Right you are!

Submitted by Daisy (United States), Sep 20, 2006 at 18:43

"Has a humble man ever been humiliated?" One of the best questions I've seen in a long time. Easily offended Muslims, please do take note!

The Pope, while brilliant and reasonable, is a humble man, and as such, not given to humiliation. He invited Muslims to reasonable dialog (to be held in the highest of places of learning) and he exhorted Westerners to value and take back the practice of Reason based faiths as a spiritual and social priority.

The Pope is giving us a way to save Western civilization from Islam and other more internal forces (i.e. secular humanism). These forces rely upon slavery to Allah in Islam's case and lonely subjectivity in the case of severe secularism. When slavery and subjective opinion rule the day, the value of the inquiry towards objective truth is seriously undermined. Even a casual look tells one that Western justice and Sharia law have fundamental differences. Why then, is it insulting to compare and contrast the religious cultures that formed such differing practices? Of course, it's not. Only people enslaved to superstitious irrationality would consider it an insult. And we've seen the evidence of that clearly displayed by frantically humiliated Muslims and entirely silent secularists.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".