With Muslims torching the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus today (under the watchful eye of their dictatorship), I found it interesting to see what side the Vatican came out for. According to the AP:
The Vatican deplored the violence but said certain provocative forms of criticism were unacceptable.
"The right to freedom of thought and expression ... cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers," the Vatican said in its first statement on the controversy.
Edward Cline is absolutely right: the advocates of faith are attempting to squelch criticism of their creeds in the name of "not offending" believers. Don't expect much outcry from the secular world though. The same article quotes German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
[A]ngela Merkel said she understood Muslims were hurt — though that did not justify violence.
"Freedom of the press is one of the great assets as a component of democracy, but we also have the value and asset of freedom of religion," Merkel told an international security conference in Munich, Germany.
Whose religious freedom is being impugned? The Muslims? To what--shove their prophet down the throats of the world?
Every time you look, this story gets worse and worse. Developing . . .
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 7:00 PM |donate | link
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The Muslims' New Program for Thought Control
"As we trace the genius of a nation by their taste in poetry and music, so by their encouragement of these we may judge of their rise or fall; good authors have never been wanting in happy climes. Barbarism begins her reign by banishing the Muses. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear!"
So wrote Philip Dormer Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield, in 1749 in a preface to a pamphlet of his speech in the House of Lords against the proposed Act for Licensing the Stage, an act supported by politicians who were being mocked in theaters by satire to the applause of an appreciative public.
In a not so coincidental dovetailing of events, a bill to regulate "hate speech" is at present being debated in the British parliament that would make it a criminal offense to publicly disparage any creed or set of religious beliefs, in addition to "inciting" violence via words or pictures against members of any race or religious sect. Ostensively, the bill is aimed at Muslims who call for jihad in Britain; in effect, it will silence anyone who questions or criticizes any creed or system of beliefs. The bill aims to suppress the provocation of thugs and rioters by gagging those who would call them thugs and rioters.
It will silence everyone but the Muslims.
At the same time, the Muslim "furor" over the publication and republication in Danish and European newspapers of cartoons that caricature Mohammed, whose depiction in any form is regarded as blasphemy, shocked many Westerners from their multicultural apathy. The one cartoon that seems to have touched the Muslim nerve -- shall we call it "sensitivity"? -- shows the head of Mohammed wearing a turban shaped as a lit-fuse bomb. This was a caricature that summed up the thousands of murders and scale of destruction wrought by Islamic "martyrs" and jihadists over the past thirty years. It was an astute, stylistic observation, a justifiable estimate of the means and ends of Islamic fascism.
The pit felt at the bottom of many stomachs over this new demand of the Muslims is fear: fear of mindless retribution, of death and destruction. It causes those who feel it to shut up in the name of "respect" for Muslim beliefs. This is the true nature of the "respect" of major American news organizations, such as CBS, when it refused to show a single cartoon.
The pit felt at the bottom of other stomachs is resolve, of a determination to stand up now for the freedom to say what one thinks, with the knowledge that if the West capitulates to Muslim demands, it will have surrendered the key freedom that permits the fight for all the other freedoms. Many European newspapers have defied Muslim "sensibilities" and reprinted the cartoons.
Islamic spokesmen called this action a "provocation." But what is it that is being "provoked"? Violence. Property destruction. Kidnappings. Murders. The initiation of physical force and terror. All in the name of Mohammed and Allah. Hardly the behavior of a "pacific" religion that would persuade one that it just wants to "get along."
Implied in the claim that images of Mohammed constitute blasphemy, is that anyone who creates such an image is guilty of blasphemy. What the Muslims are demanding is that non-Muslims accept that religious tenet. Thus, "respect" by non-Muslims of the tenet, at the price of surrendering the right to criticize Islam, means virtual conversion to Islam, a major step in the direction of actual conversion.
Islamists see the implications of multiculturalism and "diversity" much better than do the advocates and practitioners of these secular "creeds." Islamists are infamous for not subscribing to multiculturalism and diversity. They might claim that it is not conversion they seek, but "respect." But if one does not "respect" a belief, it is one's right to question it, or to criticize it in a book, essay, speech, or cartoon. However, if one "respects" it, then it becomes a taboo subject, off limits to reasoned enquiry and civil discussion. One tells oneself: I have no right to say anything about it. And if one is prohibited, under penalty of prosecution, intimidation, or physical violence, from saying or writing anything about it, then there is no reason or point to thinking of it, either.
What a formula for thought control!
The Islamists know it. Most Western intellectuals and politicians do not.
It is time that Muslims here and abroad got used to "offensive" portrayals of Mohammed, and, for good measure, of Allah himself. After all, no one is forcing them to look at the cartoons. The West regularly shrugs off the pictorial vilification of Western institutions, culture, creeds, persons and icons. Anyone familiar with the Arab press and Arab websites will note how vicious Muslim cartoonists are.
That would be a fair trade, would it not, an exercise in mutual "tolerance" and good will? One might say that the solution to the problem is reciprocity. The Arab press can publish vicious cartoons of the West, and the West can publish mildly "offensive" cartoons about Islam.
But it is not an issue of reciprocity. Reciprocity is not in the Islamic agenda. "Islam" means "submission," and it is submission its ill-willed mullahs and imams demand in exchange for the "peace" of intellectual torpidity in their rank and file followers, as well as in the West. Islam is by its very nature intolerant of other creeds and requires absolute, mindless obedience of Allah and compliance with the prophet's commandments. It cannot be "reformed" as Christianity has been. Even the new Pope, Benedict XVI, has conceded that. There are no concessions Islam could possibly make without triggering its self-destruction. Fundamentally, there is no such thing as a "moderate" Muslim or a "civilized" Islam, not when the core beliefs of the Koran and commands of the Hadith sanction the murder and enslavement of non-Muslims in an on-going jihad that will end only with the establishment of a global caliphate.
Islamic spokesman claim that they do not seek to crush freedom of speech or expression, only to put "limits" on it. Ultimately, however, any "limit" on speech means no expression, no freedom to say what one thinks must be said. It means not reaching a conclusion, and settling for only half a syllogism, or none at all. It means that an idea has been removed from debate, discussion, and criticism.
This is a defining moment for the West. It must either speak up in defense and in bold, unapologetic assertion of the idea of freedom of speech, or forever cringe in "respect" of Islamic tenets, much as in the film The Godfather, the favor-seeking mortician cringed when gangster Vito Corleone accused him of not granting him "respect." The fearful mortician immediately offered his respect and submission. He was seeking mere vengeance; Corleone required submission and acknowledgement of his power.
This will logically require the ultimate scrapping of another "belief" system, that of multiculturalism and diversity, and their recognition as fatal fallacies.
Ever since the Renaissance the genius of the West has been a commitment to the freedom of men to question the moral claims of others. Reason has always settled the question. Islamists are demanding that the West banish the Muse of Reason. Let those who have ears, hear that demand and understand its fundamental requirement. And let those who understand it, speak now, or forever maintain a "respectful" silence.
::: posted by Edward Cline at 3:27 PM |donate | link
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Friday, February 03, 2006::
Moral cowardice from the State Department
This is appalling:
Tens of thousands of angry Muslims marched through Palestinian cities, burning the Danish flag and calling for vengeance Friday against European countries where caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad were published. In Washington, the State Department criticized the drawings, calling them "offensive to the beliefs of Muslims."
While recognizing the importance of freedom of the press and expression, State Department press officer Janelle Hironimus said these rights must be coupled with press responsibility.
"Inciting religious or ethnic hatred in this manner is not acceptable," Hironimus said. "We call for tolerance and respect for all communities and for their religious beliefs and practices." [AP]
Tolerance? Should we tolerate jihad as well? Or dare we not criticize the beliefs of our enemies for fear of offending them?
Remember: the jihadists have called for the murder of people over these cartoons, yet according to Ms. Janelle Hironimus of our own State Department, it's the publishers who are guilty of inciting hatred. Could our government take a more vicious and contradictory stand?
There is only one answer to the jihad: humiliation and death. Rather then condemn those who exercise their rightful freedoms, it's high time the State Department recognize the real enemy.
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 12:38 PM |donate | link
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Thursday, February 02, 2006::
The War: Should we stop supporting our troops?
About a week ago, Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein argued that Americans should not support the members of the military. According to Stein:
I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.
But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.
And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.
I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book.
I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.
So the war against Islamic jihad is misunderstood--it's really just a war of "American imperialism." If only we were so lucky. Right now, this war is being fought to bring liberty to the liberty-hating people of the world. But that's an argument for another time.
More importantly, just who are these people Stein who holds should receive none of our accolades--these mindless tools of American hegemony? The Rocky Mountain News did a story on some of them here.
After you read the story and the accompanying slide-show, come back to Rule of Reason and let me know if you agree with Stein that the American people should withdraw their support for them members of our armed forces and their families--or if you have something of a different thought when it comes to Stein and his opinion.
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 6:44 PM |donate | link
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The Culture: 101
I almost forgot: Happy 101st Birthday, Ayn Rand!
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 12:32 PM |donate | link
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The Culture: Rediscovering the Spirit of '76
Note: In a CAC exclusive, novelist Edward Cline talks about why he wrote his epic Sparrowhawk series.
When I first pondered the task of researching and writing the Sparrowhawk series of novels, I asked myself: What was it that I wanted to accomplish, aside from recreating 18th century Britain and America and the conflict between them? What would be the primary purpose of the story? And how could that purpose best be dramatized?
My purpose was to make real the caliber of men who made the Revolution possible. It was as simple as that. What needed to be dramatized was a stature conspicuously absent in most men today. Ideally, a writer writes for his own pleasure, for his own ends. My pleasure and my end were to recreate such men as an exercise in sanity, to escape the droning, enervating miasma of today's culture and politics and recreate a world, to paraphrase Ayn Rand on the value of Romantic fiction, populated by men who should have been my neighbors.
But that simple purpose required a stupendous task to accomplish it. And the first precondition to ensure completion of that task was that I accept as fact, as the undisputable, incontestable given, that the United States was not an accident of history, not a lucky symbiosis or combination of political or economic influences; that, instead, it was a conscious, premeditated goal and a product of men's commitment to reason and justice. Nothing less than that commitment to freedom could have moved men in that period to pursue it and achieve it in the face of odds that virtually guaranteed failure and defeat.
This had always been a given of mine. The rest was comparatively easy.
I stress the term "comparatively." It was not a costume drama that I wanted to write, nor a story in any way poisoned by the cynicism, nihilism, epistemological myopia, or crudeness of our times. It was important to capture the spirit of that period, when men glimpsed an inestimable value -- liberty, or the freedom to live on earth without fetters or manacles, literal or mental -- and took actions in pursuit of it.
This was not so easy a task, to make real, or concrete, that spirit, when all around me men were surrendering to fiat power, to tyranny, running from the knowledge that they were being enslaved, evading the knowledge that they were victims of or parties to an enormous, extortionate, life-suffocating fraud, otherwise known as the welfare state. I had never a problem projecting the "Spirit of '76" in my own mind. But, how could I translate it, or objectify it, for others, and depict its discovery by men and their subsequent loyalty to it? How was I to illustrate the transition from discovery, to potential, to the actual? To make that spirit intelligible and credible for readers to whom such a spirit was unknown or alien, or in whom such potential existed, or in whom it did exist?
In short, how, if my task was to communicate an idea, could I project that spirit in terms that would render it as real in the minds of others as it was in my own?
The answer lay in the characters of Jack Frake and Hugh Kenrick, and to introduce them in the formative years of childhood, to better be able to trace their development from discovery to an awareness of their potential, and on to its actualization in adulthood. The potential at issue is an independence of mind and a commensurate independence of spirit.
Do they achieve that dual independence? Of course. Jack and Hugh, from the very beginning, see the potential within themselves and in their lives, and refuse to relinquish it or betray it in any manner. Consequently, they set the terms of their own lives, terms that are in direct conflict with the submissive norm of most men they encounter and with the political and moral culture of their time. And, in other ways, that development of a dual independence is also traced in several minor characters, such as Glorious Swain, one of the Pippins, Dogmael Jones, the barrister and member of Parliament, and John Proudlocks, the Indian who disowns his primitive heritage. Therein are the integrated threads of discovery, potential, and actualization in the characters. And therein is the premise of the major plot and of all the subplots in the series.
How did I arrive at the conclusion that the best way to concretize that development was in dramatizing the moral and intellectual growth of especially the story's principal heroes, Jack and Hugh? There was one expression of the sense of life that I had always loved, and it occurs in Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged: "To hold an unchanging youth is to reach, at the end, the vision with which one started." It appears on the dedication pages of Books Four through Six.
Jack experiences it one night on the cliffs of the Cornwall coast, Hugh during a fireworks celebration in London. It was as necessary to begin "in the beginning" in Sparrowhawk as it was for Rand to portray the early lives of her heroes in Atlas Shrugged. The difference between her novel and mine is merely in technique. The youth of her adult heroes is shown with the device of flashbacks, while I steadily progress in tiers of instances from youth to adulthood. And the sense of life of my characters, as with hers, is inexorably tied to their vision of freedom as rational men who see life as a glorious, unobstructed, limitless adventure. All through the series, Jack and Hugh retain their "unchanging youth," not out of desperation or as an escape into nostalgia, but because it is their normal approach to life. And throughout to the end of the series, it is their "unchanging youth" that allows them to face terrible conflicts and make life-changing decisions. It imbues within them a resilience in mind and action unknown or impossible to men of lesser stature.
Jack and Hugh, and many of the secondary characters in the story, are practicing heirs of the Enlightenment. While it is possible that a man born in the Dark or the early Middle Ages could have shared their notion of an "unchanging youth," he could not do much about it in it in practical terms, that is, live his life unimpeded by church, state, or looting feudal lords. We can see the consequences of such an attempt in the tragic lives of many outstanding thinkers and innovators even during the Renaissance that followed. Overt, conspicuous independence of mind and spirit was perilous to anyone who showed evidence of them. One's reward was usually the rack, the stake, or imprisonment.
But by Jack and Hugh's time, it was possible to develop such a vision of life and be loyal to it in practice without risking death or much in the way of persecution. The Dark and early Middle Ages would have been oppressively alien to Jack and Hugh, and especially to any of us today, and in the Renaissance our relative independence would likely be precariously founded on the tolerance and patronage of a powerful lord. We take freedom of thought and action so much for granted, that our demise in those cultures would have been virtually guaranteed. It was not until the late 18th and early 19th century that writers, artists, businessmen and entrepreneurs were able to fully cut the umbilical cord of dependence on lordly patronage and subsidy.
The new enemy of liberty or of the independent man in Jack and Hugh's time was no longer the church, whose power to dominate men's lives was fading, but the state. Nominally and traditionally, the British monarch ruled by the grace of God, and his power was unlimited. During the secular evolution of British government, Parliament wrested that power from the monarch, and ruled by grace of a corrupted majority. I dramatize this in part in the trial of Redmagne and Skelly in Book One, and of the Pippins in Book Two.
The "Spirit of '76" is not in evidence in America today, except in a minority of individuals marginalized by the dual phenomena of collectivism in politics and the revival of religion. I am happy to report, however, that the heroic characters of Sparrowhawk seem to have touched a chord in many readers of the series, a repressed form of that spirit. My fan mail represents a collective "yes" to what my readers have encountered in the story. They recognize what they have never been taught, or have been taught to forget, or have never discovered until now. Their letters and emails to me range in expression from pleased astonishment to wild enthusiasm to solemn relief. Their common denominator is "thank you for having written this."
Only the critical establishment remains oblivious to Sparrowhawk; no one in that debauched profession has acknowledged its existence, at least not in any major periodical or newspaper. For that I am grateful, for I can only imagine what verbose bile the New York Times or the Washington Post would offer in the way of esthetic guidance. Critics are members of a culture's intelligentsia, and ours are simply proving Ayn Rand's contention that this country's intellectuals are philosophically, morally, and esthetically at odds with America and Americans.
It is the American readership that is discovering or rediscovering the "Spirit of '76" in Sparrowhawk, and that certainly matters. My own reward has been two-fold: the work is done, my ambition has been realized, I am happy with it, it is now a part of the existing culture; and, I have been proven right, that it was offered to men, and they said "yes" to what it represents as literature and as inspiration. All those things can be said to contribute to what Ayn Rand identified as an "unchanging youth."
Edward Cline Yorktown, Virginia February 2006
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 11:48 AM |donate | link
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Tuesday, January 31, 2006::
The Culture: What the President won't be talking about tonight . . .
. . . and why Objectivists need to think long and hard about it.
Tonight is President Bush's State of the Union address, where the president will lay out his agenda for the next year. According to Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes, it won't be the "ownership society."
When running for re-election in 2004, and again last year as he campaigned for Social Security reform, President Bush repeatedly advocated an "ownership society." It was a bold concept aimed at producing a historic shift in power from Washington bureaucrats to individual Americans. But "ownership society" is not a phrase you're likely to hear from him tonight in his State of the Union address. Instead, he is expected to take a more conventional--and politically palatable--approach. His domestic agenda for 2006 includes easing the burden of rising health-care costs, trimming entitlement spending, increasing economic competitiveness, promoting measures to spur energy independence and making his tax cuts permanent. "No one will come away from the speech with ownership society on their lips," a White House official said. [Wall Street Journal]
So not unlike President Clinton's State of the Union addresses, President Bush is expected to rely upon the "micro-initiative" to sell his agenda. How pathetic.
The State of the Union address offers a president a unique opportunity to communicate directly with the American people. It gives a president the chance to explain the reasoning for his political agenda in as much detail as the strength of his voice will permit. So why not use it to make a case for private ownership that would otherwise go unheard? Why not use it to elevate the argument against statism?
Why not? Because that is not what this President believes.
President Bush has had two major policy thrusts in his administration: the "ownership society" and the "forward strategy for freedom." Both on their face sound noble, yet both have proven to be utter disasters in execution. Despite the nice title--the "ownership society" died before it even went public. By failing to directly challenge the altruistic moral premise of programs like Social Security and government-controlled healthcare, the case for the "ownership society" was never able overcome the inertia these programs enjoy. For goodness sake, Bush has created new entitlements--not repealed them. You can't defeat your enemy by adapting his arguments--especially his moral arguments.
The "forward strategy for freedom" has also come to be a miserable failure. The base premise made sense: free nations don't attack one another. In execution, it has relied upon a fantasy. The president's "forward strategy for freedom" holds the Middle East can be transformed by democratic elections made possible by the blood of American solders. Never mind that nowhere in human history did open election precede the protection of individual rights by a people. Never mind that not nearly enough jihadists have died to discredit militant Islam as a cultural force. And never mind that Hamas was just democratically elected by the Palestinians and that the Iraqis voted themselves into a theocracy. These are just inconvenient facts to be belied by true believing neo-conservatives-and unfortunately, more than a few Objectivists.
Yet despite the outrage of many of us, there is little we can do about our nation's flawed strategy in the near term. The reason President Bush is in power and we are not is because President Bush's views reflect the dominant philosophy, and we (as of yet) do not.
So just what then can Objectivists do in the realm of politics?
Perhaps first would be to admit the utter failure in "Anti-Bushies for Bush" as an Objectivist mantra. There was a lot of debate during the last presidential election in Objectivist circles over who to vote for. The spread went 80%-20% pro-Bush, dominated mostly by "Anti-Bushies for Bush" who could not stomach Kerry as a leader.
I always thought it ironic though that Objectivists who could not abide a Kerry White House nevertheless adopted a key component of Kerry's political philosophy: the position of supporting a thing while simultaneously opposing it. I think one would be hard-pressed to found anyone open to receiving Objectivism who would be taken in by such a position. If Kerry didn't deserve our support, neither does Bush-he is an intellectual nightmare and a proponent of new bad ideas. And if ideas matter, Bush's ideas ought to exclude him from receiving anything from us, whatever it may be in our power to give.
And I'm not saying I don't understand who some people get taken in by Bush. I've been taken in by the man in the past and if you read some of my writings, you'll see just how many times I responded to something he said in a speech only to be let down with him again and again and again. It's been five years now. I'm sick of it.
I think the far more successful stance for Objectivists to take would be to position themselves as what we truly are: uncompromising intellectual radicals for a new philosophy of reason and individual rights. It's that simple.
Objectivists reject the status-quo of sacrifice and self-abnegation, both as individuals and as a nation. Communicate that effectively and we will swell our ranks--get sidetracked and we will fail as a movement.
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 2:16 PM |donate | link
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Monday, January 30, 2006::
The Culture: This is what American-abetted propaganda looks like
What does Google's collusion with the Chinese government to censor its search results mean? It's the difference between fact and illusion.
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 5:52 PM |donate | link
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The Culture: Jeff Jacoby gets it
Jeff Jacoby thinks that the recent Hamas victory is a useful turn of events:
I think the sweeping Hamas victory is by far the best result that could have been hoped for.
I say that not because Hamas is anything other than a blood-drenched terrorist group, but because its lopsided win is an unambiguous reality check into the nature of Palestinian society. And if there is one thing that the West badly needs, it is more realism and less delusion about the Palestinians.
Some of that delusion was on display at the White House on Thursday, when President Bush painted the Palestinian election as a ''healthy" exercise in civic reform:
''Obviously, people were not happy with the status quo," Bush explained. ''The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find healthcare. And so the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the Palestinian territories. . . . There's something healthy about a system that does that."
Spare us, Mr. President. If a slate of neo-Nazi skinheads swept to power in a European election, would you say that the voters were seeking ''honest government" and ''services"? Palestinians are not stupid, and it insults their intelligence to pretend that when they vote to empower a genocidal organization with a platform straight out of ''Mein Kampf," what they're really after is better healthcare. Islamist extremism isn't needed to fix Palestinian hospitals any more than fascism was needed to make Italian trains run on time in the 1920s. If Palestinians turned out en masse to elect a party that unapologetically stands for hatred and mass murder, it's a safe bet that hatred and mass murder had something to do with the turnout. [Boston Globe]
Amen. Democratic elections are not the cause of freedom and peacefulness, they are the product. I wonder just how long it's going to take the White House to figure this out for themselves--for example, in Iraq.
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 3:16 PM |donate | link
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The Culture: One witch doctor to another . . .
Remember the line that the only three places that understand the world were the Vatican, the Kremlin and the basement of the Empire State Building? Well, the Vatican angle of this story caught my eye:
Pope Benedict XVI believes that unlike other religions, Islam cannot be reformed and, therefore, is incompatible with democracy, according to a Catholic leader who participated with the pontiff in a secretive meeting on the subject.
Fr. Joseph Fessio, provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., and founder of the publishing house Ignatius Press, spoke with talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt Jan. 5 about the gathering with the pope's former theology students, which took place last September at Castelgondolfo in Italy, the papal summer residence.
The pope, according to Fessio, believes Islam cannot become compatible with democracy because a radical reinterpretation of the religion would be required, which is "impossible, because it's against the very nature of the Quran, as it's understood by Muslims."
In July, when asked by reporters, Benedict refused to declare Islam "a religion of peace", a phrase often invoked by President Bush.
"I would not like to use big words to apply generic labels," the pope replied at the time. "It certainly contains elements that can favor peace, it also has other elements: We must always seek the best elements." [WorldNetDaily.com]
Interesting. It would seem that the Vatican understands the nature of Islam better then the government of a nation currently locked in a death struggle with the faith. Not good news . . .
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 2:56 PM |donate | link
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