language of the Near East during Muhammad’s time, and Arabic did not assume written form until 150 years after his death.

Luxenberg argues that the Koran that has come down to us in Arabic is partially a mistranscription of the original Syriac. A bizarre example he offers which received some attention at the time his book was published is the Koran’s promise that those who enter heaven will be “espoused” to “maidens with eyes like gazelles”; eyes, that is, which are intensely white and black (suras 4454 and 5220).

Luxenberg’s meticulous analysis suggests that the Arabic word for maidens is in fact a mistranscription of the Syriac word for grapes. This does strain common sense. Valiant strivings to be consoled by beautiful women is one thing, but to be heroic for a packet of raisins seems a bit much!

Even more explosively, Luxenberg suggests that the Koran has its basis in the texts of the Syriac Christian liturgy, and in particular in the Syriac lectionary, which provides the origin for the Arabic word “koran”. As one scholarly review observes, if Luxenberg is correct the writers who transcribed the Koran into Arabic from Syriac a century and a half after Muhammad’s death transformed it from a text that was “more or less harmonious with the New Testament and Syriac Christian liturgy and literature to one that [was] distinct, of independent origin”[17]. This too is a large claim.

It is not surprising that much textual analysis is carried out pseudonymously. Death threats and violence are frequently directed against Islamic scholars who question the divine origin of the Koran. The call for critical consideration of the Koran, even simply of its seventh-century legislative injunctions, is rejected out of hand by hard-line Muslim leaders.

Rejecting calls for the revision of school textbooks while preaching recently to those making the hajj pilgrimage to Mount Arafat, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia told pilgrims that “there is a war against our creed, against our culture under the pretext of fighting terrorism. We should stand firm and united in protecting our religion. Islam’s enemies want to empty our religion [of] its content and meaning. But the soldiers of God will be victorious”[18].

All these factors I have outlined are problems, for non-Muslims certainly, but first and foremost for Muslims themselves. In grappling with these problems we have to resist the temptation to reduce a complex and fluid situation to black and white photos. Much of the future remains radically unknown to us.

It is hard work to keep the complexity of a particular phenomenon steadily in view and to refuse to accept easy answers, whether of an optimistic or pessimistic kind.

Above all else we have to remember that like Christianity, Islam is a living religion, not just a set of theological or legislative propositions. It animates the lives of an estimated one billion people in very different political, social and cultural settings, in a wide range of devotional styles and doctrinal approaches. Human beings have an invincible genius for variation and innovation.

Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited. To stop at this proposition, however, is to neglect the way these facts are mitigated or exacerbated by the human factor.

History has more than its share of surprises. Australia lives next door to Indonesia, the country with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world[19]. Indonesia has been a successful democracy, with limitations, since independence after World War II.

Islam in Indonesia has been tempered significantly both by indigenous animism and by earlier Hinduism and Buddhism, and also by the influence of sufism. As a consequence, in most of the country (except in particular Aceh) Islam is syncretistic, moderate and with a strong mystical leaning.

The moderate Islam of Indonesia is sustained and fostered in particular by organisations like Nahdatul Ulama, once led by former president Abdurrahman Wahid, which runs schools across the country, and which with 30-40 million members is one of the largest Muslim organisations in the world.

The situation in Indonesia is quite different from that in Pakistan, the country with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. 75 per cent of Pakistani Muslims are Sunni, and most of these adhere to the relatively more-liberal Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence (for example, Hanafi jurisprudence does not consider blasphemy should be punishable by the state).

But religious belief in Pakistan is being radicalised because organisations, very different from Indonesia’s Nahdatul Ulama, have stepped in to fill the void in education created by years of neglect by military rulers.

Pakistan spends only 1.8 per cent of GDP on education. 71 per cent of government schools are without electricity, 40 per cent are without water, and 15 per cent are without a proper building. 42 per cent of the population is literate, and this proportion is falling. This sort of neglect makes it easy for radical Islamic groups with funding from foreign countries to gain ground.

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of religious schools (or madrasas) opening in Pakistan, and it is estimated that they are now educating perhaps 800,000 students, still a small proportion of the total, but with a disproportionate impact[20].

These two examples show that there is a whole range of factors, some of them susceptible to influence or a change in direction, affecting the prospects for a successful Islamic engagement with democracy. Peace with respect for human rights are the most desirable end point, but the development of democracy will not necessarily achieve this or sustain it.

This is an important question for the West as well as for the Muslim world. Adherence to what George Weigel has called “a thin, indeed anorexic, idea of procedural democracy”[21] can be fatal here.

It is not enough to assume that giving people the vote will automatically favour moderation, in the short term at least[22]. Moderation and democracy have been regular partners in Western history, but have not entered permanent and exclusive matrimony and there is little reason for this to be better in the Muslim world, as the election results in Iran last June and the elections in Palestine in January reminded us. There are many ways in which President Bush’s ambition to export democracy to the Middle East is a risky business. In its influence on both religion and politics, the culture is crucial.

There are some who resist this conclusion vehemently. In 2002, the Nobel Prize Economist Amartya Sen took issue with the importance of culture in understanding the radical Islamic challenge, arguing that religion is no more important than any other part or aspect of human endeavour or interest.

He also challenged the idea that within culture religious faith typically plays a decisive part in the development of individual self-understanding. Against this, Sen argued for a characteristically secular understanding of the human person, constituted above all else by sovereign choice.

Each of us has many interests, convictions, connections and affiliations, “but none of them has a unique and pre-ordained role in defining [the] person”. Rather, “we must insist upon the liberty to see ourselves as we would choose to see ourselves, deciding on the relative importance that we would like to attach to our membership in the different groups to which we belong. The central issue, in sum, is freedom”.[23]

This does work for some, perhaps many, people in the rich, developed and highly urbanised Western world, particularly those without strong attachments to religion. Doubtless it has ideological appeal to many more among the elites. But as a basis for engagement with people of profound religious conviction, most of whom are not fanatics or fundamentalists, it is radically deficient. Sen’s words demonstrate that the high secularism of our elites is handicapped in comprehending the challenge that Islam poses.

I suspect one example of the secular incomprehension of religion is the blithe encouragement of large scale Islamic migration into Western nations, particularly in Europe. Of course they were invited to meet the need for labour and in some cases to assuage guilt for a colonial past.

If religion rarely influences personal behaviour in a significant way then the religious identity of migrants is irrelevant. I suspect that some anti-Christians, for example, the Spanish Socialists, might have seen Muslims as a useful counterweight to Catholicism, another factor to bring religion into public disrepute.

Probably too they had been very confident that Western advertising forces would be too strong for such a primitive religious viewpoint, which would melt down like much of European Christianity. This could prove to be a spectacular misjudgement.

So the current situation is very different from what the West confronted in the twentieth century Cold War, when secularists, especially those who were repentant communists, were well equipped to generate and sustain resistance to an anti-religious and totalitarian enemy. In the present challenge it is religious people who are better equipped, at least initially, to understand the situation with Islam.

Radicalism, whether of religious or non-religious inspiration, has always had a way of filling emptiness. But if we are going to help the moderate forces within Islam defeat the extreme variants it has thrown up, we need to take seriously the personal consequences of religious faith.

We also need to understand the secular sources of emptiness and despair and how to meet them, so that people will choose life over death. This is another place where religious people have an edge.

Western secularists regularly have trouble understanding religious faith in their own societies, and are often at sea when it comes to addressing the meaninglessness that secularism spawns. An anorexic vision of democracy and the human person is no match for Islam.

It is easy for us to tell Muslims that they must look to themselves and find ways of reinterpreting their beliefs and remaking their societies. Exactly the same thing can and needs to be said to us. If democracy is a belief in procedures alone then the West is in deep trouble.

The most telling sign that Western democracy suffers a crisis of confidence lies in the disastrous fall in fertility rates, a fact remarked on by more and more commentators. In 2000, Europe from Iceland to Russia west of the Ural Mountains recorded a fertility rate of only 1.37. This means that fertility is only at 65 per cent of the level needed to keep the population stable. In 17 European nations that year deaths outnumbered births. Some regions in Germany, Italy and Spain already have fertility rates below 1.0.

Faith ensures a future. As an illustration of the literal truth of this, consider Russia and Yemen. Look also at the different birth rates in the red and blue states in the last presidential election in the U.S.A.

In 1950 Russia, which suffered one of the most extreme forms of forced secularisation under the Communists, had about 103 million people. Despite the devastation of wars and revolution the population was still young and growing. Yemen, a Muslim country, had only 4.3 million people.

By 2000 fertility was in radical decline in Russia, but because of past momentum the population stood at 145 million. Yemen had maintained a fertility rate of 7.6 over the previous 50 years and now had 18.3 million people.

Median level United Nations forecasts suggest that even with fertility rates increasing by 50 per cent in Russia over the next fifty years, its population will be about 104 million in 2050—a loss of 40 million people. It will also be an elderly population. The same forecasts suggest that even if Yemen’s fertility rate falls 50 per cent to 3.35, by 2050 it will be about the same size as Russia — 102 million — and overwhelmingly young[24].

The situation of the United States and Australia is not as dire as this, although there is no cause for complacency. It is not just a question of having more children, but of rediscovering reasons to trust in the future.

Some of the hysteric and extreme claims about global warming are also a symptom of pagan emptiness, of Western fear when confronted by the immense and basically uncontrollable forces of nature.

Belief in a benign God who is master of the universe has a steadying psychological effect, although it is no guarantee of Utopia, no guarantee that the continuing climate and geographic changes will be benign. In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

Most of this is a preliminary clearing of the ground for dialogue and interaction with our Muslim brothers and sisters based on the conviction that it is always useful to know accurately where you are before you start to decide what you should be doing.

The war against terrorism is only one aspect of the challenge. Perhaps more important is the struggle in the Islamic world between moderate forces and extremists, especially when we set this against the enormous demographic shifts likely to occur across the world, the relative changes in population-size of the West, the Islamic and Asian worlds and the growth of Islam in a childless Europe.

Every great nation and religion has shadows and indeed crimes in their histories. This is certainly true of Catholicism and all Christian denominations. We should not airbrush these out of history, but confront them and then explain our present attitude to them.

These are also legitimate requests for our Islamic partners in dialogue. Do they believe that the peaceful suras of the Koran are abrogated by the verses of the sword? Is the programme of military expansion (100 years after Muhammad’s death Muslim armies reached Spain and India) to be resumed when possible?

Do they believe that democratic majorities of Muslims in Europe would impose Sharia law? Can we discuss Islamic history and even the hermeneutical problems around the origins of the Koran without threats of violence?

Obviously some of these questions about the future cannot be answered, but the issues should be discussed. Useful dialogue means that participants grapple with the truth and in this issue of Islam and the West the stakes are too high for fundamental misunderstandings.

Both Muslims and Christians are helped by accurately identifying what are core and enduring doctrines, by identifying what issues can be discussed together usefully, by identifying those who are genuine friends, seekers after truth and cooperation and separating them from those who only appear to be friends.

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[1]. For some examples of this, see Daniel Pipes, “Jihad and the Professors”, Commentary, November 2002.

[2]. For an account of how some Muslim jurists dealt with large-scale emigration to non-Muslim countries, see Paul Stenhouse MSC, “Democracy, Dar al-Harb, and Dar al-Islam”, unpublished manuscript, nd.

[3]. Paul Stenhouse MSC, “Muhammad, Qur’anic Texts, the Shari’a and Incitement to Violence”. Unpublished manuscript, 31 August 2002.

[4]. Daniel Pipes “Jihad and the Professors” 19. Another source estimates that Muhammad engaged in 27 (out of 38) battles personally, fighting in 9 of them. See A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq (Oxford University Press, Karachi: 1955), 659.

[5]. Stenhouse “Muhammad, Qur’anic Texts, the Shari’a and Incitement to Violence”.

[6]. Ibid.

[7]. Sura 95: “Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; for God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.”

Sura936: “And fight the unbelievers totally even as they fight you totally; and know that God is with the godfearing.” (Arberry translation).

[8]. Richard Bonney, Jihad: From Qur’an to bin Laden (Palgrave, Hampshire: 2004), 22-26.

[9].“The Will of Abdullaah Yusuf Azzam”, www.islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php? articleID=532& (dated 20 April 1986).

[10]. M. J. Akbar, The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity (Routledge, London & New York: 2002), xv.

[11]. Abraham I. Katsch, Judaism and the Koran (Barnes & Co., New York: 1962), passim.

[12]. See for example Alain Besançon, “What Kind of Religion is Islam?” Commentary, May 2004.

[13]. Daniel Pipes, “Is Allah God?” New York Sun, 28 June 2005.

[14]. On the concept of “dhimmitude”, see Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, trans. Miriam Kochman and David Littman (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison NJ: 1996).

[15]. Andrew Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non Muslims (Prometheus Books, Amherst NY: 2005), 56-75.

[16]. Ibid.

[17]. Robert R. Phenix Jr & Cornelia B. Horn, “Book Review of Christoph Luxenberg (ps.) Die syro-aramaeische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Qur’ansprache”, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, 6:1 (January 2003). See also the article on Luxenberg’s book published in Newsweek, 28 July 2004.

[18]. “Hajj Pilgrims Told of War on Islam”, www.foxnews.com, 9 January 2006.

[19]. The World Christian Database (http://worldchristian database.org) gives a considerably lower estimate of the Muslim proportion of the population (54 per cent, or 121.6 million), attributing 22 per cent of the population to adherents of Asian “New Religions”. On the WCD’s estimates, Pakistan has the world’s largest Muslim population, with 154.5 million (or approximately 96 per cent of a total population of 161 million). The CIA’s World Fact Book (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook) estimates 88 per cent of Indonesia’s population of 242 million is Muslim, giving it a Muslim population of 213 million.

The Muslim proportion of the population in Indonesia may be as low as 37-40 per cent, owing to the way followers of traditional Javanese mysticism are classified as Muslim by government authorities. See Paul Stenhouse MSC, “Indonesia, Islam, Christians, and the Numbers Game”, Annals Australia, October 1998.

[20]. William Dalrymple, “Inside the Madrasas”, New York Review of Books, 1 December 2005.

[21]. George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America and Politics without God (Basic Books, New York: 2005), 136.

[22]. For a sophisticated presentation of the argument of the case for the moderating effect of electoral democracy in the Islamic world, see the Pew Forum’s interview with Professor Vali Nasr (Professor of National Security Studies at the US Naval Postgraduate School),“Islam and Democracy: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan”, 4 November 2005, pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=91.

[23]. Amartya Sen, “Civilizational Imprisonments”, The New Republic, 10 June 2002.

[24]. Allan Carlson, “Sweden and the Failure of European Family Policy”, Society, September-October 2005.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/05/2006 4.48]

If you want to know how far out (in every sense, including insane) Catholic liberalism can go, read this article on
www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1053
a site called THE BRUSSELS JOURNAL - "all the news that never gets printed", thanks to a lead from Gerald Augustinus in The Cafeteria is Closed.

I will reproduce more later today when I have time, but here's the first few paragraphs to give you an idea of the outrage, and there are photos to show what would otherwise be unthinkable! And yes, I will reproduce the full article and the photos here later for the record, because the link may not be good forever.
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Allah Takes Over Catholic Church
From the desk of Paul Belien on Sun, 2006-05-07 11:40

The Belgian Bishops have opened their churches to illegal immigrants in order to pressurize the Belgian authorities to allow the immigrants to stay in the country.

Most of the immigrant squatters in the churches are Muslims. They display banners in the church showing the name of Allah (picture taken in the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, Brussels).

The Muslim squatters hold Islamic prayer services in the church. The altar has been moved and the statue of Our Lady covered by a cloth to hide her from the eyes of the Muslim believers...

The squatters live in tents in the churches. The tents are being provided by Catholic relief organisations. They have also been offered radios, television sets and computers.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/05/2006 14.10]

GOOD GRIEF!

If they had to take in mobs of Muslims, why not use a parish hall or some other facility to house them? Why turn the church itself into a refugee camp complete with tents, TVs, and clutter? What happened to the idea of sacred spaces? When Papa met with the Austrian bishops on their ad limina visit, he was quite blunt in scolding them for permitting liturgical abuses and poor catechesis. Could someone please schedule the visit for the Belgian bishops really soon, like before their churches get turned into mosques?

From The American Muslim


Secularism and not Islam is the real enemy of the Vatican
Abid Mustafa

Posted May 9, 2006

Secularism and not Islam is the real enemy of the Vatican

By Abid Mustafa

The inauguration of Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI has brought to the fore a host of issues, which threaten to undermine his papacy. Chief amongst them is the competition from Islam and the secularisation of Christians in Europe.

The Vatican is somewhat divided on how to tackle Islam. Some cardinals are in favour of reaching out to moderate Muslims and tapering the Vatican’s attitudes towards Islam. “The next pope will need to be someone capable of dialoguing with the different religions of the world, and particularly Islam… Islam is on the rise, and Christianity, at least in the developed world, is in decline ”, said the Rev. Keith F. Pecklers, a Jesuit professor of theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University. This approach is reminiscent of the one articulated by pope John Paul II who in 1986 became the first pope to visit a Muslim country. During the visit to Morocco he said, “We believe in the same God, the one and the only God, who created the world and brought its creatures to perfection.” Hence the doctrine of inter-faith dialogue with Islam was born. For the next twenty years this doctrine defined the relations between the Vatican and the Islamic world.

Other cardinals prefer a much tougher stance towards Islam. John Allen, the Vatican correspondent of the National Catholic Reporter, is sceptical that there is such a thing as moderate Islam. “They [cardinals] think what is needed is tough love. The nightmare scenario is that one day we’ll wake up and the Holy Land will be empty of Christians”, Allen said. The views expressed by this group appear to be in unison with Pope Benedict XVI, who not so long ago scoffed at the idea of Turkey joining Christian Europe. Last August, Ratzinger said, “In the course of history, Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe. Making the two continents identical would be a mistake.” Back in November 2004, Ratzinger criticised Muslims for politicising Islam and stressed that Muslims had a great deal to learn from Christianity. Ratzinger said, “Muslims should learn from the Christian culture the importance of religious freedom, and the separation between church and state.”

In the real world, the challenges posed by Islam are not only overstated by the Vatican, but are miniscule in comparison to the influence of secularism on the world’s billion or so Catholics. A far greater threat is the secularisation of Catholics in Europe, which is significantly higher than any other continent. Only 21 percent of Europeans say that religion is “very important” to them, according to the European Values Study, conducted in 1999 and 2000 and published two years ago. A similar survey in the United States by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life put the number at nearly 60 percent. Beyond that, attendance at Mass has significantly declined throughout Europe. Among Catholics, only 10 percent in the Netherlands, 12 percent in France, 15 percent in Germany and Austria, 18 percent in Spain and 25 percent in Italy attend Mass weekly. Therefore it is not surprising to find some Catholics voicing extreme concerns for the future of Christianity in a secular Europe. “Some people look at Europe and see it spiritually tired, if not dead,” said the Rev. John Wauck, who teaches at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.

Apart from the dwindling Christian population in Europe, the principal threat to the Vatican comes from the direction of secular fundamentalists who are adamant in recasting catholic truths as falsehoods. Catholic teachings regarding the inauguration of women priests, birth control, abortion, gay marriages, adoption by same-sex couples, euthanasia and the commercialisation of Christmas bear the brunt of this onslaught. Commenting on this trend, Wauck said that the union (European Union) seems to be “infected” with a “radically secular culture”. Ratzinger delivered similar assessment hours before the conclave got underway to elect the new pope. He said, ”We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism . . . that recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one’s own ego and one’s own desires as the final measure.”

Now that Ratzinger has been officially installed as the new pope he must decide on how best to protect Catholicism and its values. His immediate concern and those of the cardinals who elected him is to win over those who have shunned Catholicism in preference for an agnostic life-style. To accomplish this feat, Pope Benedict XVI cannot ally himself with the secular powers of the world or rely on any of the world’s secular institutions to defend the Christian faith.

Secularism and its practitioners despite being a by-product of Judaeo-Christian history are not interested in defending Christianity or for that matter any faith. For instance, in May 2002 President Bush did nothing to prevent Israel from shelling the Church of Nativity, despite strong appeals from Pope John Paul II and leaders of other Christian sects.

Similarly, before the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, President Bush refused to meet evangelical Christians who were opposed to the war, but continued to entertain lobbyist from oil companies.

Religion and people who profess religious beliefs is an anathema to secularist fundamentalists and are barely tolerated. The people of faith who wish to retain their religious identity become the object of abuse within secular societies. Secular authorities utilise instruments such as the media and the political medium to constantly hound those that resist secular values. This continues until they capitulate or change their beliefs to conform to the materialistic worldview of the secularists.

Catholicism as well as other Christian faiths has suffered immensely under the patronage of secular western states, particularly European states.

Retreating behind the veil of ‘freedom of speech’, and ‘freedom of religion’, secularists have relentlessly abused Catholicism and forced the Roman Church to adapt its views and practices. Today, Catholic teachings and truths are scarcely recognisable and face imminent extinction, unless the Vatican takes a firm stand against the secular powers.

Forming an alliance with other world faiths such as Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism and other Christian denominations will not alter the fate of the Roman Church. These religions are unable to stand up to the menacing ideology of secularism and they too have fallen prey to the secular powers.

This is because of two reasons. First, they are all founded on an emotional creed that does not possess the intellectual dynamism to challenge the ideology of secularism. Second, they are based on creeds that only offer a spiritual perspective on human existence and are unable to present a social-political system of life that is a real alternative to secularism.

Islam is the sole ideology in the world that is able to counter secularism and offer genuine protection to people belonging to different faiths. Islam is able to achieve this, because at its heart is a spiritual and political creed that provides spiritual nourishment to its adherents and offers a comprehensive social-political system, where Muslims and non-Muslims are treated equally before the law.

In the past, when Islam was implemented practically -for instance in Islamic Spain- Jews, Christians and Muslims living in the Spanish cities of Toledo, Cordoba and Granada, enjoyed unrivalled tolerance and prosperity.

Martin Hume wrote in his book “Spanish People”: “Side by side with the new rulers lived the Christians and Jews in peace. The latter rich with commerce and industry were content to let the memory of their oppression by the priest-ridden Goths sleep”. However, when the Catholic monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand took charge of Spain in 1492, they did not reciprocate tolerance but proceeded to expunge Spain of its Jewish and Muslim populace. Similar acts of cruelty with the blessing of the Pope were carried out in other lands controlled by Muslims such as the island of Sicily and Jerusalem.

Today the Islamic world is experiencing a radical transformation from secularism to Islam. Muslims across the Islamic world are rebelling against the secular order that has been forcibly imposed upon them by western powers and their surrogates. Muslims are working day and night to overthrow these secular autocracies and to re-establish the Caliphate on their ruins. With the establishment of the Caliphate, millions of Christians who were previously denied their rights under the secular regimes will have their rights restated in full. And like in the Caliphates of the past, Christian beliefs and teaching will be protected. History bears witness that unlike the Roman Empire and the secular order of today, Christian doctrines and teachings were not changed under the Caliphate to agree with Islamic values.

Against this background it would be wise for Pope Benedict XVI to reconsider his position towards Islam and the Muslim world. Instead of opting for a harsh stance against Islam and Muslims, the new pope should support the right of Muslims across the Islamic world to overthrow their secular regimes and re-establish the Caliphate. In this way, the pope will be saving Catholicism, protecting the rights of his flock in the Muslim world and sending a good omen for future relations with the Caliphate.

[In regard to the post and photo up higher on this thread....]


Apostolic Nuncio defends Belgian bishops offering asylum to Muslims in Catholic churches

Brussels, May. 10, 2006 (CNA) - In the wake of a highly publicized scandal regarding occupied churches by Muslims in Belgium, the country’s Apostolic Nuncio, Msgr. Karl-Josef Rauber, released a declaration published in the “De Morgen” newspaper affirming that he fully backed the Belgian bishops in their action in favor of the asylum seekers.

“The Nuncio as ambassador of the Holy See to the kingdom of Belgium should not intervene in this question, since it’s an internal problem and not one concerning relations between Belgium and the Holy See,” he declared. The Nuncio is therefore inviting the Belgian bishops to deal with this problem internally.

“The Church has always taken position for the most weak. This problem needs a political solution,” he concluded.

The occupation of Catholic churches in Belgium, by asylum seekers--most of them Muslim--has raised concern over the respect of the sanctity of these buildings.

There have been reports of tents, computers, banners praising Allah and even campfires within the churches. Likewise, in some churches, altars have been moved and statues of the Virgin Mary have been covered with sheets.

No formal declaration or action has been taken so far by Church authorities regarding alleged desecration. Reportedly, there is a track record of occupations of Belgian Churches by Muslim groups

I have first read the whole story on the American CRF, an hour ago. I cannot express the rage I felt, and I'm not even Catholic. If I just look at the photo I become so upset. This isn't perhaps typical of Liberal Catholic bishops alone, but of a whole mindset in Europe with its sickening political correctness and ideology of humanism that has become nothing less than slow suicide. They have become lame and spineless.
As I've said in the CRF, there has to be other Christian solutions regarding the illegal immigrants. But they should have been sent back to their countries in the first place, caritas or no caritas.

[Perhaps the bishops are starting to get the point that sacred spaces should remain sacred.]


Belgium Bishops release declaration on church occupations

Brussels, May. 11, 2006 (CNA) - Today the Bishops of Belgium held a press conference in order to explain their position on the current occupation of church buildings by undocumented foreigners. A formal declaration was issued subsequently. This comes a day after the declaration of the Apostolic nuncio in Belgium.

The Bishops wished to speak in one voice, answering to alleged divisions in the Bishops Conference on the issue.

“The problem of refugees is a major issue in our society,” the declaration starts. "The Bishops reaffirm their solidarity with these undocumented refugees and hope for a swift and human solution to the problem” it states.

The Belgian Bishop expressed their sympathy for the undocumented and “understand that some of these undocumented have recourse to church occupations to bring the problem to the attention of a wider public.” They wished to express their independence from political parties: “The bishops will not accept to be instrumentalized or manipulated by any party involved.”

Then the declaration condemns the means used to bring pressure on the government. “In any case can the Bishops admit hunger strikes in churches as a mean to pressure,“ they affirmed.

Moreover on the issue of the occupation of church buildings, “the Bishops remind as well that church buildings are not the most appropriate places to undertake such actions. It is therefore preferable that the pastors provide other spaces that they have available to welcome these people.”

Returning to the political aspect of the issue, they declareed that “the normalization of the situation of undocumented foreigners is above all a political question. A political answer is therefore required. The Bishops are well aware that this political issue is not easy to manage.”

Nevertheless they strongly criticized the inaction of government and politicians in the issue. “Remaining silent or even worse indifference can not be accepted,” they affirmed.

“The Bishops can only invite people to be generous,” the declaration concludes.

---

“the Bishops remind as well that church buildings are not the most appropriate places to undertake such actions. It is therefore preferable that the pastors provide other spaces that they have available to welcome these people.”

---

That's it? And what do they propose to do about the churches now occupied and desecrated???

And why do liberal bishops - in Belgium as in the United States - coddle outright lawbreakers???? If an alien is undocumented and truly without any means whatsoever, then by all means let them feed him and provide him some shelter (not within the church) but only for the time it takes for the bleeding-heart bishops to do the correct charitable thing and buy the undocumented alien a ticket back to where he came from!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/05/2006 21.03]

This if the first time that I've been on this thread and you have no idea how relieved I am to find other people disturbed by this outrage.

I read this article elsewhere and my blood has boiled about it ever since. I cannot believe that action has not been taken to rid these sacred spaces of these squatters and I cannot believe that the clergy that has allowed a place of Christ be descecrated in this manner have not been taken to task.

What is even more outrageous is that no muslim would ever allow this to happen in one of their mosques. Try doing some of these things so much as on the grounds of their mosques and and they wouldn't think twice before they killed you.

The Bishops' response is pathetic.

[This article really says it all, especially the last paragraph. I am stunned.]


Bishops in Ever Deeper Pickle over Support for Illegal Aliens

From the desk of Paul Belien on Thu, 2006-05-11 14:08
The Brussels Journal

The crisis between the Catholic Church and the government is escalating in Belgium. So far over 30 Belgian churches have been occupied by illegal immigrants or so-called “sans papiers” (“people without papers” [=staying permits]). The latest church taken over by squatters is the Saint Susanna Church in the Brussels borough of Schaarbeek, where a group of thirty women with small children have installed themselves. They were invited in by the local parish priest.

“We only go to churches where we are welcome,” says Ali Guissé, the spokesman of the far-left Union for the Defense of People Without Papers (UDEP), which coordinates the “church asylum” actions. The relations between the Belgian Church and the government of Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt have soured since last week, when the Belgian Catholic Bishops spoke out in favour of the occupation of their churches and chapels by sans-papiers. The latter have installed themselves there in order to pressure the Belgian authorities into giving them permanent residence permits.

Yesterday Prime Minister Verhofstadt and Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the Archbishop of Mechelen and Brussels, discussed ways to solve the crisis, but, following their meeting in Mechelen today, the Belgian Bishops reaffirmed their support for the church occupations by the sans-papiers. In an official statement the Bishops write that they accept and understand the occupations of churches by people without papers.

Left-wing Belgian priests have been opening up Belgian churches for illegal immigrants for a number of years. While the controversial actions are opposed by many conservative Catholics and ordinary people, the Bishops officially support them. Father Jacques ’t Serstevens, the dean of the parishes of the Brussels boroughs Elsene and Etterbeek, however, said that he is opposed to the church occupations:

Why don’t these asylum seekers occupy town halls and other public buildings? It is the government that decides about their permits, isn’t it? A parish cannot function without its church. We need the church for religious services. An average church does not have enough toilets and washbasins. Churches are not built for living in.

Churches have been occupied in every Belgian diocese, except the diocese of Hasselt. Some churches currently have 700 people living in them. Many of the sans-papiers are Muslims. They pray in the aisles while the walls display banners with the name of Allah.

UDEP spokesman Ali Guissé, an African immigrant, says the church occupations were boosted by Patrick Dewael, the Belgian Interior Minister. Guissé was an illegal immigrant himself until very recently. He led the group of 118 sans-papiers that occupied the Saint Boniface Church in Elsene last October. Last month Minister Dewael offered 60 of them, including Guissé, permanent residence permits “for humanitarian reasons” because they had gone on a hungerstrike. According to Guissé many sans-papiers now think that the way to get their situation “regularised” is by occupying a church and threatening to go on a hungerstrike. “Indirectly the minister encourages the occupation of churches and the hungerstrikes,” Ali Guissé told Het Laatste Nieuws, Belgium’s largest paper, today. He said:

I am living proof [of the fact that our actions can be succesful]. Last October I started with the occupation of the Saint Boniface Church in Elsene, where the first sans-papiers went on hungerstrike. Minister Dewael regularised the situation of 60 occupants of the church last April, including mine. The thousands of sans-papiers, who have since followed our example, are very well aware of this.

Ali Bouchrouk, an Algerian who has a residency permit but whose wife does not, told the American weekly National Catholic Reporter that the strategy of the sans-papiers is simple:

We are in a Catholic country, thus we occupy churches. If we were in Algeria, we would occupy mosques.

Meanwhile Monsignor Karl-Jozef Rauber, the Papal Nuncio [or Vatican Ambassador] to Belgium, explained his position in the Brussels newspaper De Standaard. Yesterday the Nuncio was criticised after newspapers reported that he fully supports the church occupations. De Standaard, however, writes that the Nuncio’s secretariat denies that he supports the actions. His secretariat is quoted as saying: “The Nuncio cannot interfere in this issue. However, whatever the Belgian bishops say, the Nuncio supports them because the bishops are wise men.”

Minister Dewael, a member of Prime Minister Verhofstadt’s Liberal Party VLD, has said that the Church has to stop interfering in Belgian politics. In 2000 the Verhofstadt government, which is a coalition of Liberals and Socialists, decided to “regularise” every illegal immigrant who could prove that he or she had lived in the country for five years. The 2000 regularisation allowed 50,000 illegal immigrants to become permanent residents of Belgium (that has 10 million inhabitants). The UDEP, the Catholic Bishops and the Socialist Party are in favour of another “regularisation” round, but the VLD says the Belgian welfare system cannot afford this.

Although the Belgian Bishops support the church occupations and the Nuncio, the Vatican representative in Brussels, refuses to criticise them, the official position of the Roman Catholic Church is clear. The 2004 document Erga migrantes caritas Christi states in paragraph 61:

61. To avoid misunderstandings and confusion, and considering the religious diversity that we mutually recognise, and out of respect for sacred places and the religion of the other too, we do not consider it opportune for Christian churches, chapels, places of worship or other places reserved for evangelisation and pastoral work to be made available for members of non-Christian religions. Still less should they be used to obtain recognition of demands made on the public authorities.