Pope Bendict Speaks: A Caution

Those of us outside of the inner circle of power, particularly as power manifests itself in the current regime, need to take care on one very important point. To rebut the attack on Islam in all of its varieties--from Islamo-fascist to Islamic terrorists to Islamic fundamentalists--is not to take sides with Islam, any more than it is to condemn all of the glorious by-products of European civilization. One can respect Islamic culture and art and give it full credit for the role it played in helping to create Western civilization in the same agnostic fashion that one gives similar credit to European culture. What the argument against Muslim bashing does is merely point out the colossal hypocrisy in attacking Islam for precisely the same crimes that Christian churches and political regimes have committed on an even larger scale. Had most reasonable people had a choice, the tendency toward secularism that emerged after WWII would have been encouraged. The opposite was encouraged. Since secular movements in the Arab and other Islamic former colonies tended to be suspect, seen as inevitably gravitating toward the soviet camp, it is the U.S. and the Europeans who stimulated the growth of a brand of Islamic fanatics who would take on the soviet machine with U.S.-provided weapons, but also blow up Buddhas and initiate extremist regimes of their own. In short, the U.S. played the religion card. Atheistic regimes are bad. We support religion. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Machiavelli gone haywire.