The Pope has it right

Submitted by ron thompson (United States), Jan 18, 2006 at 10:35

... I'm not surprised you take issue with the Pope's comments. Although I don't have great respect for the new Pope, I do give him great credit, as one theocrat talking about rival theocrats, for his candor and lucidity.

Although his take on the logic and history of Islamic theology seems correct to me, this doesn't mean there is no role for diplomacy or that there are only military solutions and ideological stridency possible between Islam and the rest of the world. But to believe that there is a moderate Islam seems to be as misguided as the long-held belief of the Left in the West that there is a credible peace partner for Israel among the Palestinians if only Israel makes the right and enough territorial concessions.
I am surprised at the similarity or identity between Pipes' views and those of the Left on these different but related issues.

And consider this. In a recent (1998) book I stumbled across, JIHAD by Paul Fregosi, there is this: "Even though the jihad has been a fact of life in much of the world for more than a millennium, it remains the most unrecorded and disregarded major event in history."

There are many reasons for this strange fact. Perhaps the two most prominent are the radical political impotence of the Arab Muslim world for the 250 or so yrs when the West was experiencing the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of Democracy (none of which have the slightest strong parallel in the Arab Muslim world), and the incredibly shallow view that Islam is a "sister" ,,,, "Abrahamic" faith with Judaism and Christianity merely because all three are monotheisms.

No wonder Arab propaganda, especially in putting Israel in the wrong in the Palestinian situation, has been so successful despite the still growing spread of worldwide ISLAMIC terror.

The new pope has it right.

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