Islam & 'respect' - what about the rest of us?

Rod Dreher:

I get so very tired of global Muslim whining about how they are disrespected. In some cases, I suppose, it's true, but I'd take these complaints a lot more seriously if Islamic countries busied themselves treating Christians and members of other minority religions with respect, instead of persecution. Daniel Henninger writes about this today in the Wall Street Journal, in context of Obama's statement in Turkey the other day that he offers respect to Islam. Excerpt:

[Obama's statement] is an eloquent description of ecumenical civility. In reality, the experience of Arab Christians living now amid majority Islamic populations is often repression, arrest, imprisonment and death.

Coptic Christians in Egypt have been singled out for discrimination and persecution. Muslim rioters often burn or vandalize their churches and shops.

In Turkey, the Syriac Orthodox Church (its 3,000 members speak Aramaic, the language of Christ) is battling with Turkish authorities over the lands around the Mor Gabriel monastery, built in 397.

Pakistan's recent peace deal with the Taliban in the Swat Valley puts at risk the 500 Christians still trying to live there. Many fled after Islamic extremists bombed a girls' school late last year. Pakistan has never let them buy land to build a church.

In 1995, the Saudis were allowed to build a mosque in Rome near the Vatican, but never reciprocated with a Christian church in their country. Saudi Arabia even forbids private worship at home for some one million Christian migrant workers.

In Iraq, the situation for small religious minorities has become dire. Reports emerge regularly of mortal danger there for groups that date to antiquity -- Chaldean-Assyrians, the Yazidis and Sabean Mandaeans, who revere John the Baptist. Last fall the Chaldean-Assyrian archbishop of Mosul was kidnapped and murdered. Some Iraqi Christians believe the new government won't protect them, and talk of moving into a "homeland" enclave in Nineveh. Penn State Prof. Philip Jenkins, author of "The Lost History of Christianity," calls the Iraq situation "a classic example of a church that is killed over time."

In short, the "respect" Mr. Obama promised to give Islam is going only in one direction. And he knows that.

Islam: wife-rape legitimized in Afganistan

Critics assail Afghan law that 'legalizes rape'
Apr 2 01:11 PM US/Eastern
By FISNIK ABRASHI
Associated Press Writer

KABUL (AP) - A new Afghan law makes it legal for men to rape their wives, human rights groups and some Afghan lawmakers said Thursday, accusing President Hamid Karzai of signing the legislation to bolster his re-election prospects.

Critics worry the legislation undermines hard-won rights for women enacted after the fall of the Taliban's strict Islamist regime.

The law—which some lawmakers say was never debated in parliament—is intended to regulate family life inside Afghanistan's Shiite community, which makes up about 20 percent of this country of 30 million people. The law does not affect Afghan Sunnis.

One of the most controversial articles stipulates the wife "is bound to preen for her husband as and when he desires."

"As long as the husband is not traveling, he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night," Article 132 of the law says. "Unless the wife is ill or has any kind of illness that intercourse could aggravate, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband."

One provision also appears to protect the woman's right to sex inside marriage saying the "man should not avoid having sexual relations with his wife longer than once every four months."

The law's critics say Karzai signed the legislation in the past month only for political gains several months before the country's presidential election.

The United Nations Development Fund for Women, or UNIFEM, said the law "legalizes the rape of a wife by her husband."

"The law violates women's rights and human rights in numerous ways," a UNIFEM statement said.

The strongest criticism came from Canada, a country that has lost 116 soldiers fighting the Taliban and spent up to $8 billion to support the Karzai government.

"The concept that women are full human beings with human rights is very, very central to the reason the international community is engaged in this country," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said this week in London, where he's attending the G-20 summit.

Canada's Defense Minister Peter MacKay said he will use this week's NATO summit to put "direct" pressure on his Afghan counterparts to abandon the legislation.

The issue of women's rights is a continuous source of tension between the country's conservative establishment and more liberal members of society. The Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 banned women from appearing in public without a body-covering burqa and a male escort from her family.

Much has improved since then. Millions of girls now attend school and many women own businesses. Of 351 parliamentarians, 89 are women.

But in this staunchly conservative country, critics fear those gains could easily be reversed.

Fawzia Kufi, a lawmaker who opposed the legislation, said several of its articles undermine constitutional and human rights of women as equals and take the country backward.

"All the efforts that were made in the last seven years to enhance women's rights will be undermined," Kufi said.

Karzai has not commented on the law. A spokesman, Waheed Omar, said the president is "aware of the discussion surrounding the law, and is looking into the matter."

Brad Adams, the Asia director for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said the law is a "dramatic setback for women's rights."

"It directly contradicts the freedoms enshrined in the Afghan constitution and the international conventions that Afghanistan has signed up to that guarantee the rights of women," Adams said.

Safia Sidiqi, a lawmaker from Nangarhar province who condemned the legislation, said she cannot remember parliament debating or even voting on the law and she does not know how it came to be signed by Karzai. She called for the law to be recalled to parliament for debate.

"It is impossible in a two-month session for parliament to pass a law more than 200 pages long," she said of the 263-page law.

Sayed Hossain Alemi Balkhi, a Shiite lawmaker involved in drafting it, defended the legislation saying it gives more rights to women than even Britain or the United States does. He said the law makes women safer and ensures the husband is obliged to provide for her.

As Karzai seeks re-election later this year, he is courting voters in the Shiite community, Kufi said. Women voters are presumed to vote as their husbands do.

"Women's basic freedoms are being sacrificed for the political and electoral gain of a few parliamentarians," Human Rights Watch's Adams said.

Moslem musings...

These thoughts were born from the "Catholic & Muslim Dialogue on Faith and Reason" at the University of St. Thomas this past month.

Below are a chain of emails about the topic.

Bottom line:
-Islam wants theological dialogue to legitimize its claims
*Ismael line of descendency
*Christianity is in 'polytheistic' heresy
*Common ancestor = we are in heresy (see above)
*How can there be dialogue between Allah, god so far from creation (via negativa)
and Jesus, God incarnate? Nope, there cannot be theological dialogue
-Islam will not admit its wretched human rights record
-Islam will not recognize article 18 (freedom of conscience in faith) of UN human
rights declaration
-Islam oppresses women; Alquist: no chivalry in Islam
-Avicenna/Ibn Sibna: tried to appropriate Allah to Greco-Roman inquiry; did but
he fell into heresy. (no longer was Allah 'creator ex nihilo' as he was one step
removed from world after creating a sort of demi-urge) This results in a
'will to power' god, far removed from creation
-If God does not become incarnate, can there be Logos? A tradition of reason?
No! The Jews didn't even have this!
-Islam cannot exist outside of the 'state-religion' system; this is because
sharia (their religious law) is the state; cannot separate as a political entity.
This is different from Catholicism which spars with the state.
-The intellectuals play the blame game:
*your missionaries just want to proslytize
*your governments are the reason for violence (fair enough)
*your gvts support evil regimes
*we are suspicious of you!
-Islam calls everyone else 'Kafir' or infidel... even during this debate it was
defended!
-Sure, the intellectual arguments are good (flawed), but what about on the ground;
hardly any Imams denounce violence, in fact they foment it. The surveys are not
reassuring about violent, extreme attitudes.
-Islam blames west for split of faith and reason (it's Christianity & Greece!);
yet Islam has had no intellectual tradition since Averroes and Avicenna 12th c.
-Islam says Christ a 'prophet' in Koran... see CS Lewis (he's either God or insane)
-Islam is really a Judeo-Christian heresy that has ascended to great influence and
power via conquest - it is a sort of liberation theology, political will to power.

====================

Last night the Murphy Institute hosted
Archbishop Migliore
and Dr. Kalim (moslem)
"Muslim and Catholic Dialogue: faith and reason"
It was in response the Regensburg and the developments since
then. It was fascinating.

Dr. Kalim was ice cold. He was articulate, clever, good accent,
very intellectual, nuanced, full of clever quotes, charming, and...
totally scary.

This guy was smooth, but anyone who understands the key questions
or who could navigate his clever rhetoric, could see his claims cleary:

1) We need theological dialogue for peace...
2) Christians need to get back to Monotheisitc Abraham faith
3) Islam is much more reasonable than Christianity
4) The West, via Christianity (and Hellenistic thought), ended in the split of faith and
reason... not Islam!
5) The reason why Islam is seen as violent is misconception... it's really the fault
of imperial/colonial Europe.
6) We cannot submit to clause #18 on the UN declaration of Universal Human Rights
because of the political climate... the west maintains oppressive regimes, hence
we won't allow 'freedom of conscience to choose one's faith' (clause 18).
7) pope is bullheaded... lots of Christians think so too

I left convinced there is no chance to reason with these people;
if the westernized intellectuals talk like this, imagine what the Imam in
Detroit or Baghdad says!

Islam always equates Christianity with the West. They never want to debate Catholicism itself, but only the deformations in the West. Protestantism fostered a split between faith and reason, of course, and that led to secularism, but Catholicism has always maintained that unity.

Fair enough on the imperialism point, but as our friend Fr. Samir notes in his book, the claim that Islam doesn't have a violent streak doesn't cut the mustard.

I think you're right that there really is no "dialogue" (logos) on a person to person level. It's like a cult. They have to be loved out of it. Serious Christians have to develop personal relationships with Muslims and show them a better path by their example. Unfortunately, the harvest is ready but the laborers are few.

St. Francis's preached the gospel to the Sultan, but he came in fellowship and proposed a more excellent way of being. Forget the theological arguments. Each person has to be the image of Christ to their Muslim friends.

there are a few that still take the medieval Islamic scholastic tradition seriously, but otherwise, formal "dialogue" is a waste of breath.

It's good to have formal dialogue at the institutional level, and the Regensburg speech was good coming from the pope, because maybe changing the minds of the leadership will trickle down to the faithful. The pope is trying to encourage them to recover their medieval roots, but that seems optimistic. The logical consequences of Islamic thought have worked themselves out, and I'm not sure it's possible to have any dialogue, as the fellow you heard shows. He sounds like Satan (he's probably a good guy), but has angelic like intelligence. He's crafty!

This guy was ice and totally hosed the audience.
Satanic is the word.

Process of dismantling the City of God:
1. Christians become unfaithful
2. Christians become heretics
3. Christians hand over patrimony to secularists
4. Secularists dismantle
5. Secularists persecute Christians
6. Secularists fall in love with Islam (b/c it hates Christianity)
7. Secularists allow Islam to set up sharia (for diversity)
8. Islam seduces liberal secular/ Christians and lulls into submission
9. Islam takes over Christendom!

The common enemy, if there is a starting point for dialogue, is anti-secularism
and positivism. There can be no theological dialogue.
Also, Islam needs to recognize Universal Human Rights/Natural Law.
No more obfuscation by whinning about political situations (although there is a point).

The whole theological dialogue angle is meant to get Christians to legitimize
Moslem claims. End of story. Why else do they insist on this, against the pope's
wishes? When weak-minded Christains, so desperate for dialogue/peace, assent
to these claims, we will essentially be setting ourselves up for a contradition
when the peace is 'realized'. What a scandal?! If Ishmael is the blessed line of
Islam, and Christians recognize this, then we are saying that God worked
2 unique revelations that are in opposition to one another doctrinally! That's why
the liberals like it... kills classic doctrine. All religions are the same...

Anyone who studies Ibn Sibna (Avicenna) for a few minutes will see the issue
of the 'will to power god' clearly. Avicenna tried to reconcile Allah with
reason of Aristotle, but fell into heresy. He disguised it with traditionalist piety.
Only later Averroes dismantled his claims. If you cannot make an account
of your theology with Greek reason, I say you are a heretic!

I think another angle of Islam/secularists/liberal Christians is to undermine
Hellenistic thought. What the Greeks accomplished is universal- that is fact.
It was received so in the ancient to medieval worlds. Islam wants us
to rewrite reason according to 'okal' - their word for 'reason/intellect'.
Dr. Kalim boasted that the Koran uses 'think/reason' a whole 50 times! uhhhhh,
wow that's impressive.... not!

The planet is in 'intellectual heresy' right now- denying the Greeks/medievals their due.

I am more and more, if not already completely, convinced that Greco-Roman thought
and philosphy as appropriated by Christians is the basis for all reason. I realize
this is sort of 'duh', but it is a radical claim nonetheless. It is wonderful to drop off the
shackles of confusion over modern thought and its origins etc.

This is the Regensburg address: to protestants, Islam, and secularists (modern philosophy).

It all comes down to the Logos: language, terms, systematic thinking, universal human dignity, the "Tao" as CS Lewis calls it, and development of truth claims (D.O.D)

VS. evolution, will to power, relativism (morally and culturally), scientism, industrialism,
nationalism, novelty, progressivism, and socialism (one could also add the legitimizing of 'hatred').

I don't know. Dr. Kalim talked a mile a minute and danced around all substantive questions. He was 'the gorgias' if you will, in my opinion. The archbishop, I thought, knew what he was up against- a more polished 'intellectual' (and admitted so), but I think he slam dunked Kalim on a huge point, and Kalim obfuscated completely: "You denial article 18 of the declaration of human rights... explain!" So, to me, Migliore knew the heart of the matter questions and didn't need to 'sound super smart' and quote everyone.

Dr. Kalim, instead of addressing the query, went into questioning Catholic charitable organizations and accusing them of 'forced proslytism' (didn't your hair stand up a little here?)and then said Islam is only violent because of western gvts supporting regimes. What about that guy in New York who beheaded his wife... because he felt like it? What about 'honor killings'? If I was a woman, I'd be offended by all of this, but most of these practical questions are never raised.

I think it's more than "he's Muslim as we are Catholic". Kalim - and apparently other Islamic intellecutals - wants a whole new definition of reason, based on Islamic "okol" (or whatever it's called). He accuses the west of creating the split of faith and reason, and desires 'the good ol' days' of Islamic Cosmopolitanism... meaning we rule over you with Sharia in our (notice how he called it) "pluralistic" society. That one gal, a Cath. Studies grad., hit it on the head: how can we have 'theological dialogue' when you cite the 'via negativa' (meaning that God cannot be too close to his creation); we Christians believe God became a man! Kalim danced around that one too.

Migliore may have been a sweet old Italian out of his league intellectually (but does one need to be an intellectual in this debate? I think not), but did you see the grin on Migliore's face? He knows the smoke and mirrors, as good as they looked in Kalim. The archbishop was realistic with what we can honestly do: work on human rights, religious freedom, natural law, and honoring the little we have in common (Abraham). Kalim wants the west to convert- he was preaching last night...

Agreed: the common enemy is secularism: modern philosophy, relativism, and scientific positivism.

My one beef with the 'diet coke bishop' (.... come on, it's lent!) is that he suggested that the Church "had come a long way from decrying 'rights' of man" (via Pope Pius IX and XI, I think) to how the Church thinks now about 'rights'.

I am not so sure on that. Vatican II needs to be seen in continuity. I think "human rights" in a sense is like "military intellegence"- two words combined that can't make (perfect) sense if one believes in God (I'm working off Dave Mustaine here a little...). We have dignity (Pius IX and XI would say), and the VII council agrees. Is "rights" and "dignity" just a semantical battle, or is there a big difference? This would be the most interesting conversation to have off the bishop's remarks: was he being sloppy with words (very possible), or is this really true?

1.4-kids-per-household-Germans surprised that Moslems are taking over...

The future German skyline?

First, let's check Germany's birth rates...
Population growth rate: -0.12% (2007 est.)
Birth rate: 8.3 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)

hmmm... whose fault is this?

Not in My Backyard, Say an Increasing Number of Germans

By Jochen Bölsche

The planned construction of over 180 mosques [woah, mama!] in Germany is mobilizing right-wing xenophobes but also an increasing number of leftist critics [right, label them... because Moslems will only kill right wing xenophobes...]. They fear the Muslim places of worship will facilitate the establishment of a completely parallel society.

The issue at hand wasn't the construction of a missile base or a new nuclear power plant. Yet the media reported "turmoil" and an "enraged" audience in a school auditorium in Ehrenfeld, a district of the German city of Cologne. The mood was almost comparable to that of the protest gatherings once held against nuclear missiles or reactors.

Instead the outrage was directed at a huge mosque planned for the area. Still, the words used by the project's opponents called to mind the protests of earlier times. "The minarets even look like missiles," railed one woman [interesting observation...]. A man said the mosque's dome reminded him "of a nuclear plant."

Ill will over mosques like the one being built in Cologne is spreading rapidly throughout Germany, often to the surprise of local politicians. For a long time the establishment of Muslim prayer rooms provoked little protest, housed as they were mostly in residential buildings, shops and back courtyards. Recently, though, there has been an increasing number of acts of protest, some violent. Molotov cocktails were thrown through mosque windows in the Bavarian town of Lauingen; Christians set protest crosses inscribed with "Terra christiana est," or this is Christian land [uh, not any more, fella; you actually have to practice it...], on the grounds of a mosque in Hanover; and construction trailers went up in flames in the Berlin district of Pankow.

The anti-Islam protest movement has also begun to spill over into city politics. In Cologne, for example, the extreme right anti-mosque initiative Pro Cologne captured five local government seats in recent elections. Now the group is aspiring to enter the national scene as Pro Germany, together with other like-minded organizations, some from the far-right fringe [again...]. Their approach follows the example of populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, whose anti-immigration party garnered a surprising degree of support before he was murdered in 2002.

In Germany there is also a market for these "single-issue parties," suggests trend researcher Adjiedj Bakas, who himself emigrated from Surinam to the Netherlands. In the populous Ruhr Valley region of western Germany the Voter Initiative Recklinghausen (whose acronym "WIR" is the German word for "we") has found resonance with its message. The group claims it is fighting against "creeping Islamization," and is allied in the local government with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), one of Germany's major political parties. WIR members say they aren't alone in their opposition to Islam and their concern "that in 20 years in Recklinghausen, as in all large German cities, the majority of the residents under the age of 40 will be Muslims." "Discomfort is already spreading in some parts of the city," says Georg Schliehe, a WIR representative on the local city council, "but policy, public authorities and scholars downplay the problem." [you gotta love how secular liberals hate Christianity so much that they will even legislate themselves into the harsh submission of Islam rather than give up their 'freedoms' from conservative morals... ironically, Islam is more oppressive. Strange.]

Read the whole thing here.

The Holy Father's moving prayer at Ground Zero

This is a beautiful prayer of reconciliation, and a strong message against unreasonable violence in the name of religion. I hope many Moslems see this prayer.

O God of love, compassion, and healing,
look on us, people of many different faiths
and traditions,
who gather today at this site,
the scene of incredible violence and pain.
We ask you in your goodness
to give eternal light and peace
to all who died here—
the heroic first-responders:
our fire fighters, police officers,
emergency service workers, and
Port Authority personnel,
along with all the innocent men and women
who were victims of this tragedy
simply because their work or service
brought them here on September 11, 2001.
We ask you, in your compassion
to bring healing to those
who, because of their presence here that day,
suffer from injuries and illness.
Heal, too, the pain of still-grieving families
and all who lost loved ones in this tragedy.
Give them strength to continue their lives
with courage and hope.
We are mindful as well
of those who suffered death, injury, and loss
on the same day at the Pentagon and in
Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Our hearts are one with theirs
as our prayer embraces their pain and suffering.
God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world:
peace in the hearts of all men and women
and peace among the nations of the earth.
Turn to your way of love
those whose hearts and minds
are consumed with hatred.
God of understanding,
overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy,
we seek your light and guidance
as we confront such terrible events.
Grant that those whose lives were spared
may live so that the lives lost here
may not have been lost in vain.
Comfort and console us,
strengthen us in hope,
and give us the wisdom and courage
to work tirelessly for a world
where true peace and love reign
among nations and in the hearts of all.

At the conclusion of the prayer, the Holy Father is handed an aspergillum.

Also download the booklet that will accompany the pope's visit; all of his liturgical celebrations as well as his addresses are indicated in this handy 200 page booklet.

Minnesota taxpayers fund Muslim 'charter' school?

Another article laying down the smack by Katherine Kersten.
This one is no surprise; the state for some reason has been giving Islam the double-standard treatment for a while now. You can bet that if this was a Christian institution, it would be in serious trouble.

Recently, I wrote about Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Charter schools are public schools and by law must not endorse or promote religion.

Evidence suggests, however, that TIZA is an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers.

TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is "establishing Islam in Minnesota." [depends on what "establishing" means...] The building also houses a mosque. TIZA's executive director, Asad Zaman, is a Muslim imam, or religious leader, and its sponsor is an organization called Islamic Relief.

Students pray daily, the cafeteria serves halal food - permissible under Islamic law -- and "Islamic Studies" is offered at the end of the school day.

Zaman maintains that TIZA is not a religious school. He declined, however, to allow me to visit the school to see for myself, "due to the hectic schedule for statewide testing." [yeah, public schools are really working hard to educate our kids... right.] But after I e-mailed him that the Minnesota Department of Education had told me that testing would not begin for several weeks, Zaman did not respond -- even to urgent calls and e-mails seeking comment before my first column on TIZA.

Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.

[snip....]

TIZA's operation as a public, taxpayer-funded school is troubling on several fronts. TIZA is skirting the law by operating what is essentially an Islamic school at taxpayer expense. The Department of Education has failed to provide the oversight necessary to catch these illegalities, and appears to lack the tools to do so. In addition, there's a double standard at work here -- if TIZA were a Christian school, it would likely be gone in a heartbeat. [exactly]

TIZA is now being held up as a national model for a new kind of charter school. If it passes legal muster, Minnesota taxpayers may soon find themselves footing the bill for a separate system of education for Muslims.

Muslims Leaving Islam in Droves?

Woah. Very interesting story, indeed.

Ex-Muslim Magdi Allam's very public baptism on Easter Sunday made headlines, but he is just one among legions converting from Islam around the world.
April 3, 2008 - by Andrew Walden

Pope Benedict’s choice to publicly baptize the most prominent Muslim in Italy, Egyptian-born Magdi Allam, highlights a quiet worldwide exodus from Islam. In recent years, millions have moved on. With this high-profile action, Pope Benedict demonstratively blesses this massive conversion from the highest levels of the Church.

Interviewed by al-Jazeera in 2006, Ahmad al-Qataani, leader of the Companions Lighthouse for the Science of Islamic Law in Libya, explains the decline:

Islam used to represent … Africa’s main religion and there were 30 African languages that used to be written in Arabic script. The number of Muslims in Africa has diminished to 316 million, half of whom are Arabs in North Africa. So in the section of Africa that we are talking about, the non-Arab section, the number of Muslims does not exceed 150 million people. When we realize that the entire population of Africa is one billion people, we see that the number of Muslims has diminished greatly from what it was in the beginning of the last century.

On the other hand, the number of Catholics has increased from one million in 1902 to 329 million 882 thousand (329,882,000). Let us round off that number to 330 million in the year 2000.

As to how that happened, well there are now 1.5 million churches whose congregations account for 46 million people. In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Everyday, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity. These numbers are very large indeed.

Allam’s public baptism came just ten days after the body of Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul, Iraq, was found in a shallow grave after being kidnapped by al-Qaeda February 29. The ceremony came just three days after an al-Qaeda tape threatening the pope and condemning cartoons of Mohammed. Muslims who convert to other religions or abandon religion entirely are subject to a standing order of death for apostasy. The baptism of Allam is an act of defiance in the face of Islamic threats.

I-slam: Interreligious "dialogue", anyone?

Pakistan Post:

Saudi Arabia: No churches unless prophet Mohammed recognised, says expert

Riyadh: March 29, 2008.No churches should be permitted in Saudi Arabia, unless Pope Benedict XVI recognised the prophet Mohammed, according to a Middle East expert.

While Saudi mediators are working with the Vatican on negotiations to allow places of religious worship, some experts believe it will not occur without this recognition.

Anwar Ashiqi, president of the Saudi centre for Middle East strategic studies, endorsed this view in an interview on the site of Arab satellite TV network, al-Arabiya on Thursday.

"I haven taken part in several meetings related to Islamic-Christian dialogue and there have been negotiations on thisissue," he said.

"It would be possible to launch official negotiations to construct a church in Saudi Arabia only after the Pope and all the Christian churches recognise the prophet Mohammed."

"If they don`t recognise him as a prophet, how can we have a church in the Saudi kingdom?" Ashiqi`s comments came after a declaration launched by the papal nuncio of the Persian Gulf, the archbishop Mounged El-Hachem, at the opening of the first Catholic church in Qatar last week.

The prelate had announced the launch of "treaties to construct a church in Saudi Arabia where it is banned to practise whatever religion they want outside Islam".

El-Hachem estimated three to four million Christians in the Saudi kingdom who want to have a church.

A member of Saudi Arabia`s Consultative Council, Abdelaziz al-Thinani, rejected the prelate`s claims saying that there were no Christians among the Saudis who were all Muslims.

"Those few Christians do not reside in the country permanently, they come and go," he said. He denied there were four million Christians in the kingdom and said the issue of human rights should not be used to call for the construction of a Christian church.

Most of Saudi Arabia`s Christians are foreign workers. There are 8.2 million foreign workers in a country of 25.6 million people according to a report by the Saudi Labour Ministry.

Why should Saudi's allow churches in their country? They can set up mosques anywhere in the US and Europe, why level the playing field?

Vatican: Islam overtakes Catholicism in numbers

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.

Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent.

"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.

He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world's population -- or about 2 billion people.

Read the rest of this story

Cartoon

Thanks to Fr. Z. for this pic.

A Muslim recalls his conversion...

Dear Friends,

I am particularly happy to share with you my immense joy for this Easter of Resurrection that has brought me the gift of the Christian faith. I gladly propose the letter that I sent to the director of the Corriere della Sera, Paolo Mieli, in which I tell the story of the interior journey that brought me to the choice of conversion to Catholicism. This is the complete version of the letter, which was published by the Corriere della Sera only in part.

* * *

Dear Director,

That which I am about to relate to you concerns my choice of religious faith and personal life in which I do not wish to involve in any way the Corriere della Sera, which it has been an honor to be a part of as deputy director “ad personam” since 2003. I write you thus as protagonist of the event, as private citizen.

Yesterday evening I converted to the Christian Catholic religion, renouncing my previous Islamic faith. Thus, I finally saw the light, by divine grace -- the healthy fruit of a long, matured gestation, lived in suffering and joy, together with intimate reflection and conscious and manifest expression. I am especially grateful to his holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who imparted the sacraments of Christian initiation to me, baptism, confirmation and Eucharist, in the Basilica of St. Peter’s during the course of the solemn celebration of the Easter Vigil. And I took the simplest and most explicit Christian name: “Cristiano.” Since yesterday evening therefore my name is Magdi Crisitano Allam.

For me it is the most beautiful day of [my] life. To acquire the gift of the Christian faith during the commemoration of Christ’s resurrection by the hand of the Holy Father is, for a believer, an incomparable and inestimable privilege. At almost 56 […], it is a historical, exceptional and unforgettable event, which marks a radical and definitive turn with respect to the past. The miracle of Christ’s resurrection reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness in which the preaching of hatred and intolerance in the face of the “different,” uncritically condemned as “enemy,” were privileged over love and respect of “neighbor,” who is always, an in every case, “person”; thus, as my mind was freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimates lies and deception, violent death that leads to murder and suicide, the blind submission to tyranny, I was able to adhere to the authentic religion of truth, of life and of freedom.

On my first Easter as a Christian I not only discovered Jesus, I discovered for the first time the face of the true and only God, who is the God of faith and reason. My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy.

I had to ask myself about the attitude of those who publicly declared fatwas, Islamic juridical verdicts, against me -- I who was a Muslim -- as an “enemy of Islam,” “hypocrite because he is a Coptic Christian who pretends to be a Muslim to do damage to Islam,” “liar and vilifier of Islam,” legitimating my death sentence in this way. I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a “moderate Islam,” assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Quran. I was forced to see that, beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive.

At the same time providence brought me to meet practicing Catholics of good will who, in virtue of their witness and friendship, gradually became a point of reference in regard to the certainty of truth and the solidity of values. To begin with, among so many friends from Communion and Liberation, I will mention Father Juliàn Carròn; and then there were simple religious such as Father Gabriele Mangiarotti, Sister Maria Gloria Riva, Father Carlo Maurizi and Father Yohannis Lahzi Gaid; there was rediscovery of the Salesians thanks to Father Angelo Tengattini and Father Maurizio Verlezza, which culminated in a renewed friendship with major rector Father Pascual Chavez Villanueva; there was the embrace of top prelates of great humanity like Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Monsignor Luigi Negri, Giancarlo Vecerrica, Gino Romanazzi and, above all, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, who personally accompanied me in the journey of spiritual acceptance of the Christian faith.

But undoubtedly the most extraordinary and important encounter in my decision to convert was that with Pope Benedict XVI, whom I admired and defended as a Muslim for his mastery in setting down the indissoluble link between faith and reason as a basis for authentic religion and human civilization, and to whom I fully adhere as a Christian to inspire me with new light in the fulfillment of the mission God has reserved for me.

Mine was a journey that began when at four years old, my mother Safeya -- a believing and practicing Muslim -- in the first in the series of “fortuitous events” that would prove to be not at all the product of chance but rather an integral part of a divine destiny to which all of us have been assigned -- entrusted me to the loving care of Sister Lavinia of the Comboni Missionary Sisters, convinced of the goodness of the education that would be imparted by the Catholic and Italian religious, who had come to Cairo, the city of my birth, to witness to their Christian faith through a work aimed at the common good. I thus began an experience of life in boarding school, followed by the Salesians of the Institute of Don Bosco in junior high and high school, which transmitted to me not only the science of knowledge but above all the awareness of values.

It is thanks to members of Catholic religious orders that I acquired a profoundly and essentially an ethical conception of life, in which the person created in the image and likeness of God is called to undertake a mission that inserts itself in the framework of a universal and eternal design directed toward the interior resurrection of individuals on this earth and the whole of humanity on the day of judgment, which is founded on faith in God and the primacy of values, which is based on the sense of individual responsibility and on the sense of duty toward the collective. It is in virtue of a Christian education and of the sharing of the experience of life with Catholic religious that I cultivated a profound faith in the transcendent dimension and also sought the certainty of truth in absolute and universal values.

There was a time when my mother’s loving presence and religious zeal brought me closer to Islam, which I occasionally practiced at a cultural level and in which I believed at a spiritual level according to an interpretation that at the time -- it was the 1970s -- summarily corresponded to a faith respectful of persons and tolerant toward the neighbor, in a context -- that of the Nasser regime -- in which the secular principle of the separation of the religious sphere and the secular sphere prevailed.

My father Muhammad was completely secular and agreed with the opinion of the majority of Egyptians who took the West as a model in regard to individual freedom, social customs and cultural and artistic fashions, even if the political totalitarianism of Nasser and the bellicose ideology of Pan-Arabism that aimed at the physical elimination of Israel unfortunately led to disaster for Egypt and opened the way to the resumption of Pan-Islamism, to the ascent of Islamic extremists to power and the explosion of globalized Islamic terrorism.

The long years at school allowed me to know Catholicism well and up close and the women and men who dedicated their life to serve God in the womb of the Church. Already then I read the Bible and the Gospels and I was especially fascinated by the human and divine figure of Jesus. I had a way to attend Holy Mass and it also happened, only once, that I went to the altar to receive communion. It was a gesture that evidently signaled my attraction to Christianity and my desire to feel a part of the Catholic religious community.

Then, on my arrival in Italy at the beginning of the 1970s between the rivers of student revolts and the difficulties of integration, I went through a period of atheism understood as a faith, which nevertheless was also founded on absolute and universal values. I was never indifferent to the presence of God even if only now I feel that the God of love, of faith and reason reconciles himself completely with the patrimony of values that are rooted in me.

Dear Director, you asked me whether I fear for my life, in the awareness that conversion to Christianity will certainly procure for me yet another, and much more grave, death sentence for apostasy. You are perfectly right. I know what I am headed for but I face my destiny with my head held high, standing upright and with the interior solidity of one who has the certainty of his faith. And I will be more so after the courageous and historical gesture of the Pope, who, as soon has he knew of my desire, immediately agreed to personally impart the Christian sacraments of initiation to me. His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims.

For my part, I say that it is time to put an end to the abuse and the violence of Muslims who do not respect the freedom of religious choice. In Italy there are thousands of converts to Islam who live their new faith in peace. But there are also thousands of Muslim converts to Christianity who are forced to hide their faith out of fear of being assassinated by Islamic extremists who lurk among us. By one of those “fortuitous events” that evoke the discreet hand of the Lord, the first article that I wrote for the Corriere on Sept. 3, 2003 was entitled “The new Catacombs of Islamic Converts.” It was an investigation of recent Muslim converts to Christianity in Italy who decry their profound spiritual and human solitude in the face of absconding state institutions that do not protect them and the silence of the Church itself. Well, I hope that the Pope’s historical gesture and my testimony will lead to the conviction that the moment has come to leave the darkness of the catacombs and to publicly declare their desire to be fully themselves. If in Italy, in our home, the cradle of Catholicism, we are not prepared to guarantee complete religious freedom to everyone, how can we ever be credible when we denounce the violation of this freedom elsewhere in the world? I pray to God that on this special Easter he give the gift of the resurrection of the spirit to all the faithful in Christ who have until now been subjugated by fear. Happy Easter to everyone.

Dear friends, let us go forward on the way of truth, of life and of freedom with my best wishes for every success and good thing.

Magdi Allam

A Muslim Converts

Posted by Spengler on March 24, 2008, 11:19 AM
on First Things' blog:

The world is now discussing Magdi Cristiano Allam’s baptism by Pope Benedict XVI during the Easter Vigil at St. Peter’s. Osama bin Laden recently accused Benedict of plotting a new Crusade against Islam, and instead finds something far more powerful: faith the size of a mustard seed that can move mountains. The faith of a single human being well may have changed the course of great events. Since 9/11 the leaders of the West have searched for a “moderate Islam” to counter radical Islamism, without however encountering a single prominent Muslim willing to unequivocally repudiated terrorism, wife-beating, the stoning of adulteresses and so forth.

Now Magdi Allam, the deputy editor of Italy’s newspaper of record and a bestselling author, tells us that he has found the true God and forsaken an Islam that he regards as inherently violent. Mr. Allam has a powerful voice. For years he was the exemplar of “moderate Islam” in Europe, and now he has decided that Islam cannot be “moderate.” His conversion shifts the agenda to the debate that Benedict opened at Regensburg in September 2006 over faith and reason, in opposition to arbitrary submission and violence. Before Benedict’s election, I summarized his stance as “I have a mustard seed and I’m not afraid to use it.” Now we are seeing what faith can accomplish.

See the rest at First Things:
http://www.firstthings.com/blog/2008/03/24/541/

More madness from Rowan Williams, archb. of Canterbury

Read the following and pray for the Lord's will to be done in the crumbling Anglican communion.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has today said that the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the UK is "unavoidable" and that it would help maintain social cohesion.

Rowan Williams told BBC Radio 4's World At One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

He says that Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court. He added Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".

Dr Williams said there was a place for finding a "constructive accommodation" in areas such as marriage - allowing Muslim women to avoid Western divorce proceedings.

Other religions enjoyed such tolerance of their own laws, he pointed out, but stressed that it could never be allowed to take precedence over an individual's rights as a citizen.

He said it would also require a change in perception of what Sharia involved beyond the "inhumanity" of extreme punishments and attitudes to women seen in some Islamic states.

Dr Williams said: "It seems unavoidable and, as a matter of fact, certain conditions of Sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law, so it is not as if we are bringing in an alien and rival system.

"We already have in this country a number of situations in which the internal law of religious communities is recognised by the law of the land as justifying conscientious objections in certain circumstances."

Here's the full story: (sorry, I still can't put in links!)
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23436203-
details/Adoption+of+Islamic+Sharia+law+in+Britain+is+'unavoidable'
%2C+says+Archbishop+of+Canterbury/article.do

Sickening: Mentally Retarded Women Used in Suicide Bombings

BAGHDAD (AP) - Two mentally retarded women strapped with remote-control explosives—and possibly used as unwitting suicide bombers—brought carnage Friday to two pet bazaars, killing at 73 people in the deadliest day since Washington flooded the capital with extra troops last spring.

The coordinated blasts—coming 20 minutes apart in different parts of the city—appeared to reinforce U.S. claims al-Qaida in Iraq may be increasingly desperate and running short of able-bodied men willing or available for such missions.

But they also served as a reminder that Iraqi insurgents are constantly shifting their strategies in attempts to unravel recent security gains around the country. Women have been used in ever greater frequency in suicide attacks.

The twin attacks at the pet markets, however, could mark a disturbing use of unknowing agents of death.

Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, Iraq's chief military spokesman in Baghdad, said the women had Down syndrome and may not have known they were on suicide missions. He said the bombs were detonated by remote control.

In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the bombings prove al-Qaida is "the most brutal and bankrupt of movements" and will strengthen Iraqi resolve to reject terrorism.

The first bomb was detonated about 10:20 a.m. in the central al-Ghazl market, the home of a weekly pet bazaar with various small animals but mostly birds. At least 46 people were killed and more than 100 wounded, said police and hospital officials.

Police said the woman wearing the bomb sold cream in the mornings at the market and was known to locals as "the crazy lady."

The pet bazaar has been bombed repeatedly, but with violence declining in the capital, the market had regained popularity as a shopping district and place to stroll on Fridays, the Muslim day of prayer.

But on Friday, it was returned to a scene straight out of the worst days of the conflict. Firefighters scooped up debris scattered among pools of blood, clothing and pigeon carcasses.

A pigeon vendor said the market had been unusually crowded, with people taking advantage of a pleasantly crisp and clear winter day after a particularly harsh January.

"I have been going to the pet market with my friend every Friday, selling and buying pigeons," said Ali Ahmed, who was hit by shrapnel in his legs and chest. "It was nice weather today and the market was so crowded."

He said he was worried about his friend, Zaki, who disappeared after the blast about 40 yards away.

"I just remember the horrible scene of the bodies of dead and wounded people mixed with the blood of animals and birds, then I found myself lying in a hospital bed," Ali said.

About 20 minutes after the first attack, the second female suicide bomber was blown apart in a bird market in a predominantly Shiite area in southeastern Baghdad. As many as 27 people died and 67 were wounded, police and hospital officials said.

Rae Muhsin, the 21-year-old owner of a cell phone store, said he was walking toward the New Baghdad bird market when the explosion shattered the windows of nearby stores.

"I ran toward the bird market and saw charred pieces of flesh, small spots of blood and several damaged cars," Muhsin said. "I thought that we had achieved real security in Baghdad, but it turned that we were wrong."

The bombings were the latest in a series that has frayed Iraqi confidence in the permanence of recent security gains.

Read the rest of this sickening story here:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8UHNN081&show_article=1

A great interview with Fr. James Schall...

The interview covers topics ranging from Pope Benedict XVI, Islam, American politics, Schall's books, faith & reason, eternal life, and Hell. Can you do better than that? Enjoy this read from the Claremont Institute.
-Old Books Club

-------------------------------------------------
An interview with James V. Schall, by Ken Masugi

Posted December 13, 2007

Georgetown University professor of government James V. Schall, S. J. has authored some 30 books on political theory and theology, including, most recently, The Regensburg Lecture (2007) and the Order of Things (2007). His website, a portal into his writings and course syllabi, is here. This interview covers the relationship between reason and faith and its political implications. It explores the themes of the Pope's recent encyclical on hope (Spe Salvi) and Fr. Schall's most recent books. It was conducted earlier this month via email with Ken Masugi and follows four others on similar themes that they have undertaken over the last several years.

Masugi: Is this Pope a public intellectual? If so, who is his public? How can he be an intellectual and a man of faith, a shepherd of his flock, at the same time?

Schall: One is bemused to think that a "public intellectual" might be thought to have a higher rank than the Pope of Rome! Suffice it to say, that there is no individual person in the public order anywhere in the world today with the intellectual accomplishments of Pope Ratzinger. That is not a boast, just a fact. The sheer volume and depth of what he has published over the years is simply massive in addition to its being profound with that German thoroughness that leaves little to the imagination.

We are witnessing the time in which this accumulated learning has, perhaps uncannily, settled in the one office in the world that still speaks "Urbi et Orbi." The days are simply gone, if they ever existed, in which anyone can pretend that there is not a major intellectual force within Catholicism that actively seeks out and deals with every religious, intellectual, historical, and scientific tradition in terms of intelligence.

We really have not had a non-intellectual pope in several centuries. Part of the reason for this tradition is simply that the Catholic Church addresses itself to reason. It demands of itself and others the canons of complete rationality. It does not accept "rationalistic" definitions of reason that limit its real scope to its methods or presuppositions.

His public? It is interesting to look over a few issues of L'Osservatore Romano to see just whom a pope deals with in the course of a week or a month. He will talk to numerous ambassadors from any and every country in the world, political and religious leaders, bishops, students from all over, leading scholars, prelates of other religions, newly-weds, the sick, and heaven knows whom, from presidents, kings, and prime ministers to sports figures and ordinary people. The papacy is not an abstraction, as we vividly learned with John Paul II. It is much more in contact with the world at large than any other public body, certainly more than any university or think tank or government.

But the pope also targets audiences to whom to address. Sometimes they come to him. Sometimes he goes to them. He always has a brief or longer statement to make that is well worth attention. He is also a man who has to deal with major theological issues wherever they arise. When Pope Ratzinger considers any issues, we can be sure that he does his homework.

More and more it is becoming clear that the major political problems are at root spiritual and theological problems. Spengler put it well in a recent Asia Times (November 6, 2007):

The West is not fighting individual criminals, as the left insists; it is not fighting a Soviet-style state as the Iraqi disaster makes clear; nor is it fighting a political movement. It is fighting a religion, specifically a religion that arose in enraged reaction to the West. None of the political leaders of the West, and few of the West's opinion leaders, comprehends this. We are left with the anomaly that the only effective leader of the West is a man wholly averse to war, a pope who took his name from the Benedict who interceded fore peace during World War I. Benedict XVI, alone among the leaders of the Christian world, challenges Islam as a religion, as he did in his September 2006 Regensburg address.

To put it differently, before the political order can be straightened out, it must understand the forces that are in fact loose in the world, and understand them on their own terms, not in terms of western social or political science. What even scholars and politicians are suddenly aware of is that they cannot ignore religion, whatever it is. It is precisely by ignoring religion in both academic and secularized political circles, that the West has come to leave the deepest issues that all men know about to other religions. It is to this emptiness that Benedict addresses himself—what exactly is it?

Benedict's more formal encyclicals and statements are very carefully thought out. If we read Deus Caritas Est, the Regensburg Lecture, and Spe Salvi, we begin to suspect that this pope has the whole world in his sights, not just Islam or the secularized West, though these are the more immediate and pressing issues. The whole world has an intellectual core that includes both the intellectual history of the West and how it relates to other cultures and political bodies. All politics presupposes a view of the world that is more than political. We are so used to denying this in the name of some abstraction called the "separation of church and state" that we can hardly understand even ourselves.

"How can [the pope] be an intellectual and a man of faith—a shepherd of his flock—at the same time?" Ex esse sequitur posse. I do not know how he does all these things, but the fact is that he does them. We have to begin from here. No doubt Benedict does not know every last bishop who must be appointed to vital spots—appointing bishops may be his most important task of ruling—but he seems to be working at it.

If there is any motto or epigram that would define this papacy, it is surely that the "intellectual" and the "man of faith" is the same man. The one faith addresses reason and reason, if it is really open to the whole of things, inquires about faith at least as it can be seen in its effects. Philosophy cannot exclude a reality and still claim to pursue the whole. This relationship has been the agenda since at least Thomas Aquinas if not Plato.

But at no time in centuries, I think, has the ground for this relationship been more thoroughly founded in intellectual history. This pope does not cite Nietzsche and Hegel for nothing. He cites them because he knows them. I would almost say he delights in them. He knows their relevance to contemporary issues as well as to their relation to revelation and modern ideology.

***

Masugi: "Regarding politics: Looking at our American elections, not to mention political events throughout the world, how should the Church seek to influence politics?

To read Schall's answer & the rest of the interview, go to this link:
http://www.claremont.org/publications/pubid.746/pub_detail.asp

Top 10 neglected Vatican stories of 2007

I voted for “Redefining dialogue with Islam” because I think the Regensburg address, which is at the heart of this discussion, is about more than simply Islam; the underlying issue is reconciling faith and reason and showing how revelation is completely intertwined with our ability to reason. Islam has encountered the modern world in a very unreasonable/violent way, and so it needs to develop a philosophy/theology in which it (based deeply in a “will to power”) can encounter the modern world in a peaceful manner. Christianity has done this already during the Enlightenment, but it was clear that Christianity had the tools within itself to do this well. The other issue brought into clearer light by Regensburg is the loss of Christian identity in the west, and how the Christian faith has been separated from reason (or at least it is believed to be antagonistic to reason). Fundamentalism is abound, especially in America. There is no doubt that the reformation dealt a blow to the magical union of faith and reason during the medieval period, and that effect has been felt even greater by the fundamentalist/protestant reaction to secularism/enlightenment; those faiths, by rejecting the Greeks especially, lost their ability to bridge faith and reason. These are the origins of the “dehelenization of Europe” (and the west in general) that Benedict is talking about. These are serious issues that I believe underpin even Catholic identity. It is going to be very difficult to get back to a rich Catholic Christian culture and identity, as seen in beautiful liturgy, without also and first bridging the gap between faith and reason. We are so entrenched in secularism and liberalism right now, reaction to a beautiful mass, gregorian chant, or studying Latin will be met in a way somewhat similar to an exorcism.

Below is the article that inspired this point...
========================================

Top 10 neglected Vatican stories of 2007

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

Every society has its shorthand ways of signaling what it considers important. At the level of pop culture, Americans know something registers when David Letterman or Jon Stewart pokes fun at it; more seriously, however, we grasp that something matters if it lands on the front page of The New York Times. [Is the NYT relevant anymore outside an increasingly small circle? -Fr. Z.]

By that standard, one can only conclude that for the United States in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI was no big deal.

As incredible as it seems for a figure regarded as a major global newsmaker, the pope appeared on the front page of the Times only twice this year (discounting any mention after mid-December, when this article was written): on Jan. 8, in a piece about the resignation of his nominee as archbishop of Warsaw, Poland, amid charges of collaboration with the communist-era secret police; and a May 7 look ahead to his trip to Brazil, focusing on the continuing strength of liberation theology in Latin America.

Otherwise, the major papal events of 2007 all finished well inside. (Benedict was, however, the subject of a lengthy profile in the Times magazine on April 8.)

This year was basically Benedict’s third as pope. By comparison, in the third year of John Paul II’s papacy, he finished on A1 of the Times on 25 occasions, roughly twice a month. Granted, John Paul was shot in 1981, and 13 of those front-page stories were related to the assassination attempt. Nonetheless, 12 concerned other matters—John Paul’s comments on nuclear disarmament, his interventions in Poland, his encyclical on work (Laborem Exercens), and four straight days about his trip to the Philippines.

At a comparable stage of his papacy, in other words, John Paul was roughly six times the newsmaker that Benedict is today. The contrast seems to capture an essential difference between the two popes. John Paul was interested in wielding the social capital of Catholicism to change the history of his day; Benedict is more an “insider’s pope,” looking to solidify the spiritual foundations of Catholicism to weather what he considers the long-term storm of secularism and a “dictatorship of relativism.” Such an approach is not well-suited to capturing headlines.

Traditionally in mid-December, I compile a list of the year’s “Top 10 neglected Vatican stories.” In 2007, however, such an exercise feels a bit silly, given that almost every Vatican story was covered with benign neglect. Instead, I’ll offer capsule summaries of the year’s Top 10 stories, briefly suggesting dimensions that perhaps didn’t get the attention they deserve.

10) Benedict in Austria: When the pope visits a country that was once the capital of Christendom, which still claims a Catholic population of some 5 million in a small geographic area, and the biggest crowd he draws is roughly 30,000, that alone says something. The Sept. 7-9 Austria trip offered a snapshot of Catholicism as what Benedict calls a “creative minority” in today’s highly secularized Western European milieu.

9) The pope is coming: Benedict’s April 15-20, 2008, trip to the United States was announced in November. Two bits of drama to watch: First, how will he address the sexual abuse crisis, and will he meet with victims? (No pope has yet done so.) Second, how will organizers prevent political exploitation of the trip in view of looming elections? That could be tricky if, as in 2004, one presidential candidate is pro-life and the other pro-choice.

8) Scandal in Poland: Polish Catholicism was rocked by charges that several important clergy, including Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus, Benedict’s pick to succeed Cardinal Jozef Glemp in Warsaw, had collaborated with the communist secret police. Among other things, the scandal reinforced questions about decision-making in the church. Lay Catholic researchers in Poland had unearthed files concerning Wielgus and other clergy years ago, but apparently were not consulted in making appointments.

7) New cardinals: By appointing new cardinals, popes influence the choice of their own successor. The consensus on Benedict’s Oct. 24 consistory, in which he created 23 cardinals, including 18 eligible to vote (among them, two Americans), is that it offered no slam-dunk new papabile, or papal candidate, nor did Benedict appear to stack the deck politically. It did, however, reinforce European and North American dominance, as two-thirds of the cardinals are from the Global North, while two-thirds of the Catholic population is in the Global South.

6) A Catholic shade of green: Benedict sharpened his environmental message in 2007, calling in September for greater ecological responsibility “before it’s too late,” and OK’ing the installation of solar panels atop his audience hall and planting trees in a Hungarian forest to offset the Vatican’s carbon output. Yet Benedict isn’t quite ready to join Earth First; for him, the environmental movement is more about a broad recovery of natural law, meaning the idea that creation itself carries moral laws written by the Creator.

5) CELAM: On May 14 in Brazil, Benedict presided over the opening of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM), rapping both Marxism and capitalism as failed attempts to construct society without God. Over the next month, the Latin American bishops hashed out a pastoral strategy for the continent. One aspect they looked at: massive Catholic losses to Pentecostals and evangelicals. The bishops endorsed both a moderate form of liberation theology and a return to old-fashioned evangelization in what they called a “great continental mission.” The outcome suggests the ideological polarization of the Latin American past may be fading.

4) A pope of hope: Despite his erstwhile reputation as an Augustinian pessimist, Benedict XVI struck two major blows for hope in 2007. In April, the International Theological Commission, acting on his recommendation, suggested that limbo (a destination for unbaptized babies in the afterlife) could be set aside in favor of hope for their salvation. In December, Benedict issued his encyclical Spe Salvi (“Saved by Hope”), offering a positive spin on eschatology. The Last Judgment, for example, is not a threat of damnation, but a promise that justice will eventually prevail in a world in which evil too often goes unchecked.

3) Redefining dialogue with Islam: In October, 138 Muslim scholars, jurists and clerics, representing all major Islamic traditions, wrote to Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders, suggesting that love of God and of neighbor represent a common theological ground. While Benedict appreciated the gesture (in mid-November, he proposed a meeting with the signatories to be organized by Jordan’s Prince Ghazi), he and his top lieutenants have signaled that they’re less interested in theological exchange than in working with Muslims on practical diplomatic, social and cultural matters—beginning with religious freedom, and especially the status of Christians in majority Muslim states.

2) A double play for Catholic identity: [Frankly, I think this is more important in the long run, than the publication of Jesus of Nazareth (mentioned below). Also, it seems to me that other Pope’s have done what Mr. Allen describes for #1.] In July, Benedict XVI authorized wider celebration of the old Latin Mass, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith asserted that Catholicism remains the lone “true church.” Both were victories for efforts to buttress traditional Catholic identity. On the ground, however, Benedict’s Latin Mass motu proprio has not yet been the revolution some anticipated. [I don’t think anyone expected a and immediate "revolution".] A November New York Times survey [Again wtih the NYT, rapidly becoming one of the most irrelevant news sources available.] found that while some younger Catholics appear drawn to the old rite, new interest has surfaced in just one or two parishes in each of the 25 largest archdioceses in America.

1) Christ at the core: For Benedict XVI, 2007 was clearly a Christological year. In his book Jesus of Nazareth, in his speeches in Brazil, in the Vatican’s notice on Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino, [That was important.] in Spe Salvi, and in countless other venues, Benedict hammered home his core message to the modern world: A just society cannot be built without reference to God, and only in Christ is the full reality of God made clear. Preaching Christ is thus not a distraction from building a better world; it is building a better world. Perhaps that’s why Benedict was often invisible to global newspapers; a pope talking about Christ may seem the ultimate in “dog bites man” stories, but it was nonetheless Benedict’s clear idée fixe.

John Allen is NCR senior correspondent. His e-mail address is jallen@ncronline.org.

The Moslem Honor Killing in Texas...

More from the 'religion of peace'....
from 'Crunchy Con' Rod Dreher.
----------------------------------------

After today's Dallas Morning News update, I feel comfortable calling the double murder of Amina and Sarah Said, allegedly by their father (who is still on the run from police), an honor killing (if, of course, their father was the murderer). Excerpt:

Islam Said has previously disputed widespread rumors and media reports that his Muslim father's religion may have been the reason for the killings. Some have speculated that the deaths may have been "honor killings," a practice in which a man kills a female relative who he believes has somehow shamed the family.

Irving police have said that they are exploring all possible motives for the slayings. Police have acknowledged that the family had some previous domestic problems.

Gail Gartrell, the sisters' great-aunt, said Saturday that Mr. Said had physically abused the two girls for years. Around Christmas, the girls' mother – Ms. Gartrell's niece – had fled because of Mr. Said's threats to kill the girls after he learned they had boyfriends, she said.

"She ran with them because she knew he would carry out the threat," Ms. Gartrell said. "This was an honor killing."

The girls had a Christian service (weirdly, a Baptist service conducted by a Catholic priest, according to the story), and then a Muslim service at a mosque:


The short Muslim service was at a gold-domed mosque in Richardson in a cavernous gym, with prayers piped across loudspeakers. The closed caskets were at the far side of the gym, end to end.

Dozens of Muslim men lined up in front of the girls' caskets. About 20 feet behind them were women in hajibs. An imam then led a Muslim prayer.

Dr. Yusuf Kavacki, head of the Richardson mosque, alternating between English and Arabic, told mourners that all living things are destined to die. Another imam talked about families being the most important thing in Islam and the need for parents to work to keep their families strong.

OK, maybe they didn't mention honor killing because they didn't want to make a judgment on the father, who hasn't been charged. But for pity's sake, the reason why Muslim fathers who commit honor killings murder their daughters is because they believe they are keeping their families strong, by punishing daughters who violate the social code! As I've said here, a member of Kavakci's mosque told me and two other DMN editors over lunch that what we in the West consider to be unacceptable violence is considered by Muslims like him to be defending the family.

When police finally capture Yaser Abdel Said, the girls' father, it will be very, very interesting to learn who, if anybody, was helping shelter Said ... and why.

Bishop warns of no-go zones for non-Muslims

More troubles for England and the Anglican communion. Truly, the faith lost its identity when the schism occurred after Henry's 'great matter.' St. Thomas More prophetically foresaw this disaster for England and Christianity in his Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation.


By Jonathan Wynne-Jones
Last Updated: 1:31am GMT 07/01/2008
from the UK Telegraph


Islamic extremists have created "no-go" areas across Britain where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter, one of the Church of England's most senior bishops warns today.

The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester and the Church's only Asian bishop, says that people of a different race or faith face physical attack if they live or work in communities dominated by a strict Muslim ideology.

The Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester
Bishop Nazir-Ali warns that attempts are being made to give Britain an increasingly Islamic character

The Muslim Council of Britain today described his comments as "frantic scaremongering", while William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said the bishop had "probably put it too strongly".

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said the idea of no-go areas was "a gross caricature of reality".

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Bishop Nazir-Ali compares the threat to the use of intimidation by the far-Right, and says that it is becoming increasingly difficult for Christianity to be the nation's public religion in a multifaith, multicultural society.

His comments come as a poll of the General Synod - the Church's parliament - shows that its senior leaders, including bishops, also believe that Britain is being damaged by large-scale immigration.

Bishop Nazir-Ali, who was born in Pakistan, gives warning that attempts are being made to give Britain an increasingly Islamic character by introducing the call to prayer and wider use of sharia law, a legal system based on the Koran.
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In an attack on the Government's response to immigration and the influx of "people of other faiths to these shores", he blames its "novel philosophy of multiculturalism" for allowing society to become deeply divided, and accuses ministers of lacking a "moral and spiritual vision".

Echoing Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, who has said that the country is "sleepwalking into segregation", the bishop argues that multiculturalism has led to deep divisions.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, has accused Muslims of promoting a kind of "voluntary apartheid" by shutting themselves in closed societies and demanding immunity from criticism.

In the Synod survey, to be published this week, bishops, senior clergy and influential churchgoers said that an increasingly multi-faith society threatens the country's Christian heritage and blamed the divisions on the Government's failure to integrate immigrants into their communities.

It found that more than one in three believe that a mass influx of people of other faiths is diluting the Christian nature of Britain and only a quarter feel that they have been integrated into society.

The overwhelming majority - 80 per cent - said that the Government has not upheld the place of religion in public life and up to 63 per cent fear that the Church will be disestablished within a generation, breaking a bond that has existed between the Church and State since the Reformation.

Calls for disestablishment have grown following research showing that attendance at Mass has overtaken the number of worshippers at Church of England Sunday services.

Bishop Nazir-Ali, whose father converted from Islam to Catholicism, was criticised by Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain. He said: "It's irresponsible for a man of his position to make these comments.

"He should accept that Britain is a multicultural society in which we are free to follow our religion at the same time as being extremely proud to be British. We wouldn't allow 'no-go' areas to happen. I smell extreme intolerance when people criticise multiculturalism without proper evidence of what has gone wrong."

Religious membership in Britain:
click to enlarge

But the Bishop's concerns are shared by other members of the General Synod.

The Rt Rev Nicholas Reade, the Bishop of Blackburn, which has a large Muslim community, said that it was increasingly difficult for Christians to share their faith in areas where there was a high proportion of immigrants of other faiths.

He believes that increasing pressure will be put on the Government to begin the process of disestablishment and end the preferential status given to the Church of England. "The writing is on the wall," he said.

Gordon Brown relinquished Downing Street's involvement in appointing bishops in one of his first facts as Prime Minister - a move viewed by some as a significant step towards disestablishment.

Last night, Mr Davis said: "Bishop Nazir-Ali has drawn attention to a deeply serious problem. The Government's confused and counter-productive approach risks creating a number of closed societies instead of one open, cohesive one. It generates the risk of encouraging radicalisation and creating home-grown terrorism."

Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "Bishop Nazir-Ali appears to be exercised by what he perceives as the decline in the influence of Christianity upon this country, but trying to frantically scaremonger about Islam and Muslims seems to us to be a rather unethical way of trying to reverse this.

"He talks about the rise of 'Islamic extremism' but fails to mention how some of the policies of our government and especially that of the United States in the Middle East over several decades now has clearly contributed to this phenomenon."

------------------------
Read the bishop's article with this title:
Extremism flourished as UK lost Christianity
By Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester

Christians: enemies of the people? Turks agree.

A translation from the German-Catholic site: kreuz.net katholische nachrichten

A film series warns against Christians and missionaries and associates them both with organ trafficking, the mafia and prostitution.

The well-known Turkish nationwide television station 'Show TV' aired on 8th, 15th and 29 November 2007 a new episode of the old series "Kurtlar Vadisi-Pusu" – The Valley of the Wolves.

This was reported on 28 December on its website by the 'The Institute of Islamic Issues' of the German Evangelical Alliance.

The film is about the relationship between the state and four powerful Mafia families, which in the film control the economic life of the country.

The programme also mentions Christian missionary work and closely links it to organ trafficking, mafia and prostitution.

Christians are shown as enemies of the people.

The goal of Christians in the series is to defraud Turks and to weaken the national consciousness in order to divide the country among themselves.

Further it is presumed that Turkish Christians ally themselves with foreign powers and make common cause to betray the Turkish people.

As a result, 29 November, for example, the script literally said:

"Someone must be in a position to halt these people."

He continued: "As we have thrown out crusaders [from Turkey], we will also throw them out. If you have no weapon, I will give you one. "

The 'Institute of Islamic issues' refers to the rules of the state media regulatory authority "RTÜK".

It contains Art. No. 3984 paragraph 4. This seeks to prevent the media from calling for violence, terror and ethnic discrimination.

Likewise, it prohibits the call to hatred against other people, classes, ethnic or religious groups and the incitement to hatred.

In a commentary the 'Institute of Islamic issues' explains that Christian missionary work, according to the Turkish Constitution is not prohibited.

But contemporary Christians in the country are coming under strong pressure, because Christians and Christian missionaries are accused of being the source of social problems.

If the nature of the representation of Christians in the series "Kurtlar Vadisi-Pusu" was judged appropriate by the authorities, some Muslim Turks would be encouraged to take action against Turkish Christians and communities.

The U.N. coddling Islam...

The United Nations General Assembly in session.
The resolution shows a worrying acceptance of Islamic ideology.

Don't criticise Islam, says UN
Posted by Damian Thompson on 31 Dec 2007 at 14:02
Tags: Islam, United Nations, Religion, terrorism, Ideology, UN resolution

It didn’t attract much notice, but the General Assembly of the United Nations ended the year by passing a disgusting resolution protecting Islam from criticism of its human rights violations.

Lots of non-Muslims voted for it – a sign that more and more corrupt Third World governments are identifying with the ideology of Islam, even if they don't accept its doctrines.

The resolution goes under the innocuous title "Combating defamation of religions" – but the text singles out "Islam and Muslims in particular". It expresses "deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism".

Wrongly associated? As of today, terrorists have carried out 10,277 separate attacks since September 11, 2001. They all belong to the same religion, and it ain’t Methodism.

The resolution (which of course makes no mention of the vicious persecution of Christians) was pushed through by the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which has been agitating for it for years. Naturally every Muslim country was among the 108 supporters, but it’s interesting to note how other countries lined up.

Cuba, China, North Korea and Zimbabwe all voted the same way. I’ll give you one guess.