Recently in Robert Spencer Category

In PJ Lifestyle today I consider what goes on in jihad families like the Tsarnaevs:

“Peace will come,” Golda Meir once famously remarked, “when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate us.” The obstacle to peace was not actually Arabs as such, but Muslims who had imbibed Islam’s doctrine of jihad and hatred of non-believers and primarily Jews — a hatred so intense that it drives people to prefer death (and murder) to life. And as we have seen recently with the monstrous grandstanding of Mama Tsarnaeva, this hatred is passed on in some Muslim families – and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is by no means the only mother from hell.

Islamic supremacists avowedly and proudly love death. Jihad mass murderer Mohamed Merah said that he “loved death more than they loved life.” Nigerian jihadist Abubakar Shekau said: “I’m even longing for death, you vagabond.”

Ayman al-Zawahiri’s wife advised Muslim women: “I advise you to raise your children in the cult of jihad and martyrdom and to instil in them a love for religion and death.” And as one jihadist put it, “We love death. You love your life!” And another: “The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death.” That was from Afghan jihadist Maulana Inyadullah.

Ultimately, this idea comes from the Qur’an itself:

“Say (O Muhammad): O ye who are Jews! If ye claim that ye are favoured of Allah apart from (all) mankind, then long for death if ye are truthful.” — Qur’an 62:6

This love of death is instilled in children. A Muslim child preacher recently taunted those he has been taught to hate most: “Oh Zionists, we love death for the sake of Allah, just as much as you love life for the sake of Satan.” This young man’s mother was probably much like the quintessential mother from hell, Mariam Farhat, or Umm Nidal (mother of Nidal), a Palestinian parliamentarian who died in March. No one more fully embodied the Hamas ethos — and the ethos of infanticide that permeates contemporary Palestinian culture as a whole — than Umm Nidal, a mother who willed the death of her own children and the children of others.

The New York Times in 2006 called her as “the mother of three Hamas supporters killed by Israelis.” This was a highly tendentious appellation, as the Times report itself made clear when it said that “she bade one son goodbye in a homemade videotape before he stormed an Israeli settlement, killing five people, then being shot dead. She said later, in a much-publicized quotation, that she wished she had 100 sons to sacrifice that way. Known as the ‘mother of martyrs,’ she was seen in a campaign video toting a gun.”

Umm Nidal’s oldest son Nidal was killed in 2003, and his brother Rawad in 2005 — both as they were involved in jihad actions against Israelis. Muhammad Farhat was the first of her sons to die. In June 2002 he stormed the Atzmona settlement in Israel, firing indiscriminately, murdering five teenagers and wounding twenty others before he himself was killed.

Umm Nidal cried out “Allahu Akbar” when she learned of Muhammad’s murders and his own death; she “prepared boxes of halva and chocolates, and handed them out to his friends.”

There is more.

I just returned from speaking at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Texas Weekend in Dallas, where featured speakers included Congressman Louie Gohmert, with whom I am having breakfast above, Senator Ted Cruz, Allen West and many other luminaries. It was an enlightening weekend of determination and strategizing; I'll post video as soon as it becomes available.

Saturday evening I spoke to a coalition of conservative groups on the Leftist/Islamic supremacist war on the freedom of speech and how it interfered with prevention of the Boston Marathon jihad bombing. Southington, CT, April 27, 2013.

Last night on my weekly spot on Michael Coren's Sun TV show, with guest host Ryan Doyle.

"...the positive achievements that we Catholics have attained in our inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims..." -- Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester, Massachusetts, February 8, 2013

Why didn't that "inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims" in the Boston area, which is where McManus is, prevent the Boston jihad bombings? Find out in my new book Not Peace But a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam, which is all the more timely in light of all the naive, short-sighted and self-defeating calls for yet more "dialogue" that are ringing out in the wake of the Boston jihad bombings. You can order the book here (Kindle edition here) and download a free sample chapter here.

"Dialogue with Islam may be the order of the day, but what exactly should we talk about? Before we can discuss what we, as Catholics, might have in common with Muslims, we had better be aware of the defining differences as they are understood by Muslims themselves. This is the invaluable service Spencer provides in this book, which directs our attention to what the Islamic revelational texts actually say and how they are understood by the majority of Muslims today. With his usual clarity and insight, Spencer gets to the essence of the problems that anyone who thinks we can talk our way out of the challenge Islam presents must face. Catholics need to know this material." -- Robert Reilly, author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind

"Robert Spencer is a careful observer of Islam and a courageous voice on behalf of Christians. In his new book, Not Peace But a Sword, he shows Catholics how to take Islam seriously without falling into alarmism, hatred, or bigotry. He provides a needed corrective to the misinformation and disinformation propagated by so many media today." -- Scott Hahn, author of The Lamb's Supper, Understanding the Scriptures and many other books

"In Not Peace but a Sword, Robert Spencer carefully examines the multifaceted challenge posed to Christianity by an increasingly militant Islam. His case is calm, lucid, accurate, and uncompromising in its presentation of the facts of history. He provides an honest and unflinching account of the roots of Christian/Muslim tensions, a robust defense of Jesus Christ and Christianity in response to Muslim claims, and a sobering wake-up call to all Christians everywhere that objects in the mirror are closer (much closer) than they appear." -- Patrick Madrid, author of Envoy for Christ: 25 Years as a Catholic Apologist and host of the "Right Here, Right Now" radio show

"As Robert Spencer clearly shows in this much-needed book, a great many Catholics know only a Disneyfied version of Islam. While Christians in North Africa and the Middle East are being exterminated in the name of Islam, Catholics in the West still cling to the dangerous illusion that Muslims and Christians share much in common. But beneath the surface similarities, as Spencer ably demonstrates, lies a deep and possibly unbridgeable gulf. This is must reading not only for Catholics but for all Christians." -- William Kilpatrick, author of Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West

This is my twelfth book -- get them all!

This evening I made a special appearance on Michael Coren's Sun TV show to discuss the Boston jihad attacks and mainstream media obfuscation of their real motive.

Here is a fine review of my new book Not Peace But a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam, which seems all the more timely in light of all the naive, short-sighted and self-defeating calls for "dialogue" ringing out in the wake of the Boston jihad bombings. You can order the book here (Kindle edition here) and download a free sample chapter here.

"Christianity and Islam: Cooperation or Conflict? A review of Robert Spencer's Not Peace But a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam," by William Kilpatrick in the Catholic World Report, April 21:

Robert Spencer has written a dozen books on Islam, as well as thousands of pages of commentary on Islamic law, scripture, and tradition, but this may be his most significant book yet because of its potential to alert Christians to a dangerous gap in their knowledge of Islam. Christian leaders are badly in need of a wake-up call about Islam and this is a wake-up call that is hard to ignore. Not Peace but a Swordasks questions about the relationship between Christianity and Islam that few others are asking, even though they are questions that beg for answers.

Coexistence or Chasm?

The main question is whether the differences between Christianity and Islam can be worked out or whether there is an unbridgeable chasm between the two faiths.  Spencer is not saying that individual Muslims must necessarily be at odds with individual Christians but he is asking whether Islam’s doctrinal hostility toward Christianity can be overcome, or whether it is of the essence of Islam.

This hostility toward non-Muslims is abundantly evident in almost every country where Muslims are in the majority and even in many places where they are a sizeable minority.  A few weeks ago in Pakistan, a Muslim mob attacked a Christian neighborhood burning down 180 homes and damaging two churches.  In Egypt, Christian girls are routinely kidnapped and forced to marry Muslim men.  In Nigeria, Christians are burned alive in their churches.  Brutal attacks on Christians are a daily occurrence in the Muslim world, and in many instances, the hostility is fueled by Muslim clerics.

The hostility is much less in evidence in the world of Western academics and in the conference rooms where Muslims and Christians gather for dialogue.  In these settings, Christian professors and prelates get along fine with their well-educated and friendly Muslim colleagues and dialogue partners, all of whom seem committed to the proposition that the values Christians and Muslims share in common are much more important than the differences that separate them. Many Christians in the West take it for granted that Muslims share the same values they do, but, as Spencer ably demonstrates, this assumption seems to be based largely on wishful thinking rather than on knowledge of Islamic doctrine and practice.

Spencer is not opposed to dialogue per se, but he suggests that Christians need to be more clear-eyed about it.  Take the “Common Word” initiative. Begun in 2007, it was an appeal to Christians by 138 Muslim leaders and scholars for mutual understanding. The initiative was well-received by Christians and this resulted in an ongoing series of interfaith conferences and other undertakings. The Common Word website says that “the [Muslim] signatories have adopted the traditional and mainstream Islamic position of respecting the Christian scripture and calling Christians to be more, not less, faithful to it.”

This sounds promising but, as Spencer points out, in Islamic tradition the true and original Christian Gospel is considered to be congruent with the Koran.  According to this staple of Muslim belief, the New Testament that Christians consult today is a corruption of the original gospel.  In fact, Muslims look upon Christian Scripture in much the same way that The Da Vinci Code does:  “Mainstream Muslim belief is that orthodox Christianity is nothing more than a subterfuge, a massive hoax designed to fool the believers and lead them astray.”  Thus, when Muslim scholars call Christians to be more faithful to their scripture, what they have in mind is something quite different from what their Christian audience supposes.

Moreover, as Spencer notes, the Qur’anic verse on which the Common Word initiative is based suggests that the agenda is not dialogue but conversion or, at least, submission:  “Say: ‘People of the Book! [Christians] Come now to a word common between us and you, that we serve none but God, and that we associate not aught with Him, and do not some of us take others as Lords, apart from God.’” (3:64). Spencer observes: 

Since Muslims consider the Christian confession of the divinity of Christ to be an unacceptable association of a partner with God, this verse is saying that the “common word” that Muslims and the People of the Book should agree on is that Christians should discard one of the central tenets of their faith and essentially become Muslims.

[...]

Good Muslims and Bad Muslims

Spencer’s book ends with an interesting epilogue—a transcript of a 2010 debate between Spencer and Dr. Peter Kreeft, one of the foremost exponents of the idea that Christians and Muslims ought to form an alliance against anti-religious secularists.  The proposition of the debate was “The Only Good Muslim Is a Bad Muslim.”  And, indeed, much of Spencer’s work over the years suggests that the more moderate Muslims are the ones who ignore their faith altogether or else don’t fully understand its obligations. On the other hand, the more closely a Muslim adheres to the core teachings of Islam, the more likely he is to be a danger to non-Muslims. Right now, the media is trying to come up with a reason to explain why two young men in Boston became heartless killers.  Many journalists, pundits, and politicians are avoiding what appears to be the most obvious factor—Islam.  The two Tsarnaev brothers had evidently become more aware of the religious obligation to wage jihad and being young they chose the path of armed jihad. From our point of view, this would mean they were “bad Muslims” but from their point of view they were “good Muslims.” In this regard, consider the explanation given by a world-be suicide bomber in Pakistan as to why he let himself be recruited by the Taliban to don a suicide vest:  “They prayed all the time and read the Koran so I thought they were good people.”

There is abundant evidence that Islamic terrorists are not “misunderstanders” of their religion as the media likes to portray them, but that they understand it very well.  For example, Umar Abdulmutallab, the “underwear bomber,” was president of the Islamic Society at University College London, and in high school he was nicknamed “the scholar” for his extensive knowledge of Islam.  And anyone who closely follows the careers of extremist Muslim leaders such as Ayatollah Khamenei, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Mohamed Morsi will realize that they are well-grounded in their religion and take it very seriously.

Perhaps it’s time for those Christian leaders who are responsible for dialogue to take Islam more seriously, also—seriously enough to take a harder look at Islamic doctrine. It’s beginning to look like the real misunderstanders of Islam are the Christian academics and dialoguers who seem committed to a policy of “see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.”  The urgent question they need to ask themselves is whether, in their desire for harmony, they are only succeeding in legitimizing and enabling a politico- religious ideology that endorses the subjugation of Christians and Jews.

Read it all.

I was on the Laura Ingraham Show yesterday discussing the Boston jihad bombings and the extent of Islamic supremacist preaching in U.S. mosques. You can listen here.

I referred during this interview to four separate studies that all found that 80% of U.S. mosques were teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism, and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians. There are no countervailing studies that challenge these results. In 1998, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. Then he gave testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999, and asserted that 80% of American mosques taught the “extremist ideology.”

Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom’s 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.

And in the summer of 2011 came another study showing that only 19% of mosques in U.S. don’t teach jihad violence and/or Islamic supremacism.

Specifically:

A random survey of 100 representative mosques in the U.S. was conducted to measure the correlation between Sharia adherence and dogma calling for violence against non-believers. Of the 100 mosques surveyed, 51% had texts on site rated as severely advocating violence; 30% had texts rated as moderately advocating violence; and 19% had no violent texts at all. Mosques that presented as Sharia adherent were more likely to feature violence-positive texts on site than were their non-Sharia-adherent counterparts. In 84.5% of the mosques, the imam recommended studying violence-positive texts. The leadership at Sharia-adherent mosques was more likely to recommend that a worshiper study violence-positive texts than leadership at non-Sharia-adherent mosques. Fifty-eight percent of the mosques invited guest imams known to promote violent jihad. The leadership of mosques that featured violence-positive literature was more likely to invite guest imams who were known to promote violent jihad than was the leadership of mosques that did not feature violence-positive literature on mosque premises.

That means that around 1,700 mosques in the U.S. are preaching hatred of infidels and justifying violence against them.

Thursday night on my weekly appearance on Michael Coren's Sun TV show.

Wednesday night I interviewed Walid Shoebat on my ABN Jihad Watch show.

PJ Lifestyle Bookshelf had this yesterday: "A reminder for modern day abolitionists from page 23 of Robert Spencer's new book Not Peace But a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam." You can order the book here (Kindle edition here) and download a free sample chapter here.

...and the silence and indifference of Western Christians to that persecution.

Wednesday night, on my ABN show.

Here is an excerpt from a review of my new book, Not Peace But A Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam by Jeff Miller at Patheos, April 7. You can order it here (Kindle edition here) and download a free sample chapter here.

...The biggest problem in understanding Islam as one of the Abrahamic faiths is that what we seem to have in common can be seen as completely different. We might think we are looking at the same basic story in the Old Testament, but while there might be commonalities in the Qur’an there are also vast differences. This comes about because of the way the Qur’an came about in the first place. Maybe this analogy is off-base, but it seems to me to be kind of like fan-fiction. Somebody takes a story they like and writes another story in that same universe. They also might reboot the story to be in a similar framework, but with some diferences [sic]. You can even have a case of one fan-fiction writer writing a story like the latter and then another writer taking off on that story. The Qur’an to me seems to be an awful lot like that as you have some similar biblical stories, but there are major differences such as Abraham attempting to sacrifice Ishmael instead. There are also obvious Gnostic Christian influences along with examples of other early Christian heresies.

Much is made of Jesus and Mary being in the Qur’an and yet where we think we have something in common, we really don’t. It would be like two people talking about President Lincoln where one is talking about the historic Abraham Lincoln and the other one talking about the Vampire Killer Abraham Lincoln. The Jesus in the Qur’an is really a sock puppet mainly used to deny that he is the son of God. A rebooted Jesus used to proclaim Islam. A major reboot happens where Jesus at the end of time is going to come back to break all the crosses and kill all the pigs. As annoyed by reboot story arcs found in Marvel and D.C. Comics are, they have nothing on the author or authors of the Qur’an....

Read it all.

My twelfth book, Not Peace But A Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam, is available now. You can order it here (Kindle edition here) and download a free sample chapter here. It is especially timely in light of the recent decision, under pressure from the Boston Globe and jihad terror-linked Islamic supremacists, by Robert McManus, the Roman Catholic bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts to drop me from speaking at a conference there. What happened to me in Worcester unfolded rather like a scripted illustration of what I explain in the book. This because the book explores the pitfalls of the "dialogue" that Christian leaders so naively pursue with Islamic supremacists, as well as the similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam, the nature of the dialogue that has gone on between the two so far, and the prospects of such dialogue in the future.

Here are some reviews:

"Dialogue with Islam may be the order of the day, but what exactly should we talk about? Before we can discuss what we, as Catholics, might have in common with Muslims, we had better be aware of the defining differences as they are understood by Muslims themselves. This is the invaluable service Spencer provides in this book, which directs our attention to what the Islamic revelational texts actually say and how they are understood by the majority of Muslims today. With his usual clarity and insight, Spencer gets to the essence of the problems that anyone who thinks we can talk our way out of the challenge Islam presents must face. Catholics need to know this material." -- Robert Reilly, author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind

"Robert Spencer is a careful observer of Islam and a courageous voice on behalf of Christians. In his new book, Not Peace But a Sword, he shows Catholics how to take Islam seriously without falling into alarmism, hatred, or bigotry. He provides a needed corrective to the misinformation and disinformation propagated by so many media today." -- Scott Hahn, author of The Lamb's Supper, Understanding the Scriptures and many other books

"In Not Peace but a Sword, Robert Spencer carefully examines the multifaceted challenge posed to Christianity by an increasingly militant Islam. His case is calm, lucid, accurate, and uncompromising in its presentation of the facts of history. He provides an honest and unflinching account of the roots of Christian/Muslim tensions, a robust defense of Jesus Christ and Christianity in response to Muslim claims, and a sobering wake-up call to all Christians everywhere that objects in the mirror are closer (much closer) than they appear." -- Patrick Madrid, author of Envoy for Christ: 25 Years as a Catholic Apologist and host of the "Right Here, Right Now" radio show

"As Robert Spencer clearly shows in this much-needed book, a great many Catholics know only a Disneyfied version of Islam. While Christians in North Africa and the Middle East are being exterminated in the name of Islam, Catholics in the West still cling to the dangerous illusion that Muslims and Christians share much in common. But beneath the surface similarities, as Spencer ably demonstrates, lies a deep and possibly unbridgeable gulf. This is must reading not only for Catholics but for all Christians." -- William Kilpatrick, author of Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West

Twelve books -- get them all!

At PJ Lifestyle I continue my series on jazz and Islam (some pieces have more one than the other):

"Every innovation leads astray and every creator of the astray goes into the fire."

This statement is attributed to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and is part of Islam’s general disapproval of the concept of bid’ah, or innovation. The prohibition of innovation refers specifically to new theological ideas – Allah tells the Muslims in the Qur’an that he has perfected their religion for them (5:3), and that’s that. But all the frowning on theological innovation has fostered a general cultural attitude against innovation of any kind – which is one reason why Islamic states are not generally leaders in technological development or scientific exploration. In the West, by contrast, we generally respect and reward innovation when it leads to new insights and greater efficiency – and are the beneficiaries of a musical tradition that has celebrated innovators from Bach to Beethoven to Louis Armstrong. And there are many others, drastically unsung, who deserve a hearing.

Musical innovation is a tricky thing; one man’s startling and fascinating new musical development is another man’s noise. That’s why musical innovators have implored their hearers to listen without prejudice long before George Michael appropriated the term. And of course what may not appeal to someone at first may get through at some other point; I vividly remember the day when I became so completely absorbed in Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, which had never much mattered to me before that, and came down from the mountain dazed and dazzled, not interested in hearing any other music ever again, ever. The exaltation wore off, of course, as it always does, but the respect for musical innovation, and the resolve to listen without prejudice, remained. And so here are five jazz innovators whose work is usually classified as “avant garde,” which for most people is a synonym for “unlistenable.” I beg to differ. Listen without prejudice.

1. Ornette Coleman, “Lonely Woman” and “Free Jazz” It is perhaps an exaggerated sense of victimhood that would lead one to classify Ornette Coleman, now over 80 and laden with honors, as unsung and underappreciated, but even though it is now over fifty years since he was the butt of jokes on New York’s jazz scene (a blind man took his date to hear Ornette at his celebrated Five Spot gig; a waiter dropped a plate of dishes and the blind man said, “Listen, honey, Ornette’s playing our song”), he has never entirely lived down his reputation as an out-of-control musical anarchist. Yet in reality, Ornette Coleman has a wonderful ear for melody, and the melodies just keep coming from him, even as he disregards conventional improvisational strictures. “Lonely Woman” – the beauty of it is indisputable, and listen for how Coleman and trumpeter Don Cherry comment musically on each other’s solos in mid-flight.

Then there is “Free Jazz,” the huge slab of free improvisation that set the jazz world on its ear when it appeared in 1961. Some have argued that it set in motion a revolution that ultimately killed jazz, leading some to take refuge in rock and roll (Miles Davis) and others to move so far beyond the bounds of conventional harmony as to lead some to question whether what they were producing was music at all (John Coltrane). Without commenting on whether “Free Jazz” was a dead end, I believe it was certainly a supernova, flaming out with a light more brilliant than what had come before.

There is more.

Last Wednesday evening on ABN.

Over at Atlas Shrugs I discuss the famous Pope Francis foot-washing and its implications:

We have seen Pope Francis exemplify Christ’s extreme humility. Will he also imitate Christ and the Biblical prophets in challenging the powerful and rebuking the unjust?

It created an international sensation when the new Pope washed a Muslim woman’s feet during Maundy Thursday mass. Numerous Leftists and Islamic supremacists expressed their delight, including the dhimmi pseudo-academic Juan Cole, who is a Board member of a front group for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Clearly Cole thought that the Pope’s act somehow constituted some kind of rebuke to Catholics who are sounding the alarm about the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. He gleefully entitled a post at his Informed Comment site: “Dear Rightwing Catholic Islamophobes: Pope Francis just washed the feet of a Poor Muslim.” Hussam Ayloush of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations retweeted it as “Dear Rightwing Catholic Islamophobe (Robert Spencer): Pope Francis just washed the feet of a Muslim.” Greetings from inside Hussam Ayloush’s head, where apparently I occupy a large suite.

In his piece, Cole (who is abysmally ignorant of Catholicism) demonstrates yet again a common pitfall for hard-Left propagandists: they tend to believe their own propaganda. Cole is assuming here that those whom he defames as “Islamophobes” really do hate Muslims, and so are outraged that the Pope would show kindness and demonstrate humility before one. The idea that opposing jihad and Islamic supremacism constitutes “hate” is a well-worn Leftist cliche, but it has no substance. Why should it? Why should a desire to preserve and protect the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and equality of rights of all people before the law involve any kind of hate?

Anyway, as for the foot-washing itself, the question is, what did the Pope mean by it? If he meant simply to imitate Christ's action of extreme humility at the Last Supper, and to demonstrate that no one is beyond the pale of God's mercy, no Christian could object to that.

Coming at a time when Muslim persecution of Christians is escalating worldwide, however, and when there already questions about the Catholic Church’s apparent determination to accommodate Islamic supremacism at all costs, and not speak up for the persecuted Christians, this foot-washing is being seen as an indication that the Church is surrendering and bowing down to its new Islamic overlords. Cole’s article expressing his joy at the Pope’s action is an indication of that. Pamela Geller wrote trenchantly about just how disastrous was the signal the Pope was sending: “While millions of Christians are being oppressed, persecuted and slaughtered under Islamic law ...... this is stomach-churning dhimmitude. This isn’t merely a lack of leadership; this is betrayal on an unimaginable level. Kill my people and I will wash and kiss your feet. For jihadists, this image could very well replace the burning twin towers as iconic of Islamic imperialism and conquest.”

Cole and Ayloush and their allies are so happy about the Pope’s gesture because it does seem to indicate a surrender to the forces of Islamic supremacism, and a determination not to resist or even confront them. If that really is what Pope Francis meant, then his action constitutes an error in judgment even greater than John Paul II’s kissing of the Qur’an. Whether that is what it really means will become clear one way or the other as events unfold. 

Also, if the Pope really meant by washing this Muslim woman’s feet that Catholics should not defend themselves and their loved ones and their homelands against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, then his gesture is not only wrong, disastrous and lamentable, but in contradiction to centuries of Church teaching about the right and even the duty of defending oneself. It seems inconceivable that Pope Francis meant by this gesture unilaterally to change Church teaching on self-defense, or to proclaim that the Church must not resist jihadis and Islamic supremacists – but time will tell.

It is also worth noting that if the Pope had dared to touch and kiss a Muslim woman's feet in Saudi Arabia or Iran, he would have been immediately killed. His act of humility would not have been received in the spirit in which it was intended. It could have caused a firestorm of indignation in the Muslim world, a la Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensberg address, but of course Islamic supremacists are generally smarter than that, and do not interfere with someone who is doing them a favor (and Francis was, whether he intended to or not, as Cole’s piece demonstrates). Nor has Francis’s gesture of humility been reciprocated by any Muslim authority, and it will not be.

Cole is very happy here that the Pope has shown concern for the downtrodden; Cole doesn’t mention the downtrodden Christians in Islamic lands. Does the Pope care for them? It seems that he does; but rather than blaming a vague “fundamentalism,” which isn’t even a word that legitimately applies to Islam at all, will he speak up more clearly and forcefully about why they are suffering, and challenge their persecutors? Or does this foot-washing signify that he is abandoning them to their fate? We shall see. We shall soon see whether this Pope is a servant only, or a prophet as well.

Last Tuesday night I did a live ABN show with Sam Shamoun of Answering Islam. The intended topic was Christian/Muslim dialogue, but we ended up having a freewheeling discussion with a number of callers.

In PJ Lifestyle, I discuss the conversion to Islam of Aurora murderer James Holmes:

The debate over James Holmes’s sanity has raged hotly ever since he murdered twelve people and wounded 58 in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in July 2012. But now the controversy can be laid to rest: Holmes is sane. The clearest indication of his sanity came last week, when the Daily Mail reported that he had converted to Islam.

The Mail reported that Holmes is apparently quite devout: he has grown a lavish beard, eats only halal food, prays the obligatory five daily prayers, and studies the Qur’an for hours every day.

Holmes’s conversion reveals that instead of being unaware of what he did, or utterly remorseless, as one might expect of a psychotic or a sociopath, the murders must trouble him a great deal. For it is souls that are troubled – intellectually, morally, spiritually, psychologically – who cast about for some solution to what troubles them, and often find it in religious conversion.

But it is what Holmes converted to that is significant. Had Holmes converted to Christianity, he might have found relief for any remorse he might be feeling for the massacre in the proposition that in Christ his sins, no matter how great, were forgiven; if he had explored Buddhism, he might have focused upon developing right intention, right speech, and right action, and eradicating the illusions that led him to kill in the first place.

Instead, Holmes chose Islam. A prison source noted: “He has brainwashed himself into believing he was on his own personal jihad and that his victims were infidels.”

This suggests that Holmes’s conversion is a defensive action against any regret that he may be feeling. But instead of meeting that regret with repentance, he has found a way to justify his actions. Instead of acknowledging his wrongdoing, he chose a belief system that justifies violence in certain circumstances, and has attempted to cleanse himself of any wrongdoing by seeing his murders in light of that belief system.

Jihad may take the form of indiscriminate mass murder of infidels, as we saw on 9/11, and 7/7, and in Beslan and Mumbai and Fort Hood and in so very, very many other places. Unfortunately for Holmes, however, jihad is not retroactive. If Holmes was an infidel at the time of the murders, then it doesn’t make his actions jihad to convert to Islam afterward.

Nonetheless, his conversion illustrates yet again why Islamic supremacist groups make such a concerted effort to make converts in prison. They know that men who are already in many cases notably aggressive and violent, and who have a grievance against society, are perfect fits for a religion that contains teachings that are themselves aggressive and violent, and that sets itself against infidel society. Islamic proselytizers in prisons hope to channel that aggression by sanctifying and thereby justifying it – as Holmes seems to be trying to justify his murders by affecting Islamic piety now.

There is more.