Anglican Prelate Defends Pope

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Carey supported Pope Benedict's speech calling for a dialogue based on faith and reason. Some of the points the Archbishop are telling, as he was the head of a Muslim/Christian dialogue while head of the Anglican clergy:

Lord Carey said that Muslims must address “with great urgency” their religion’s association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the "clash of civilisations" endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole.

"We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times," he said. "There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths."

Archbishop Carey went on to quote Samuel Huntington.

Lord Carey, who as Archbishop of Canterbury became a pioneer in Christian-Muslim dialogue, himself quoted a contemporary political scientist, Samuel Huntington, who has said the world is witnessing a "clash of civilisations."

Arguing that Huntington’s thesis has some "validity," Lord Carey quoted him as saying: "Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power."

Lord Carey went on to argue that a "deep-seated Westophobia" has developed in recent years in the Muslim world.

If anyone has given a lot of thought to the dialogue between a triumphant West and a spiritually-impoverished, materially-underdevelopped religion with violence built into its DNA [Read the Quran's sura 9:5 about how it is okay to kill unbelievers], it is Lord Carey.

There is a death-wish strain in Western Civilization, promoted by the international left and the multiculti loonies, which seeks to match Islamic violence with Western submission---in the vain and preposterous hope that acts of compliant deference to Islamic demands will soften the attack.

These extremist Muslims are similar to rabid dogs, and see Western non-response to violence and illegalities on their part as a reason to redouble their efforts to overcome Western civilization. The more EU "diplomacy" toward Iran, for example, is pursued in the face of repeated lies and equivocations by the Iranian leadership, the more Iran and its extremist allies consider the West to be a pushover and ripe for the picking.

I know that a naive person might believe I am exaggerating the Islamic obsession with the past, and almost psychotic resolve to turn the tables on the West. When I first arrived in the Middle East, I was struck by the complete immersion of the society in the distant past, in its psychological make-up and thought-horizons. For example, I stayed in Jidda in the Hotel Andolusia, a part of Spain I had visited and which had been under Spanish rule since its final conquest in 1492. When I remarked on this once to a Muslim friend, he noted that Andolusia had been under Islamic suzerainty for over 800 years, with the implicit suggestion that Andolusia remains an irredentist claim in the Muslim mindset.

It certainly does to Osama bL, who is said to obsess on the return of Al-Andalus to Islamic control as much as he does on Whitney Houston, now available as Bobby ran out of drug money to stoke her habit. The Chief of Arabic Language instruction in Beirut got his PhD on the 6000 Arabic words which have become standard vocabulary in the Spanish language.

The feckless mindless Spaniards, who have already forgotten the Madrid train bombings, are heedless to any threat to their already weakened central government. Look for an AQ attack on Sevilla or Cadiz in the future, as a stake-claim on the imminent return of Islam to the Iberian peninsula. Given the present Spanish govt, such an outcome is not difficult to imagine. And you can be sure Tubby Hugo down in Caracas will be cheering on the return of Islam to Europe. But I digress. More Carey:

Lord Carey, who has continued to work in interfaith collaboration since his retirement in 2002, said that the relationship between Islamic countries and the West was "the most dangerous, most important and potentially cataclysmic issue of our day." He described the two civilisations as "polarised and uncomprehending" and said that the Danish cartoons controversy last March showed "two world views colliding in public space with no common point of reference".

There is no real freedom of speech in the Islamic world, save in outposts of sanity like Beirut or Doha. Either it is shut down by secular govts [Syria], religious dictatorships [Iran and Saudi Arabia] or populist violent agitators [Pakistan]. There is little freedom of religion and churches and synagogues are regularly bombed or attacked where there is nominal religious tolerance. Ask the Copts in Egypt or the Christians on the West Bank, or the Bahai or Zoroastrians in Iran.

While Islam has been able to live with dhimmi subcultures under the Ottoman experience, the relationship has always been master-slave rather than a community of autonomous and partnership of equals. Except in the perilous state of Lebanon, there has been no long-time democracy in any Muslim country despite papiere mache parliaments on the Egyptian model. And we have seen Lebanon subside into civil strife over power-sharing by the various communities. Carey ends on the following note:

He said he agreed with his Muslim friends who claimed that true Islam is not a violent religion, but he wanted to know why Islam today had become associated with violence. "The Muslim world must address this matter with great urgency," he said.

Unfortunately, the track record for moderation in the Muslim world is littered with the bodies of moderates murdered by violent extremists. The biggest mistake the Egyptian government ever made was releasing Dr. Zawahiri after his complicity in the murder of Sadat, a triumph of hollow legalism over national security. Not that empty-headed over-lawyered liberals in the US would pay attention to such historical precedents.

Finally, another article in the same paper demonstrates how weakened the anti-terrorist effort has become in the lethargic political world of the UK. Rather than arrest a terrorist sympathizer who made public remarks praising the July 7th bombings last year in London, this terrorist wannabe was "investigated" and his screaming at the British Home Secretary in public was lapped up by a tabloid press sinking to trying to fan the flames of intercommunal strife, just to sell more papers.

The UK has an MSM too, and it is just as mindless and ruled by PC Thought Police gibberish as the US NYT-led suicide pact.