Theme of Jihad

NY Sun ^ | September 20, 2006 | JOHN BATCHELOR

[fgoodwin]

Pope Benedict XVI, the "Panzer pope," has done the unusual in modern discourse: he has jumped into the war on terror with armored facts from six centuries ago that refute a deal of the appeasement from 21st-century Europeans and their American fellow travelers.

You will recall that Pope Benedict recently spoke, auf Deutsch, at Regensburg University, where he once enjoyed a professorship. The speech was dry, mechanical, unappetizing, a predictable German exercise in theology, with much attention to how reason and faith are compatible. In Calvinist seminary we used to call this a Roman disquisition on epistemology. Yet in the speech, the pope chose to illustrate what is not reasonable, what is not faithful, by arguing not surprisingly that violence is both unreasonable and faithless.

For an example the Pope could have chosen any number of incidents of war-making by church-anointed Christian kings and their modern elected pretenders — the Vatican's cooperation with Hitler and Mussolini comes to mind — but instead the pope reached back to the last days of the Byzantine Empire, not only to speak of jihad but also to box Mohammed's ears.

Accident? Unlikely. Arrogance? Less unlikely. The pope and a legion of exceedingly well-read apologists in many languages have now begged pardon in person and in deed. The routine Pakistani mob displays with English signage the various murders, fire-bombings, puffy statements of outrage, and threats with timelines. (My favorite is from the Islamic Salafist Boy Scout Battalions, who will kill all Christians in Iraq in three days unless the pope apologizes to the whole planet). All instances have several months to run in the magazines and journals. However, none of the voices claiming context or shouting condemnation is going to remove the facts of the matter.

[Rembrandt]

For those who've read this question on other posts, I'm sorry for being repetitive, but here goes:

If the Pope is killed by Islamists, what will be the worldwide reaction?

[the invisib1e hand]

If the Pope is killed by Islamists, what will be the worldwide reaction?

If your father were killed by islamists, what would you do?

I ask a question I would never ask to bring you face to face with just what an offensive question it is, and to suggest my personal answer. Can't speak for "the world."

[the invisib1e hand]

Vatican's cooperation with Hitler and Mussolini comes to mind

Tooooooootally lost credibility here.

Also, the condescending remark about Calvinist Seminary reduce an otherwise interesting piece to just so much more NYC drivel.

[PajamaTruthMafia]

The Pope then traveled back in time six centuries in order to demonstrate his case against jihad by using the voice of a long-dead empire that was defeated and obliterated by the jihad that, ... pursued a war of theft and attrition against civilized Christian Byzantium from the seventh century until Constantinople was smashed like glass in the 15th-century. It was total war... At the end, the losers not only were pushed into slavery, but also were forced to convert to Islam or die.

[PajamaTruthMafia]

What the pope did at Regensburg was point to the most spectacular victory for jihad in the last thousand years and say that it is not an example of religion nor of humanity

[ClaireSolt]

Presto is a problem.