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Pope Benedict XVI has assumed a more critical stance vis-à-vis Islam than did his predecessor. He seems more concerned with the challenge Islam poses for Christianity; certainly, he has spoken out strongly against terrorism and in support of religious liberty. After Abdul Rahman was allowed to flee Afghanistan to safety in Italy, it emerged that the pope played a key role by telephoning Afghan President Hamid Karzai and urging his release.
Further evidence of the Catholic Church's reappraisal of Islam is found in the new issue of Studium, a bi-monthly Italian journal of Catholic culture. The January-February issue includes a 30-page essay entitled "The Islamic Question" by Roberto A.M. Bertacchini and Piersandro Vanzan. The latter author, a Jesuit, writes for La Civiltà Cattolica, a magazine closely associated with the Vatican.
Studium's website is entirely in Italian, but a lengthy excerpt translated into English, has been posted at Chiesa, along with introductory remarks by Sandro Magister. Here are the opening paragraphs from the excerpt:
Islamic terrorism is a rather complex response to the confrontation with the West, which Islam sees as a devastating, deadly threat.
At the end of the 1980’s, there was a pitched battle within the Islamist camp between the positions of Abdullah Azzam and the more extremist positions of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, a true ideologue of jihad in the form it has taken today, which includes in the category of enemy the “Herodians,” or those who collaborate with the West. On November 24, 1989, Azzam was assassinated in Peshawar, and Al-Zawahiri had an open field.
For the zealots, everything that comes from the outside is like poison to their traditional ways of life, so they hold that there is only one way to avert cultural catastrophe: expel the invader and hermetically seal off the borders, so nothing can pollute or corrupt their miniature world. This is, in part, the position of Osama Bin Laden, who is opposed to the American presence, not only in Iraq, but also in Saudi Arabia.
But this defensive program would never work against Western civilization. Unlike all previous civilizations, it is not localized or territorially circumscribed. The pervasiveness of the global village is such that there is only one way to escape its grasp: destroy it. And this is Al-Zawahiri’s ideological program, which he pursues with a complex strategy. For the formula of “modernizing Islam,” he substitutes another: “Islamizing modernity,” and therefore the West.
Within the Muslim world, Islamization means de-Westernizing everything: from political and cultural institutions to economic ones, even to the point of rethinking banking operations. On the outside, it means spreading Islam through vigorous missionary activity, in both Europe and the United States: this activity is supported above all by Saudia Arabia. But according to the most radical interpretations, Islamizing the West means violently attacking its political and economic power, without sparing the civilian population.
This pan-Islamist program might make some smirk, just as many smirked at Hitler before his political ascent. But this is a real program, which is being carried out according to a clear plan, and although it is working slowly, it is producing results.
That this is a real program can be seen in many ways.
The authors then outline six pieces of evidence supporting the proposition that an intentional pan-Islamist campaign against Western civilisation has been underway since at least 1969.
via Dhimmi Watch.
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