Baghdad Massacre

Rorate Caeli has the full text by Father Raymond J. de Souza. Or if you prefer, Father Z is it as well with his own interspersed commentary.

It's a race against time and we're probably going to lose the Middle East before we reach the finish line.

Eventually though, Globalization is going to neuter the Muslim countries as it has the West with its tools of abortion and contraception to the point where their own populations will start falling. Iran with its huge population of young people born since the Revolution of 1979 who have collectively chosen to not procreate is the prime example of this demographic trend (check out the graph at the right).

The battlefield now truly is Europe where the question is if the European states (for example, Germany and Merkel's recent statement that multiculturalism has failed) will be able to rouse themselves soon enough to hold off the tide or if the Muslims will take control of a decayed secular Europe just in time for their own implosion.

Commentary on the open letter

Sandro Magister has an extensive point-by-point commentary on the open letter sent by thirty-eight Muslim scholars last week which I linked to here. His preliminary paragraph summarizes well the points of the letter:

nstead of saying they are offended and demanding apologies, they express their respect for him and dialogue with him on faith and reason. They disagree on many points. But they also criticize those Muslims who want to impose, with violence, “utopian dreams in which the end justifies the means”

The analysis of the letter has a lot of great points and it's definitely worth a read both as a summary of the letter or as a companion. I don't need to repeat it here. One remark of Magister's that is important is this one:

It is worthwhile to recall that even the most authoritative leader of Shiite Islam, the Iraqi grand ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, has expressed toward Benedict XVI the respect and attention that can also be found in the letter of the 38. And he did this much sooner. In the most violent days of the anti-papal protest that exploded in the Muslim world, representatives of Al-Sistani visited on two occasions the secretary of the Vatican nunciature in Baghdad, monsignor Thomas Hlim Sbib, to express his friendship toward Benedict XVI and his desire for a meeting with him in Rome.

We should all pray for the continued health of Sistani. He's probably the greatest friend the West has anywhere in Islam today. That is to say his goals and those of the West largely coincide. His website can be found here in case anyone is interested in learning more.

The open letter

Our good friends at the BBC are reporting that that an open letter to the Pope from thirty-eight Muslim scholars is on its way.

The letter is online at the website of the magazine Islamica.

The link to the letter and an introduction to it are here. The letter-link will open a Javascript window.

At the Islamica website is also a piece by John L. Esposito that discusses the Pope's lecture and the Muslim reaction.

In particular:

Have Muslims over-reacted to the Pope's statement? Their responses need to be understood in the context of our post 9/11 world with its greater polarisation and alarming increases in Islamophobia. Many Muslims feel under siege. A Gallup World Poll of some 800 million Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia indicates widespread resentment over what respondents see as the denigration of Islam, Arabs and Muslims in the West. The cartoon controversy in Europe demonstrated both the dangers of xenophobia and Islamophobia, and the depths of anger and outrage. Therefore, it is easy to understand why Muslims would express their disappointment and anger and call for an apology and dialogue much the same as Jewish leaders strongly urged meetings with the Pope or other Church leaders for offensive comments or actions. This was the case for American Jewish leaders before the papal visit of 1987, after Pope John Paul II had met with Kurt Waldheim. As prominent Muslim leaders noted during the European cartoon controversy and in the current situation, expressions of concern or outrage do not preclude discussion and dialogue and certainly never justify acts of violence.

Yeah, it's easy to understand that people are justified in chopping off the head of a priest who wasn't even Catholic because they feel they're being denigrated by an old man who lives on another continent. Got it.