Please see preceding page for earlier posts today, 8/30/10.
As I was away most of yesterday, I was unaware of this development until I came across an essay by Vittorio Messori in today's Corriere della Sera... First, a portion of a news item that gives the background to Messori's commentary:
Khaddafi visit provokes
outrage in Italy
By Giulia Segreti
ROME, August 30 - Italian politicians from all sides criticised Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, on Monday over his political and economic ties to Libya as Muammer Khaddafi, the country’s leader, held lessons on Islam and for more than 500 young women in Rome’s Academy of Libya.
“May Islam be the religion of all of Europe, convert to Islam, the true religion”, Khaddafi told some 500 women hired by a hostessing agency to attend a lecture by him. According to Italian media reports, three of them converted during Gaddafi’s teaching.
“Italy has become Khaddafi’s Disneyland, the amusement park for his senile vanities, and the reason, unfortunately is political. Since Khaddafi pays, his reasons become ‘our’ reasons and his politics becomes ‘our’ politics”, wrote Farefuturo, a political think-tank close to Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house.
The Libyan leader arrived in the Italian capital on Sunday for a two-day visit in occasion of the second annual Libyan-Italian friendship day. It is his third visit to Italy in the past year. Under a 2008 accord, Italy pledged to pay some $5 billion over 25 years as reparations for its colonial rule of the north African state, which lasted from 1911 to 1943. In return, Libya made a deal regarding asylum seekers and gave Italian companies priority in infrastructure projects....
Khaddafi wants Europe to be Muslim?
Let us not rend our garments!
by VITTORIO MESSORI
Translated from
August 30, 2010
Please, no rending of garments, no scandalized invectives, nor any calls for a new Crusade because of a prophecy a la Muammar Khaddafi!
More than anyone, Christians ought to acknowledge the unpredictability of history. And this, from the very beginnings of Christianity:
Who, at the apogee of the Roman Empire, would have seriously believed anyone who would have said that Rome's lavish pagan feasts would give way to adoration of an obscure Jewish preacher who was condemned by the worst punishment imaginable for criminals who had no citizenship in the Empire?
And after Christianity had triumphed, who would have believed anyone if he had predicted that the Holy Places associated with Jesus himself, the cities converted by Paul, the lands of the great Fathers of the Church, would be submerged by hordes suddenly arising from the depths of Arabia's deserts who would demote Christ to nothing more than a precursor of Mohammed, the last prophet?
Providence, in the Christian perspective, often takes incomprehensible courses. The ways of God are not ours. Therefore, no historical possibility can be alien to the faith expressed in the Gospels - not even that announced by Khaddafi who said that
whatever remains of Christianity in secularized Europe must inevitably yield to the faith that conquered Jerusalem, Constantinople, Alexandria, Toledo.
No one should be scandalized over the rantings of the Libyan leader - at least not among those who believe in the Nazarene who denied he was a king, who prevented the use of weapons in his defense, who announced to his disciples that they would be 'little flocks' who would act as 'salt' and 'yeast' for mankind. Salt and yeast are indispensable ingredients, true, but only in tiny amounts!
In fact, the natural habitat of the believers in he who ended up on the Cross is not Christianity en masse but rather in diaspora
[literally, a scattering of seeds].
Benedict XVI himself appears to have hypothesized a future of small Christian communities that would also be fervent and creative, i.e., destined to be a minority, perhaps, but never marginal. Salt and yeast, we must remember that!
Therefore, not outside history, but in the very mass of human events to give them flavor and meaning. Without claiming to impose themselves through means other than the apparent 'weakness' of peaceful evangelization and fraternal persuasion.
But to get down from the heights of theology to the concreteness of the present: From what we can see today, are there really conditions which could lead to minarets replacing belltowers all over Europe?
Any historian knows that the Islamic conquests in the early centuries of Islam cannot help us to hypothesize the future. In Africa and the Middle East, between the 7th-8th centuries AD, the arrival of the Muslims was often facilitated by Christian sects who were at war with each other and united in their hatred of Byzantium and of the native Jewish communities whom they persecuted.
History also tells us that Islam never succeeded to establish itself in Europe. Even if it took centuries, it was finally expelled from Spain, from the Balkans, from Sicily, from Malta.
And in Egypt, heart of long-Christian north Africa, centuries of Islamic dominion did not succeed in extirpating the Christian faith.
It is also too often forgotten, unfortunately, that Islamic hostility to Christianity is bland, compared to the authentic hatred between the two main traditions of Islam: Khaddafi, a Sunni, can preach freely in Rome, but no one would guarantee his safety if he dared to pontificate in Shiite Tehran!
For what it is worth, I count myself among those who think that the current radicalization of Islam is determined not by its certainty of triumph but by its fear - unacknowledged, perhaps even subconscious - of 'contamination' by another culture, a fear of assimilation into a secularized society.
This is demonstrated in an exemplary manner by the conundrum of Iran -which was forced to call back from exile an aged and near-forgotten Ayatollah in order to chase out the Shah because he was 'too Western'.
The Muslim world is permeated with uneasiness that easily leads to fanaticism. It doesn't fear our virtues but our vices. It is not concerned about our religion but about our secularism.
If any Muslim in the West ends up killing his daughter because she dresses, eats, drinks and flirts like her non-Muslim schoolmates, it is because there is no Muslim family living in the West who is not constantly worried that our way of life will be devastating for their children.
Islam depends on legalisms - there is no Muslim anywhere who does not abide by a whole set of norms imposed by Islam, to be followed by all Muslims, each and everyone, without exception. And that is something unthinkable in a Europe and America which are not only increasingly liberal but downright libertine!
[We must ask ourselves why and how Islam has managed all these centuries to impose religion so uniformly as the primary way of life for all its adherents, while Catholicism today cannot even get many Catholics to follow basic obligations to the faith like Sunday Mass and the sacraments, let alone prohibitions against violating Christ's teachings through abortion, contraception, euthanasia, etc!]
Europe's 'liquid society' has stopped following Christian precepts. Could it possibly accept Koranic precepts which are even more rigorous and imposed as law and punishes violators by stoning, beheading and hanging?
[Aye, there's the rub! Let them have sharia, and see how they like it!
I think the reason for some young Westerners converting to Islam and becoming more Muslim than Muhammad is that they have an inner compulsion to have faith in something Absolute, something they can give their lives for, and which, if only by this fact alone, gives meaning to their life. They see themselves as being worthless ciphers in a narcissistic Western society where human value is determined on the basis of what the individual can achieve materially. Too bad no Christian inspiration ever reached them persuasively as Mohammed's message did. ]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/08/2010 03:08]