This was not a crude anti-Islamic polemic; nor was it so at the end of the 14th century. It was a quest for peace and amity, then as now.
By turning the story back-to-front, so that what’s promised in the lead — a crude attack on Islam — is quietly withdrawn much later in the text, the BBC journalists were having a little mischief. The kind of mischief that is likely to end with Catholic priests and faithful butchered around the Muslim world. Either the writers were so jaw-droppingly ignorant, they did not realize this is what they were abetting (always a possibility with the postmodern journalist), or the malice was intended. There is no third possibility.
From the start, the BBC’s reports said the Pope would “face criticism from Muslim leaders” — in the present tense. This is a form of dishonesty that has become common in journalism today. The flagrantly biased reporter, feigning objectivity, spices his story by just guessing what a man’s enemies will say, even before they have spoken.
[…]
From now on, the reporting will be about the Muslim rage, and whether the Vatican has apologized yet. That is the “drama” the media will seek to capture — the drama of the cockfight — because they know no better kind. That the Pope said nothing intrinsically objectionable will be overlooked, in deference to the Muslim rage, just as the media hid the Danish cartoons from their viewers — preventing them from discovering how mild they were.
Looks like the project was a success. Though I doubt this will make it to the front pages of the New York Times.
(Via Michelle Malkin)
The script in red calls for his beheading.
Race and Religon, they have dominated the ME for decades. I have one question; according to many pundits, the people of the area or the children of Shem, are Semites, so in one sense muslims and jews are brothers, so why do they fight.
ronrob: Just consider the American Civil War. There is no accounting for recourse to violence except ideas.
All depends, in the long run, on which ideas are:
a) right, and;
b) successfully defended.
Mark
Ottawa
There’s nothing else to add, except, isn’t it instructive to see what an Islamofascist “artist” (I use this term extremely loosely) has done with the Pope?
At least the cartoons about the Islamofascists were well drawn. This is just a crude hatchet job. Doesn’t THAT say something–a lot–about their “culture”?
‘Thanks for the comment on Scotus (I’m a Peircean, who was a fan of Scotus, so, I’m loyal in that area0.”
Go to http://www.morec.com — you would enjoy the work on Semiotics, John of Poinsot. I assume as a fan of Duns Scotus you read Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ?
These morons from the 7th century stick their asses in the air all day long with their prayin to this devil, time we started nukin them
I think that the Pope knew that they would go apeshit: he did this for a reason, maybe as a warning to the world. JPII helped end communism: B16 has entered the fight against the world’s next great evil.
A Canadian died in Thailand today: killed by a bomb placed by “Mulim seperatists”. RIP.
I just realized that it’s been at least 20 years since a muslim has shot a pope: get over it already.
Not only are we seeing that reason is absent in Islam but we are also seeing that the MSM will go to any length to create chaos and violence. As innocent people are killed, more “news” is released, in that tried and true fashion that CREATES the problem.
It’s not the Islamic press that is the problem, it’s the western press, specifically the BBC and it’s clones.
Pat
Why do we presume that all Christians and all Muslims worship or apprehend the same God? Both are to some extent the children of Judaeism which in turn is a step-child of Zoroastriaism ( post the Babylonian captivity of 6th Century BC when Cyrus the Mede liberated them and the Judaens in turn developed a huge admiration for Persian civilization and theology. MohammAd was influenced more directly still in +6/7C).
Among other things, Zoroastrianism probably originated such religious memes as Free Will, the last Day of Judgement, a Messiah, Heaven and Hell, redemption, ecumenalism, equality (across class, sex, and ethnic lines) of the individual soul, Angels and eternal time. Centally located Zoroastrians not only influenced the early western and Abrahamic religious traditions ( after all the Magi in the manager were Zoroastrians) but also the Indic ones of Hindus and Buddhists.
Oh, and another thing; Ahura Mazda ( the uncreated creator) the principle impelling structure, order, reason, right action, tolerance ( or should I say acceptance i.e. that what is, is … physically/scientific speaking) etc., in short, virtue/good or God. And, Ahriman the opposite tendency; entropy, chaos, unreason, coersion, inequity, formless aconsciousness (not unconsciousness, which implies latent spirit not its negation) and rejection of our universe and all things in it (including techne and science). These (twin/mirror) concepts also heavily influenced our world.
Am I out of line in thinking that almost any major or minor religion you care to cite (even when not practised by its own best lights) reveres ( by any name or rite) Ahura Mazda and that one significiant strand of one significiant faith tends more today to Ahriman and is giving its other adherents a bad name?
Sincerely,
;but, I’m no expert
Do most Muslims that migrate to the west come here for freedom, democracy and tolerance? Could it be for colonization? They have effectively colonized, not just the ME, but much of North Africa and South Asia, and frankly much of Europe and Detroit. Americans hardy notice the influx of Muxlims due to the saturation of legal and illegal Hispanics. I wonder what’s really up.
Depressing Times
Oriana Fallaci, RIP, the Pope, and a Sad Age
Rarely has the death of a public intellectual affected me as much as the passing of Oriana Fallaci. I never met her, and only received a brief note once from her accompanying a copy of The Rage and the Pride. The story of her career is well known, but her death, at this pivotal time, was full of paradoxes and yet instruction as well.
Radical Islam is, among other things, a patriarchal movement, embedded particularly in the cult of the Middle-Eastern male, who occupies a privileged position in a society that can be fairly described as one of abject gender apartheid. Islamism is also at war with the religious infidel, not just the atheist—and, in its envy and victimhood, fueled by a renewal of the age-old hatred of the Christian.
………
So we really are left with very little in these pivotal times—the will of George Bush, of course, the Old Breed unchanged since Okinawa and the Bulge that still anchors the US military, the courage and skill of a very few brave writers like a Hitchens, Krauthammer, and the tireless and brilliant Mark Stein, but very, very few others. No, this is an age in which we in the West make smug snuff movies about killing an American President, while the Taliban and the Islamists boast of assassinating the Pope.
So long may you run, Ms. Fallaci, you who by now have learned that, yes, there is a soul, and, yes, yours was indeed saved for eternity if only for its singular courage and honesty alone. And dear Pope: clarify, contextualize, express sorrow over the wrong interpretation of your remarks, but please don’t apologize for the Truth—not now, not ever. …-
http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/2006/09/16/a_depressing_age.php
Excellent article by Victor Davis Hanson. And that’s just it – the pope should clarify, contextualize and explain, but not apologize for telling the truth. His comments on the lack of reason within the Islamic religion are vitally important. An ideology that rejects life, which is the expression of reason, in favour of death, which is the lack of reason, is disastrous.
Plato’s Stepchild – sorry, I’m not a fan of John Deely, prolific though he is. He has, of late, moved into a pansemiotics with which I agree(seeing reason or Mind in every aspect of the world) but…
Go to http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see and click on seed. That might explain.
Can the Islamic world keep reason out of their ideology forever? When they were isolate, they were able to do so. But now in the global world, can they continue to isolate their people from reason? Can they maintain anger, used as a Wall against Reason, forever against Reason?
http://www.bbcgovernors.co.uk/
It’s time to check out who these people are.
Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC, in a speech to the International Press Institute:
MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: POPE’S APOLOGY IS ‘SUFFICIENT’
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood announced Sunday afternoon that it accepted Pope Benedict XVI’s apology, issued earlier in the day.
“We see the Pope’s latest statement as a retraction of his previous statements,” Mohammed Habib, the group’s second in command, said. “We see it as a sufficient apology, even though we would like the Pope to give a picture of his position on and vision of Islam.” …-
http://www.paulding.net/bin/url.cgi/13408.10
Comments?
Benedict didn’t apologize for his words; he said he was ” deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims. ”
Note- he’s concerned about THEIR reactions; he’s sorry for THEIR reactions.
“These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought. ” But the quotation, which was about ‘evil and inhuman’ was not the same as his personal thought, which was the analysis of the rejection of reason within a religion. That’s his personal thought.
Perhaps I’m ‘too nuanced’ but I don’t think he apologized for HIS words; he was sorry about their reaction. His focus, to my understanding, is quite different from that of the previous pope, which was conciliatory. His focus is on a confrontative questioning, on reciprocity (if you want us to accept you, then do something acceptable).
And his personal thought, which the Muslims are refusing, at this moment, to consider, was that their rejection of reason and insistence on violence, is antithetical to religion. And, that confining reason to positivistic actions (measurement), and rejecting it within social life, as is done by the postmodernists, is antithetical to life.
It was a speech against Islam and against postmodernism. He didn’t apologize.
I’m totally with you, ET, on your understanding of what Pope Benedict XVI’s apology was about: He apologized for the offence that the Muslims took at his remarks. He was sorry that they were offended. He did not apologize for making the remarks.
As I commented somewhere else about the Islamofascist males–something maz2 also points out when he says about them that they are part of “a patriarchal movement…[and] occup[y] a privileged position in a society that can be fairly described as one of abject gender apartheid”–they are bullies, mama’s boys, and crybabies, not endearing qualities in adult men.
I don’t know how the West gets around this, except to stand up to them. Bullies don’t respond to “negotiations” or “appeasement.” The only way to deal with bullies is to challenge them and, ultimately, defeat them.
All that we learn from the Warren quote is that he is an absolute idiot who probably intones his remarks while facing a mirror. He sees no further. If only it was a mirror that told the truth as in the Fairy story.
Who is so bereft of common sense to believe that remarks in this setting are not reviewed with exquisite care, and fashioned as carefully as plains Indians once made arrows for their bows.
I was really saddened to see that the Holy Father has taken one more step on a path diverging from that set by the previous Pope who sought to build a bridge to the Moslems. This one has burned down that bridge with several decisive moves. If we are going to have a new crusade, it seems the current administration of the Church is determined to be out front.
Is a re run of the 12th Century really necessary?
“Is a re run of the 12th Century really necessary?”
Excellent question. But it’s one for Muslims to answer – they’re the ones trapped in that century.
garhane? Doesn’t that sound a bit like “hateboy” in another language?
WE’RE supposed to build bridges to the Muslims? Would that be, garhane, because, even though millions of them have been welcomed, to share the freedoms of the West, they’ve flown planes into the bridges and destroyed them?
It’s written somewhere, “Let he who has ears, hear. Let he who has eyes, see.” I think, garhane, those words may have been written with you in mind.
Remove your head from the sand, my boy or girl, and take off the rose coloured glasses.
But it would be untrue to say the recent controversy over the Islamic world’s reaction to the Pope’s remarks have no effect.
Just as the public will probably read the Pope’s sorrow for the reaction to his remarks as being sorry for his remarks — that is, as an apology– much of the simple public will probably regard the apology as as the product of a bullying Islamic world as abetted by the liberal establishment, of which the nun’s recent death is an example.
And while such sentiments are unlikely to manifest themselves in any large shift in the political proportions of Western countries, it will have the effect of hardening the attitudes of those who suspect they are being sold down the river by the liberals and the left.
Not by any great measure, but by some small increment.
Added on to the context of train bombings, airline scares and the ceaseless belligerence of militant Islamic preachers in the West, it will make unctuous remarks at how carelessly and insensitively the Pope has treated Islam just that much more nauseating.
The New York Times for example says “Because the world listens carefully to the words of any pope, Benedict XVI needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology for his hurtful speech.”
The NYT may be playing to an audience, but not since the phrase “let them eat cake” has there been such an unwitting example of contempt for those outside the charmed circle.
We have learned less from Pope Benedict’s words then we have discovered from the reaction to them. …-
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2006/09/near-irreparable-breach.html
Benedict XVI will prevail; I expect that “a large shift in the political proportions of Western countries” is coming, and Benedict will be a large part of that.
Isn’t this pope scheduled to visit Turkey next month? This pope lived through the nazi horrors; he will not allow a repeat.
By the way, I haven’t noticed any Islamic imams apologizing for their hate-filled remarks against the West.
I haven’t noticed any Islamics apologizing for their hijacking of planes, for murdering thousands of people.
I haven’t noticed any Islamics apologizing for their blowing up subway trains, restaurants, hotels, for their beheading of journalists, murdering of young girls going to school, stoning women to death.
I haven’t noticed any Islamics apologizing for anything.
Instead, they inform us that if we even suggest, with a breath of speech, that they are violent; that they are intolerant of others, then, they will be very angry. That statement of “anyone who describes Islam as a religion, as intolerant, encourages violence’ is so astonishing that it deserves to be on a poster somewhere.
From the Vatican via AP: Pope Benedict XVI says:
BEGIN QUOTE ***
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The pastoral visit which I recently made to Bavaria was a deep spiritual experience, bringing together personal memories linked to places well known to me and pastoral initiatives towards an effective proclamation of the Gospel for today.
I thank God for the interior joy which he made possible, and I am also grateful to all those who worked hard for the success of this pastoral
visit. As is the custom, I will speak more of this during next Wednesday’s general audience.
At this time, I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the university of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.
These in fact were a quotation from a Medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought.
Yesterday, the Cardinal Secretary of State published a statement in this regard in which he explained the true meaning of my words. I hope that this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect.
END QUOTE ***
As ET points out what, in G*d’s name, have the Muslims apologized for? Their confreres have been responsible for thousands of violent deaths, clashes, and altercations and not one word of apology.
They, then, ask the Pope to apologize for a reference he has made to Islam in a quotation from a Medieval text in what was a very long speech? And we have the MSM useful idiots making a big to-do about it, screaming about the Pope’s insensitivity and his lack of media savvy?
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? HAS THE WORLD GONE TOTALLY MAD?
Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide…
…except under the shadow of G*d’s wing…
ET: Thanks for your “I haven’t noticed any Islamics apologizing” post. Just finished making exactly that point to a liberal friend.
And also for your cogent analysis of the Pope’s address, which I’ve now read. Not only was it NOT an insult, it was in fact a call for western secularists to expand their notion of reason in order to have a successful dialogue with other cultures with profound religious beliefs.
Lookout to garhane: He’s right. I urge everybody to read Bat Ye’or’s mind-blowing book “Eurabia: The Euro Arab Axis”, which exhaustively documents the semi-secret Euro Arab Dialogue (EAD) begun back in 1973. Three decades of “dialogue” [read: empty euro monologue of elites] ending in the diaster of euro dhimmitude, zero reciprocity from Muslims, and collusion with jihadi terrorism.
Any “bridge” you try to build to Muslims you’ll be killed trying to cross (no pun intended :).
Muslims just don’t do dialogue and, as ET reminds us, they certainly don’t do apology, as we reflect on 1400 years of jihad which continues to this very hour.
Muslims, of course, referring to the dominant jihadi branch and not to moderate Muslims who are as victimized as we are.
Well it wasn’t an insult in the first place; in fact the exact opposite. And now the “regret over the reactions” will be spun as an apology. Well, the Pope had a few moments of non-dhimmitude anyway. I’m bitterly disappointed but not at all surprised.
Read Bat Ye’or and you’ll see that world Christianity is now deep in dhimmitude and have signed onto the anti-Jew, anti-American jihad and the Cult of Palestinianism. And of course the myth of Andalusian Utopia, which, alas, never was.
Hey Mark, thanks for the post, unfortunately most of the west does not even know the history behind Islam, if they did they would be very worried!
Until Muslims reconcile their faith with the facts of history, there will be problems.
In their view, Mohammad was a prophet sent by the Judeo/Christian God, and his is the last revelation – which in essence is the denial of the divinity of Christ and the rewritting of long established Biblical accounts, such as the Abraham and Isaac story. This doesn’t make sense.
In any written account of his life, Mad Moe was not a good or spiritual man by anybody’s standards (Aisha – his 9 year old child bride. His order for the beheading of more than 600 Jewish men after the battle of the Trench. The selling of their Jewish wives and daughters into slavery, etc.).
Neither was he a prophet. For example, what did he prophesy?
In fact, at the time that Mohammad was devising his religion, Allah was one of a pantheon of 365 Arab gods, who was fittingly a god of war, amongst other titles.
In all historical accounts imperial Islam conquered and was spread by war. Therefore it is an occupying force having taken all lands from the original people and forcing their conversion by the sword and by outright bigotry in the form of taxes and unbearable social constraints.
Given that Muslims reject the truth about the criminal behaviour of their prophet and his armies, it’s little wonder that they believe so many lies (like 911 conspiracy theories) and act like savages when confronted with the truth.
Islam cannot survive the truth.
While the Muslims gear themselves up for confrontation after misunderstanding the Pope, with help from the MSM, the nuts (dangerous nuts)in the Palestine Authority have attacked least 5 churches and one Islamic terrorist group threatened to blow up all churches in Gaza.
I prefer reading this as it was written, and not as it was interpreted; i.e. that the Pope sincerely regrets that certain passages could have sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim faithful. I know the Muslim psyche prefers to have us grovel, but this is not in that category.
And if there are people who don’t believe the following is planned, they live with their heads in the sand. Bethlehem was 75%-80% Christian and is now 95% Muslim. While the Christians did not fight for Bethlehem, we know the Jews won’t leave Jerusalem. Since intimidation isn’t going to work, what have the militant Muslim groups planned for the take-over?
Israeli Islamist Leader: JERUSALEM TO BE A MUSLIM CAPITAL SOON!
02:09 Sep 17, ‘06 / 24 Elul 5766
by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz, Arutz Sheva
Reiterating a position he has expressed in the past, the leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement declared that a new Caliphate will soon arise, with its capital in Jerusalem.
The Islamist leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, made the prediction Friday night, at the 11th annual conference of the Israeli Islamic Movement, in the northern city of Umm El-Fahm.
Muslims can’t be all dumb though – they totally agree that Western culture is superior to theirs because if any of them have the chance to move away from their backward countries and live in the West they’ll take it.
Lucky us whereas i think we should not let them immigrate.
This guy: The Emperor Manual II Paleologos of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox Christian empire which had its capital in what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul in the 14th century.
Was absolutely right! Has anyone seen any changes in the last 700 years?
The Emperor Manual II Paleologos of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox Christian empire which had its capital in what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul in the 14th century.
Is absolutely right both then and now!
Nothing changes…………..
The leader of a church that launched both the crusades and inquisition obviously knows a few tricks about religious violence but hardly holds any ‘moral’ high ground. Poachers turned gamekeeper are always suspect and mostly hypocrites. But the greatest threat to the pope is not Islam. The origins and claims of his own church are coming under question by a new interpretation of the moral teachings of Jesus the Christ recently posted on the web. Check these links: http://www.energon.uklinux.net
http://thefinalfreedoms.bulldoghome.com