LAWRENCE AUSTER writes:

In your entry, “Pope Benedict Welcomes a Muslim Europe,” you quote Benedict’s statement that he welcomes the growing Muslim presence in Germany, because, as he puts it, “religion” is good, and Muslims are very religious. You are to be commended for clearly seeing the problem in this. My criticism here is limited to your opening sentence, in which you say:

“When Pope Benedict met with prominent Muslims in Berlin today, the Benedict of the Regensburg speech was absent.”

You are giving him too much. There should be no mistaking this miserable fact: the Benedict of the Regensburg speech, delivered on September 12, 2006, has been absent since five days after the Regensburg speech. As I wrote during those five days, the pope’s lecture, in which he had uncritically quoted the 14th century Eastern emperor Manuel II Paleologos about the “evil” nature of the religion created by Muhammad, and proceeded to argue that Islam at its core is based on violence and coercion, was as provocative and spectacularly un-PC in the sphere of Islam-West relations as ex-Harvard president Lawrence Summers’s statement that women may be less capable than men at the higher range of math abilities had been in the sphere of Harvard University. I said that, like Summers, the pope would probably not be able to stand by his statement, though I hoped that he would.

On September 16, four days after Regensburg lecture, I wrote:

IS THE POPE READY TO CAUSE A CIVILIZATIONAL WAR?

Muslim leaders around the world-though the New York Times article mentions only a few-are demanding that Pope Benedict XVI apologize for his comments about Islam. If he doesn’t, what would happen? Mounting protests throughout the world? A breakdown of relations? Open hostility? Terrorist attacks? Is Benedict prepared to be the cause of that? Is he prepared to refuse under such pressure to dissociate himself from a statement that is not even his own, but someone else’s?

[Emperor Manuel II Paleologos] said, I quote, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” [Emphasis added.]

Let’s make no bones about it. Both the original quote from the 14th century emperor, and the pope’s non-critical quotation of it, are grave insults to Islam, and in today’s world it’s hard to imagine a leader standing by such an insult. But if the pope breaks all expectations and does stand by it, if he does, then the forbidden truth about Islam will have become speakable, and the whole West-Islam relationship will have shifted in the direction of a re-awakened West prepared to draw lines and defend itself.

Pray that the pope doesn’t turn out to be another Lawrence Summers. Pray that the Vatican keeps issuing meaningless non-apology apologies.

But, tragically, Benedict, did turn out to be another Larry Summers. I wrote on September 17:

I’ve been saying for the last three days that as long as Pope Benedict kept issuing meaningless non-apology apologies to the Muslims (in the form of, “I’m very sorry you are upset, I didn’t intend to upset you”), while declining to retract his uncritical quotation of Manuel II Paleologos’s statement about Islam, this could represent the inauguration of a new stage of Western realism and strength in dealing with our age-old adversary. I also said that “[i]f the pope backs down and retracts the statement, it will be a disastrous surrender that will weaken us and further empower the Muslims.”

Sadly for the West, and the world, today the pope folded. In a story filed at 8:21 a.m. this morning, the New York Times reports that Pope Benedict has dissociated himself from Manuel II’s comment:

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (AP)-Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that he was ”deeply sorry” about the angry reaction to his recent remarks about Islam, which he said came from a text that didn’t reflect his personal opinion.

”These (words) were in fact a quotation from a Medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thought,” Benedict told pilgrims at his summer palace outside Rome.

This leaves us with big questions about the pope’s judgment and reliability. If the quote did not express his personal thought, why did he not make that clear in his speech when he delivered it five days ago? And why did he not make it clear as soon as the inevitable Muslim protests began four days ago? Why arouse the fury of so many Muslims, and the hopes of so many Western patriots, only to appease the former, and betray the latter? The pope ends up looking like that most disgraceful of all figures, former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who made what he had to know was the most politically incorrect of all statements about sex differences, and then ran away from it when he was attacked. As I said of Summers, I say to Benedict: If you weren’t going to stand by such a provocative statement, why did you make it in the first place? To make such a statement, and then retract it, is worse than never making it at all.

Subsequently, the pope made his surrender complete, by restating in St. Peter’s Square the Church position from the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate that Muslims are “our fellow adorers of the one God.” And he has never since revisited the criticisms of Islam made in the Regensburg speech. To the contrary, he has behaved as a dhimmi ever since. Two months after Regensburg, he went to Turkey. I wrote on November 28:

The headline in the Telegraph says:

Turkish hosts scold conciliatory Pope

Isn’t that great? Two months ago the pope was in Regensburg scolding the religion of the Muslims. Now he goes to Turkey for the Muslims to scold him.

The caption underneath the photo of the pope with his chief scolder, Ali Bardakoglu, Turkey’s official Islamic religious leader, says, “Almost every paragraph of the Pope’s speech dwelt on the shared ground between the religions.”

Isn’t that great? Three months ago Benedict was speaking precious words of truth, that Islam is at its sacred core a religion of violence and coercion, and that Christianity is a religion that, while coming from a transcendent source, nevertheless appeals to and is conformable with human reason. Now he’s acting like a guilty white politician who’s gone up to Al Sharpton’s headquarters in Harlem to do homage, talk about the legacy of white racism, and pray with Sharpton for racial reconciliation.

Why did Benedict do this? Because he’s a dhimmi. And no one forced him to be one. He’s the pope, he’s the Man. He has chosen to be a dhimmi.

In the same entry, I acknowledged that even if Benedict was not yet a full dhimmi, he was what Bat Ye’or calls a mental dhimmi:

Yes, he’s not a total dhimmi, like the slavish Chirac, but it seems to me he’s made the decisive move in that direction, by switching from strongly criticizing Islam to sucking up to Islam.

Remember also that there are different modes of dhimmitude, as discussed by Bat Ye’or. There is mental dhimmitude, brought about not by outright Muslim military force or political dominance, but by the affirmative eagerness of the mental dhimmi to be ruled. A man who said in 2004 that it would be a grave error to include the Muslim country of Turkey in the EU, because Islam is incompatible with Europe, and who now turns around and supports such inclusion, purely as a response to Muslim anger over the Regensburg speech; a man who said three months ago that Islam is at its core a religion of violence and coercion, and who now, out of an evident desire to placate Muslim anger, turns around and makes love to Islam and praises Islam all over the place, is a mental dhimmi.

Here is part of an e-mail sent to me by Bat Ye’or in July 2005, in which she explains the mental dhimmitude by which Europe has willingly subjugated itself to Islam, even in the absence of Islamic military and political dominance. Tell me if you think this passage doesn’t describe the pope. The rest of the e-mail can be read here.

Bat Ye’or wrote:

Dhimmitude is characterised by the victim’s siding with his oppressors, by the moral justification the victim provides for his oppressors’ hateful behavior, and by the destruction of the victim’s own self by a mental enslavement of love and admiration toward his oppressors. Willfully serving his oppressors, the dhimmi loses the sense of his own rights and humanity. He loses the possibility of revolt because revolt arises from a sense of injustice, and the dhimmi justifies the injustices done against him because he is utterly destroyed as a human being who hates himself in order to praise his oppressors. Perfect examples of this are Edward Saïd, Christian janissaries, and dhimmi Churches throughout history till today.

In another entry written at the same time, I explained the underlying principles, proceeding from the Church’s Vatican II era embrace of Islam, that make it impossible for Benedict or any Church leader to take a firm stand against Islam, so long as those principles remain in place:

In 2004, the then Cardinal Ratzinger said that the admission of Turkey into the EU would be a “grave error.” His election as pope was welcomed by traditionalists not least because he was thought to be a man who understood the Islamic threat and was prepared to defend what remained of the Christian West against it.

Today, following Pope Benedict’s pathetic surrender to Islam following his thoughtlessly sweeping attack on Islam at Regensburg in September, he has also changed his position on Turkey:

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg)-Pope Benedict XVI said he backs Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after meeting the pontiff upon his arrival in Ankara for his first visit to a Muslim country.

The Pope told Erdogan that while the Vatican seeks to stay out of politics it “desires Turkey’s membership in the EU,”‘ Erdogan said at a news conference after the 15 minute meeting that initiated his four-day visit to Turkey.

Pretty miserable. But, as I also indicated at the time of the post-Regensburg betrayal, this new betrayal is not all that shocking when we remember the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate which embraces Muslims as fellow “adorers of the one God,” which Benedict fully endorses, and which, during his “Stations of the Apology” tour following Regensburg, he quoted to a crowd in St. Peter’s Square.

As I realized at the time, so long as Nostra Aetate remains authoritative, any papal statement critical of Islam is nothing more than an unprincipled exception to Nostra Aetate, meaning a non-liberal attitude that is not backed up by a non-liberal principle, and therefore is inevitably rolled over by liberal principle. Thus Ratzinger said in ’04 that Turkey’s admission into the EU would be a grave error, because Europe is Christian and Turkey is not. But that was just a vestigial, non-liberal attitude to which Ratzinger was giving voice. The only authoritative principle for him was that Islam and Christianity are basically one, because Christians and Muslims both “adore the one God.” Nostra Aetate also commands Catholics to “forget” its 1,400 years of defensive warfare against Islamic invasions. As a result, as soon as the pope’s non-liberal desire to exclude Turkey from Europe came up against the pope’s liberal principle that Christians must forget what Islam actually is and embrace Muslims, the non-liberal attitude surrendered to the liberal principle.

The lesson is that only individuals who stand on the firm ground of non-liberal principle can resist the liberal destruction of the West.

Finally, concerning Benedict’s visit to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, where he prayed alongside Muslims, I wrote satirically about the tendency of Catholics to try to imagine that the pope was not really surrendering to Islam when he did this, but was following some deeper strategy (just as GW Bush’s defenders always imagined that when he was going along with liberals, he was really outfoxing them). In a Nov. 30, 2006 entry, “Benedict goes where no pope has gone before,” I wrote:

This is from BBC News:

Pope Benedict XVI has visited one of Turkey’s most famous mosques in what is being seen as an attempt to mend relations with the Muslim community.

During his tour of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the pontiff paused in silent prayer alongside senior Muslim clerics.

Folks, I think I now understand Benedict. His real ambition is to surpass in the Dhimmitude Hall of Fame of his predecessor, John Paul II.

But things can’t be that bad, can they? There must be a better explanation of what Benedict is up to. Let’s see, what could it be? I’ve got it. By praying in a famous mosque alongside Muslim clerics, he is making the Muslim world feel so happy and satisfied at their coup over Christianity, that they will now go complacently to sleep. While their guard is down, the Pope will order a new Crusade that will drive the Musulmans out of Istanbul, which he will rename as Constantinople, and bring the once Christian lands of Asia Minor back into the fold of Christendom. He’s got it all planned out. He’s a genius.

In reality, as reader Howard Sutherland pointed out, when the pope prayed along with Muslims in the Blue Mosque, he was putting the imprimatur of Christianity on the Moslim conquest the old Christian East.

(VFR entries on the aftermath of the Regensburg lecture and the pope’s trip to Turkey are listed here.)

                                                             — Comments —

Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:

Manuel II Paleologus (also spelled Palaiologos) was the antepenultimate Byzantine Emperor – hence also the last Roman Emperor – being succeeded by John VIII Paleologus and Constantine XI Paleologus. The Byzantium of Manuel’s day was a shrunken vestige of the original Eastern Roman Empire. It had retreated to a small territory adjacent to Constantinople, portions of the Greek Peninsula, and the “nome” of Thessaloniki. What textbooks call Byzantium or the Eastern Roman Empire, Medieval Europeans knew as Eastern Christendom. Between the Seventh and Fifteenth Centuries, the Jihad ate Eastern Christendom alive. Manuel II had been a hostage in the court of the Turkish potentate Mehmet I, whose son Mehmet II, would complete the subjugation of Byzantium in 1453 when he besieged and then took Constantinople. For an account of the Turkish victory in Constantinople, a good source is Steven Runciman’s Fall of Constantinople (1965). Interested readers should, however, also avail themselves of Mika Waltari’s novel The Dark Angel (1952), a powerful historical novel that is unsparing in its depiction of Mehmet the Conqueror’s savage brutality. 

Manuel II undertook between 1400 and 1402 an extended diplomatic journey through Europe seeking Western assistance in his fight against Islamic imperialism. He was the only Greek Emperor to have visited England, where Henry IV hosted his mission. Manuel II was a learned man, with a belletristic inclination, whose poems belong in the canon of Medieval Greek literature. He knew many Muslims, having been resident in the potentate’s court although unwillingly; he understood Islam, with which he sought dialogue. When dialogue proved fruitless, he stood his ground. 

Would that Pope Benedict had stood his ground.

Please follow and like us: