On the offensive…
Some Muslim leaders in the Middle East continue to whip up anti-Christian hostility, aimed mostly at Pope Benedict because of his reference to Islam in one of his addresses in Regensburg this week (see below). I questioned in the earlier post whether the faithful Mulsim masses are truly offended, or are being told to be.
Here’s part of the answer:
“This is a new crusade against the Arab Islamic world. It comes in different forms, in cartoons or lectures … they hate our religion,” Ismail Radwan, a local Hamas official, told the rally.
They’re quick to call this a “crusade,” which is like a call to arms. And sure enough, they’re likening it to the notorious Danish “cartoon controversy,” which carried on far and wide and long. The Hamas official “told the rally” that “they hate our religion.”
Officials like that are calling their people out to rally, and filling them with this kind of rhetoric. Who sounds more eager for a crusade?
Cooler, more reasoned heads are explaining the pope’s words and willingness to speak them as an interest on his part to engage the global tension over radical Islam.
Pope Benedict XVI’s comments on religious radicalism are another sign of his intention to bring his voice into one of the world’s most critical showdowns: Islam’s internal struggles between moderates and extremists…
Benedict, they say, appears to increasingly view the West’s confrontation with radical Islam as a fateful moment in history that demands the Vatican’s moral authority – just as his predecessor, John Paul II, reshaped the dimensions of the papacy by openly taking sides in the Cold War.
If you’re thinking what I’m thinking — that Pope Benedict is way too smart and savvy to blunder into this without anticipating the consequences — some experts are swift to explain…we’re right.
The Rev. Robert Taft, a specialist in Islamic affairs at Rome’s Pontifical Oriental Institute, said it was unlikely the pope miscalculated how some Muslims would receive his speech.
“The message he is sending is very, very clear,” Taft said. “Violence in the name of faith is never acceptable in any religion and that (the pope) considers it his duty to challenge Islam and anyone else on this.”
Pray for Pope Benedict, and world peace, now as much as ever.
