Engagement is futile

If someone referred to me as a loud, foul-mouthed, immature idiot, by shouting back at them, “OH YEAH! A*&HOLE! WELL, I KNOW YOU ARE, BUT WHAT AM I?” I might just be making their point. So, even if what they are saying about me is true, it might be in my best interest to just ignore them.

So it is as the Pope wonders aloud if it’s possible to have a reasoned conversation with a Muslim about religion without the Muslim resorting violence. Predictably, the Muslims are rioting in the streets, burning churches and murdering nuns. All of this is in an effort to prove the Pope wrong and get an apology. Worse, great thinkers like Arnaud de Borchgrave and not so great thinkers like E. J. Dionne are wondering whether the pope should have said anything at all.

Well it is the Pope’s job to confront evil, not sit quietly in its presence. Whether the world wants to admit it or not, we are in the throes of a world war with a ruthless enemy known as Islamo-terror-fascists. The Pope erred only with his non-apology, apology. You know the RC Durbin type apology where you apologize for the reaction to your remarks rather than the remarks themselves. In Durbin’s case he apologized for the reasonable reaction at his idiotic and reprehensible remarks comparing US troops to Nazis, Pol Pot and the soviets who ran the Gulag, without ever retracting the words. The Pope apologized for the idiotic and reprehensible reaction to his reasonable remarks wondering if it is possible to have a conversation with a Muslim about religion, without ever retracting the words.

The answer, by the way, is no. You cannot have a reasonable conversation with radical lunatics trapped in the seventh century. Until Islam under goes some sort of reformation which purges the blood-thirsty imams, closes Saudi madrases, and rejects pan Islamo-terror-fascism, engagement will only incite the mob. Ask the Pope, Theo Van Gough’s friends and family, Dutch cartoonists or the friends and family of the murdered Italian nun.