Another post by the Great Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch.

Fitzgerald: Dialogue and reality

Rome, 31 July (AKI) - Pope Benedict XVI has played a key role in helping Muslims and Christians start to find common ground on issues ranging from poverty to pollution, according to a top Muslim intellectual.

"After years of attempted dialogue, Islam and Christianity have begun to find consensus on subjects of shared interest, the president of Italy's Association of Muslim Intellectuals Ahmad Vincenzo said in an interview with the Catholic daily Liberal. -- from this article

The "dialogues" remain dialogues of the deaf, in which the main subject -- what Islam teaches Muslims to think of, and how to treat, Infidels -- is avoided. Only those other matters, the ones on which so-called "common ground" (but even that so often turns out to be quicksand) can be found, end up being discussed. These include, were told, "topics [which] range from the family to pollution, poverty, and the distribution of natural resources." So Muslims are against poverty. Great. When are the rich Muslims doing to share their wealth, either with other Muslims, or -- my god, what an idea -- with Infidels who, after all, have spent so many hundreds of billions on so many Muslims?

And they are worried, presumably, about the "family." What are they doing to combat the mistreatment of women, including the demeaning effects of polygamy? And as for the "distribution of natural resources," have the Muslim members of OPEC finally decided to share the oil and gas wealth that gives them trillions of dollars without their having to lift a finger?

Even this is, when examined, mostly phony and certainly misleads. Come back to the main points, Ahmad Vincenzo, which are the incessant demands of the adherents of a faith that is not merely alien, but hostile, to others. And that faith is especially hostile to the advanced Western world, and to so many of the things (the art, in particular) that has helped to make that world -- and so much of which is in Italy.

Perhaps Ahmad Vincenzo would like to open the Corriere della Sera for July 28, just three days ago. He will find, under the rubric "Cronache," a story titled: "Genova, polemica sulla moschea. Il sindaco; non voglio il minareto." [Genoa, a polemic on the matter of the mosque. The mayor: I'm opposed to the minaret."] In this story we learn about the demands of Muslims in Genoa to build a mosque with a minaret, right smack in the historic center of Genova. They want to do this despite the fact that there are only 8,000 Muslims in Genova, which is less than 1% of the total population -- and not all of them are even citizens. It is, Mayor Marta Vincenzi says, a deliberate act of using the minaret to send a message of o'erweening power: "Simbolo troppo forte in citta."

And supplementing the story about this minaret controversy is a discussion with Paolo Branca, a professor of Arabic and of Islamic studies at the Catholic University of Milan, who explains that the minaret was never required by the tenets of Islam, but came to be as a deliberate imitation of, and out-towering of, the campanile, or Christian bell-tower. It was meant to symbolize the power and might of Islam, of Muslims, over Christians and their symbols. It is prompted by the same impulse -- to express Muslim power and to win over the impressed -- that requires, under the Shari'a, all non-Muslim houses of worship to be built on lower ground than any nearby mosque. Muslims and Islam must dominate the skyline, as they must dominate in the world.

Oh, in Italy right now, all kinds of people are waking up to Islam. Not everyone of course. Not those Italians -- still a very small group -- who converted, or reverted, for whatever sad-eyed reasons, such as Ahmad Vincenzo. One wonders if Ahmad Vincenzo is the product of one of those couples where one of the pair is Muslim, the other not, but the non-Muslim ends up converting in order, if male, to be able to get married at all. Or is he one more of the psychically marginal who, having not understood Islam, converted and then, only later, when it was for him just a little too late, found out a bit more about the Faith, but had, out of necessity now, to stick with it?

Posted by Hugh at July 31, 2008 8:05 PM

ed- Yeah, let's have a "dialogue" about Jihad and Muslm Colonization and the Persecution of Christians and Religious Apartheid.  I'm all for it.

Pelayo / Martel / DTI