Physician, heal thyself.

Submitted by John W. McGinley (United States), Jan 17, 2006 at 13:38

It's not for the Pope to decide the character of the Quran. For that matter, it is not for the Pope to presume to group Judaism and Christianity. For all he knows, Christianity and Islam may be closer to each other than either is close to Judaism.

Whatever the metaphysical subtleties of how and why certain texts are counted as the revelation of God (Hashem; Allah, whatever), these texts are historical through and through and in point of fact cannot be interpretated at all without historically conditioned and changing mindsets, both conscious and unconscious in character. This is true for both what might be called "moderate" Islam and what might be called "Islamist" Islam.

It is up to Islam itself to engineer what its face to the non-Islamic world is to be. If "moderate" Islam continues its rather cowardly average tendency of avoidance and culpable silence relative to the barbarism of "Islamist" Islam then, more and more, "Islamist" Islam becomes the only face of Islam to the non-Islamic world.

In the meantime -- and in this regard Professor Pipes your voice has been loud, clear and precise -- those mortally threatened by "Islamist" Islam must first of all NAME the enemy accurately and defeat the enemy. John W. McGinley

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