"You Can't Take the Islam Out of Islamic terrorism."
--Andrew McCarthy

. . . the people who founded our country had a much more humble and better idea about how the country would need to be defended. They didn't assume that America would be forever, and they certainly were not under a delusion that we could be protected by our legal system from foreign threats to our security. They had a very strong conviction that there had to be an accountability nexus between the people who made national security decisions and the people whose lives were at stake. And what that meant was that the courts essentially were going to have no role in national security. They had an important role in our system, but not in protecting our nation from foreign threats.
--Andrew McCarthy

Presume everybody that comes to court is innocent in our domestic legal system. How can anybody think that will apply to armed militants under declared hostilities against the country? Not individuals. How can anybody think that that would apply?
--Rush Limbaugh

You hear a lot about, "We need to bring terrorists into our system, give them the full power of due process that we would give to a tax cheat," and get them convicted under all those presumptions that you just described, and then that way we can feel good about ourselves.
--Andrew McCarthy

About Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheik," now in prison in the U.S.

. . . and the "sweeping under the prayer rug" of the murder of Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League

Speaking of the "blind sheik:"
. . . he didn't have to ask for asylum until the end because we just let him in. It really was awful. I mean, he was on the list, but we didn't read the list and then when he got here it turned out that, you know, one office is investigating him and the other is giving him a green card as a religious instructor, you know, not our finest hour, but unfortunately a sort of a steady theme of all this. You know, if we look back at the 1993 attack, we had very good reason to know that it was coming. We had the FBI conducting surveillance in the late 1980s of these guys as they were conducting paramilitary training out in Long Island. We had, you know, a CIA angle to this because they were basically funding large parts of the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and they were doing it through the Pakistanis who were very sympathetic to the most anti-American elements of the mujahideen, and then we had this murder of Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League in 1990 where that murder was committed by a guy named El Sayyid Nosair, who was actually reporting to the Blind Sheik even while the Blind Sheik was over in Egypt, and though it was quite clear from the stuff that was seized from him that he was part of something that was much bigger and had much more ambitious designs than just the murder of Kahane, there was a decision made at that time to treat that murder like it was the work of a lone gunman, in order to prevent any religious element from getting into the case, which I think was a big mistake unfortunately.
--Andrew McCarthy

I wanted to believe in 1993 the stuff that we were putting out, you know, that he [the blind sheik] basically perverted who was otherwise a peaceful doctrine. But what I found was going through all of his thousands of pages of transcripts and statements, was that when he cited scripture to justify acts of terrorism, to the extent he was quoting scripture or referring to it, he did it accurately, which shouldn't be a surprise.
***
". . . he [the blind sheik] was a doctor of Islamic jurisprudence, graduated from Al-Azhar University in Egypt. Why in the world I would have thought that I or the Justice Department would know more about Islam than he would is beyond me now that I look back on it, but back then I was pretty confident that we must have been right when we said that he was basically perverting the doctrine.
--Andrew McCarthy

. . . you assumed him [the blind sheik] to be a fruitcake. Nobody, nobody's religion could actually have things in [Islamic] scripture that he was citing, and you found out everything he said was there. It opened your eyes, and I think this is the kind of thing. . . . and you've talked about the notion here that they declared war on us, you cite 1993. We didn't take it seriously until 2001. Do you think we still take it seriously?
--Rush Limbaugh

. . . We're taking it less seriously. . . . the reporting that's come out since -- I guess it was about April 24th -- is that the internal syncing at least in parts of the administration -- and this is something the State Department's pushed for a long time -- is that we make a mistake call jihadism, jihadism; because there are all kinds of jihad, not just forceable jihad. This is how the thinking goes. And, by the way, while there may be all kinds of jihad, jihad is a military concept. That's how it grew up. That's the reason there is a Muslim world in the first place. But secondly the idea is that when you call them jihadists, you are somehow emboldening them as if what they were relying on is how we regard them rather than how they see themselves.
***
We're so intimidated by the idea that there's a religious label on this and everybody is so afraid of their shadow to talk about it, that whenever you say what is obvious -- which is that you can't take the "Islam" out of Islamic terror and that the main cause of this is not democracy or lack of democracy; or, you know, ancient hatreds or the economy, poverty, or whatever our excuse is this week. This is driven by doctrine. You know, we have poor people all over the world. They're not all committing terrorism.
***
The ideology that we're talking about here is 14 centuries old. It existed and thrived before there was a United States. It has commanded the allegiance of the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the educated and uneducated -- to some extent, Sunnis and Shi'ites, princes and paupers. You know, you can't pigeonhole one rationale for why it exists other than the obvious one, which is that it's a matter of doctrine and the people who believe it believe it's a divine injunction and that mankind doesn't have a right to make laws which run afoul of what they believe is the law that was handed down by Allah directly to Mohammed 14 centuries ago.
--Anrew McCarthy

What's it going to take to wake people up again to the existence of this threat, and just because we've thwarted one on our soil for seven years; however we've done it, doesn't mean the threat's gone away or is any less intense. What's it going to take?
--Rush Limbaugh

Well, I hope it doesn't take another attack. . . . [regarding pulling out of Iraq] the worst thing we ever did was pull out of Lebanon in 1983 when the Marine barracks got hit. The next worst thing we probably ever did was pull out of Somalia when that got ugly. These people -- and when I talk about "these people," I mean people like Bin Laden and the Blind Sheik -- if used to a fair thee well as a recruiting tool this notion that they're the strong horse, we're the weak horse . . . . What they have going for them that we don't, is they have basically eradicated our threshold idea of what is civilized behavior. They are willing to do anything to win, and they're absolutely sure that history is on their side. Unless we become more sure than we are now that we're right, and that we have a need to show them that however long it takes, we're going to do what has to be done to win; you know, we can't rely on the fact that we're a super power and that it's inevitable that we'll win this thing.
--Andrew McCarthy

The title of the book: Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. The author is Andrew McCarthy.

from "Talking to Andrew McCarthy, author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad," an interview by Rush Limbaugh.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_050208/content/01125110.guest.html
Hat tip to Jihad Watch http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/020882.php
who pointed to this interview. More there.

CAN THE WEST (THE FREE WORLD) WIN AGAIN?


CAN WE WIN THIS WAR AGAINST ISLAMIC IMPERIALISM AND THE MOSLEM DRIVE TO MAKE US SUBMIT TO A STIFLING IDEOLOGY OF SEXUAL REPRESSION AND DICTATORIAL ASCETICISM*?
___________________________________
* asceticism = Practice of the denial of physical or psychological desires in order to attain a spiritual ideal or goal.
___________________________________
CAN THE EUROPEANS (NON-MOSLEMS) RECOVER THEIR HERITAGE OF SAVAGE WARFARE, AND AGAIN BECOME WARRIORS?

AND HOW ABOUT THE AMERICANS? CAN AMERICA RECALL ITS NO-NONSENSE ATTITUDE TOWARDS THOSE WHO WANT TO ENSLAVE IT?

CAN WE RID OURSELVES OF THE CREEPING DESIRE TO PLEASE, TO INCORPORATE THE INCORPORABLE INTO OUR SOCIETIES THAT HAVE ADVANCED FAR BEYOND THE STAGNANT, STALE IDEOLOGY OF DEATH AND INTOLERANCE THAT THREATENS US?

WE DESCEND FROM WARRIOR TRIBES AND CIVILIZATIONS WHOSE SAVAGERY, CRUELTY AND BARBARITY FAR EXCEEDS THAT OF THOSE WHO FOR THE SAME MILLENIA ROAMED PARCHED DESERTS ON DROMEDARIES IN BARE-EXISTENCE MISERY.

AND WE HAVE FAR OUTSTRIPPED THE IDEOLOGY-TRAMMELED SAND-DWELLERS THAT HAD LONG AGO BEEN FORCED TO REMAIN OUTSIDE THE FERTILE PORTIONS OF THE WORLD TO EKE OUT A MISERABLE EXISTENCE ON THE MOST INHOSPITABLE PARTS OF THE EARTH.

YET THEY HAVE TRIED AND TRIED AGAIN TO CONQUER US, TO TAKE WHAT WE HAVE BUILT AND ACCOMPLISHED MAKE US THEIR SLAVES TO SUPPORT THEIR INDOLENCE WITH OUR BRAINS AND MUSCLE. THIS IS THE HISTORY OF THE FOLLOWERS OF THIS IDEOLOGY THEY CALL "ISLAM."

THEY HAVE APPROPRIATED WHAT OTHERS HAVE WROUGHT AND BOASTED IT AS THEIR OWN ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THEY HAVE OBLITERATED ALL HISTORY OF THEIR OWN BEFORE THE IDEOLOGY CALLED ISLAM WAS INVENTED AND THAT OF EVERY CULTURE THAT THEY HAVE BEEN ABLE TO SUBJUGATE.

THEIR ARROGANCE HAS NO BASIS, FOR THEY CAN BOAST OF NOTHING BUT A DRIVE TO SUBJUGATE AND FEED OFF THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF OTHERS.

YET THEY THREATEN US AGAIN. AND THE METHODS THEY USE ARE THE SAME ONES THAT HAD PROVEN SUCCESSFUL FOR THEM 13 CENTURIES AGO:

INSTILLING FEAR

OFFERING CONVERSION TO THEIR IDEOLOGY

OR

"PROTECTION" IN RETURN FOR HEAVY TAXATION
AND SUBHUMAN STATUS AS THEIR INFERIORS

ALL THESE OFFERS ARE UNACCEPTABLE TO US

HENCE

WE MUST USE FORCE

TALK: ARGUMENT, DEBATE, DIPLOMACY

WILL NOT WORK

BECAUSE THE ISLAMICS LIE, DECEIVE, CHEAT, ARE UNTRUSTWORTHY



BUT, CAN WE OF THE WEST, PEEL OFF THE VENEER OF

"NICENESS," FAIRNESS, HUMANITARIANISM, COMPASSION, PITY, AND

OTHER STRENGTH-SAPPING CULTURAL AMELIORATION

THAT WE HAVE DEVISED TO LIVE IN PEACE WITH EACH OTHER

TO DEFEAT THE DECEITFUL ISLAMICS?

WE WILL HAVE TO.


WE MUST GET BACK TO THE BASICS OF WARFARE.

WE WILL EXAMINE ISLAMIC WARFARE

CONTRASTED WITH WESTERN WARFARE

IN COMING POSTS

TO SEE WHICH WILL PREVAIL.


VICTOR DAVIS HANSON HAS HIS OWN IDEAS ON THIS TOPIC:

According to Hanson, Western values such as political freedom, capitalism, individualism, democracy, scientific inquiry, rationalism, and open debate form an especially lethal combination when applied to warfare. Non-Western societies can win the occasional victory when warring against a society with these Western values, writes Hanson, but the "Western way of war" will prevail in the long run. Hanson emphasizes that Western warfare is not necessarily more (or less) moral than war as practiced by other cultures; his argument is simply that the "Western way of war" is unequalled in its devastation and decisiveness.

###

Dr. Hanson is most famous for his 2001 book Carnage and Culture in which he argued that the military dominance of Western Civilization, beginning with the ancient Greeks, is the result of certain fundamental aspects of Western culture. Hanson rejects racial explanations for this military preeminence. He also disagrees with environmental explanations, as put forth by authors such as Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel.[2]

Carnage and Culture examines nine battles throughout history, each of which is used to illustrate a particular aspect of Western culture that Hanson believes contributes to the dominance of Western warfare. The battles or campaigns recounted (with themes in parenthesis) are the Battle of Salamis (480 BC; free citizens), the Battle of Gaugamela (331 BC; the decisive battle of annihilation), the Battle of Cannae (216 BC; civic militarism), the Battle of Tours/Poitiers (732; infantry), the Battle of Tenochtitlan (1521; technology and reason), the Battle of Lepanto (1571; capitalism), the Battle of Rorke's Drift (1879; discipline), the Battle of Midway (1942; individualism), and the Tet Offensive (1968; dissent).

Though Carnage and Culture appeared before the September 11, 2001 attacks, its message that the "Western way of war" will ultimately prevail made the book a best-seller in the wake of those events. Immediately after 9/11, Carnage and Culture was re-issued with a new afterword by Hanson in which he explicitly stated that the United States would win the war on terror for the reasons stated in the book.

Hanson cites the Theban general and statesman Epaminondas, the American generals Sherman and Patton, as well as Winston Churchill as his heroes.

Victor_Davis_Hanson - Wikipedia

[This post first appeared at the now-censored Islamic Danger blog on 4/27/07 as http://islamic-danger.blogspot.com/2007/04/can-west-free-world-win-again-can-we.html. To try and see more at this restricted blog, click on <<> "Home" at the very bottom of the post. This may or may not work. I cannot tell, as I, as an "author" of that blog, can still access it. Give it a try, and let me know as a Comment here.]

2 Comments:

Sounder said...
Wars can only be won by overwhelming force, not the series of half measures we apply today. If we don't have the stomach for war then we should stay home. I don't nlike waste, I believe in a mission and a plan to accomplish the mission no matter how un-PC it is.

4:50 PM

urbanadder22 said...
To elaborate on what you said, sounder, here's what's wrong with how we've been going about fighting the Islamic enemy:

[quote]

"Empty talk of “complete victory” notwithstanding, our official foreign policy regarding America's security against Islamic terrorism is: accepted defeat. We have not been willing to take military action against the most important threats against us, and the type of military action we have been willing to take has not succeeded in making us safer. And most disturbing of all, despite our travesty of a foreign policy, the vast majority of once-enraged Americans has not demanded anything better. Most Americans acknowledge that Iraq is a debacle, that we will not be safe anytime soon, and that we have no plans to deal effectively with threats such as Iran's nuclear weapons program—yet there is widespread resignation that this is the best we can do. This—in response to a threat caused by pip-squeak nations, against the most powerful military in history."

[close quote]

The quote is from: “Just War Theory” vs. American Self-Defense." Read the whole thing by clicking on the foregoing title and link.

THE HISTORY OF MOSLEMS IN INDIA

from http://islamicdangerstill.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-moslems-purloined-knowledge-of.html

[quoting Fjordman:]

. . . in India, Muslims were initially viewed as just another group of foreigners, sometimes annoying, but essentially marginal: "There is no evidence of an Indian appreciation of the global threat which they represented; and the peculiar nature of their mission – to impose a new monotheist orthodoxy by military conquest and political dominion – was so alien to Indian tradition that it went uncomprehended."

Parts of northern India had been invaded by outsiders before, but Muslims represented a very different breed of conquerors. Keay again:
"Unlike Alexander's Greeks, Muslim invaders were well aware of India's immensity, and mightily excited by its resources. As well as exotic produce like spices, peacocks, pearls, diamonds, ivory and ebony, the 'Hindu country' was renowned for its skilled manufactures and its bustling commerce. India's economy was probably one of the most sophisticated in the world. Guilds regulated production and provided credit; the roads were safe, ports and markets carefully supervised, and tariffs low. Moreover capital was both plentiful and conspicuous. Since at least Roman times the subcontinent seems to have enjoyed a favourable balance of payments. Gold and silver had been accumulating long before the 'golden Guptas,' and they continued to do so. Figures in the Mamallapuram sculptures and the Ajanta frescoes are as strung about with jewellery as those in the Sanchi and Amaravati reliefs. Divine images of solid gold are well attested and royal temples were rapidly becoming royal treasuries as successful dynasts endowed them with the fruits of their conquests. The devout Muslim, although ostensibly bent on converting the infidel, would find his zeal handsomely rewarded."
http://islamicdangerstill.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-moslems-purloined-knowledge-of.html

OF WHAT USE IS HISTORY?

history "may not teach us particular lessons, but it does tell us how we might live in the world", . . . a historical sense "will give us the best guide we'll ever have for groping our way into an unpredictable future".

--Gordon S. Wood

The Purpose of the Past: Reflections of the Uses of History (Penguin, 2008)

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2008/04/book-review-purpose-of-past.html


FOR PEOPLE WITH A MORE THAN A PASSING INTEREST IN HISTORY:

A Book Review by JBD
from http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2008/04/book-review-purpose-of-past.html

This volume, The Purpose of the Past: Reflections of the Uses of History (Penguin, 2008) collects twenty-one of Gordon S. Wood's essay-length book reviews, written over the past two and a half decades for the New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Atlantic and other publications. With these essays Wood, one of America's most critically-acclaimed academic historians, offers little less than a thorough review of recent historical scholarship, with enhancements in the form of a thoughtful introduction and short afterwords appended to each essay.

One of the threads running through these selections is Wood's discomfort with the intrusion of literary theory into historical writing. He declares bluntly that "the epistemological skepticism and blurring of genres that seem to have made sense for some literary scholars had devastating implications for historians .... The result of all this postmodern history, with its talk of 'deconstruction,' 'decentering,' 'textuality,' and 'essentialism,' has been to make academic history writing almost as esoteric and inward directed as the writing of literary scholars. This is too bad, since history is an endeavor that needs a wide readership to justify itself" (4-6).

I couldn't agree more with this view - I share Wood's intense dislike for historical writing so filled with jargony gobbledygook that whatever narrative might be lurking within is utterly obscured by language which means absolutely nothing to anyone not in tune with the babble of befuddling banality unleashed on society by the theoreticians. I also happen to agree with Wood on another of his major points (that history "may not teach us particular lessons, but it does tell us how we might live in the world", that a historical sense "will give us the best guide we'll ever have for groping our way into an unpredictable future").

Wood is nothing if not very a careful historian, and many of the reviews included here offer cautionary notes for would-be writers of history. He argues against the practice of offering exaggerated claims of how x influenced y ("in most cases tracing the source of broadly shared ideas is a fool's errand" - 29); urges historians to be conscious of - and quite wary of - inserting anachronism and/or presentism into their writing; and suggests that historical writing should be seen as less a vehicle for imparting lessons than the opportunity to explain, to tell a story.

There weren't all that many things said in Wood's reviews that I found myself in strong disagreement with, one important exception being his 1991 NYRB review of Simon Schama's Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations). In this very non-traditional book, which the author himself described as something of an experiment, Schama inserted fictional musings and "novelistic devices" into his narrative: Wood was profoundly disturbed by this, and both in his review and in the afterword to it printed here decries the "devastating effects such a work by a distinguished historian could have on the conventions of the discipline" (109). Since I feel myself completely capable of distinguishing between fiction and non-fiction (and perhaps because I do like a bit of historical fiction if it's written well), I had no problem with Schama's experimentation in Dead Certainties, and wouldn't mind reading more of it (I do agree, however, with Wood's criticism about the book being classified as history by the Library of Congress and not fiction - that is problematic).

When my copy of The Purpose of the Past arrived, I immediately opened to the last review to see if it was the one I hoped it would be: Wood's 28 June 2007 NYRB review of two recent books (Lawrence Goldstone's Dark Bargain and Robin Einhorn's American Taxation, American Slavery). I had reviewed Goldstone's book almost a year earlier, and was pleased to see many of my own criticisms echoed by Wood (who offered what I think was a very fair and even-handed treatment of a truly misguided book). Goldstone's vituperative response to Wood's review is a prime example of how not to react to criticism: he suggests that Wood "dismisses" his work as that of an amateur, when (as Wood replied) Goldstone's lack of "academic appointment" has nothing whatever to do with the failings of Dark Bargain.

Writers and readers of American historical scholarship will find Wood's essays enlightening, clearly-written, and at time provocative. I recommend them highly.
Labels: Book Reviews

posted by JBD @ 3:43 PM April 27, 2008

WHAT THE POPE REALLY SAID

That fateful day at Regensburg?

WHAT DID THE POPE SAY, WHAT DID HE REALLY SAY?

Did he insult the sensibilities of the Moslems of the world?

Or was it a learned discourse about the relationship of

faith and reason?

(Is there reason in the faith of Islam? Or is it an irrational drive to convert or subjugate the world to a faith that has no reason? [rhetorical questions mine ed.])

What did he say? What did he really say, that Benedict XVI, the Holy Father of the Catholic Church and the Pope to the rest of the world?

Well, read it for yourself:

Here are his words. This is what the Pope said--official from the Vatican--although . . .

"The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional."
© Copyright 2006 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

[Ed. my, LW, note: The "good" parts, the parts that everybody is looking for, have been emphasized bold and in red. this emphasis is not Benedict XVI's, but is mine]

First, here is Pope Benedict XVI's concluding statement:


"Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university".

And here is that portion of the Pope's address that contains the part--the forceful [sic] expression of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II:


[Quote - this is the Pope speaking now]

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness which leaves us astounded, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. . . . .

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply declares "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.

[end of quote]

Read the whole thing at

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html

© Copyright 2006 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

And that [as Forrest Gump would say] is all I'm going to say about that. LW

THE POPE AND THE AYATOLLAH


Q: What do they have in common?

A: They were both interviewed by the same person


LA FALLACI AND THE AYTOLLAH
(La inolvidable Oriana)

Fallaci Goes-a Few Rounds with the Ayatollah Khomeini
QUOTING A QUOTE FROM NEO-NEOCOM blogspot:
http://neo-neocon.blogspot.com/2006/09/fallaci-goes-few-rounds-with-khomeini.html:

"In memory of Oriana Fallaci, who died in 2006 in Florence Italy, I'm posting
excerpts from her 1979 interview with Ayatollah Khomeini, not long after he came
to power (these quotes appeared as part of a piece the New Yorker..."

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060605fa_fact
neo-neocon - http://neo-neocon.blogspot.com

from The New Yorker:
Oriana Fallaci directs her fury toward Islam.
by MARGARET TALBOT

"...it did not take long to realize that in spite of his [the Ayatollah Khomeini's] quiet appearance he represented the Robespierre or the Lenin of something which would go very far and would poison the world. People loved him too much. They saw in him another Prophet. Worse: a God."

Upon leaving Khomeini’s house after her first interview, Fallaci was besieged by Iranians who wanted to touch her because she’d been in the Ayatollah’s presence. “The sleeves of my shirt were all torn off, my slacks, too,” she recalled. “My arms were full of bruises, and hands, too. Do believe me: everything started with Khomeini. Without Khomeini, we would not be where we are. What a pity that, when pregnant with him, his mother did not choose to have an abortion.”

http://neo-neocon.blogspot.com/2006/09/fallaci-goes-few-rounds-with-khomeini.html


LA FALLACI AND POPE BENEDICT XVI

A passage from Fallaci's The Force of Reason:
re-quoted from "Polistra"
http://polistrasmill.blogspot.com/2006/09/welcome-back-to-civilization-benedict.html

Last August I was received in private audience by Ratzinger. A Pope who loves my work since he read 'Letter to a Child Never Born' and whom I deeply respect since I read his intelligent books. Morover, with whom I happen to agree in many occasions. For example, when he writes that the West has developed a sort of hatred toward itself. That it no longer loves itself, that it has lost its spirituality and risks to lose its identity too. ... This is also why I state that, in selling itself to theocratic Islam, secularism has missed the most important appointment offered to it by History.

And in doing so it has opened a void, an abyss, that only spirituality can fill. It is also why in the Church of today I see an unexpected partner, an unexpected ally.... Unless, of course, the Church too misses its appointment with History. Something I don't foresee, though. And I don't becuse, in reaction to the materialistic ideologies which have characterized the century we just left, the century ahead seems to me marked by an inevitable nostalgia or irresistible need of religiousness.

In other words, you can't replace an evil religion with an empty theory like democracy. You have to replace it with a good religion, and the Pope is best positioned to start such a replacement.

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Also see

http://neoconexpress.blogspot.com/2006/09/la-fallaci-prophet-of-decline-passes.html

http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2006/09/oriana-fallaci-rip.html

A German's point of view on Islam

From American Congress for Truth

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

'Very few people were true Nazis 'he said,' but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'

We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.

It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the 'peaceful majority', the 'silent majority', is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.

China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:

Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands world wide, read this -think about it - and send it on.

[Regarding Germans and Moslems, also click on and then read Moslems are not Jews-Letter to the Germans]
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American Congress for Truth
P.O. Box 6884
Virginia Beach, VA 23456
http://www.americancongressfortruth.org/