The Vatican line: “Violent reactions are always a falsification of true religion”
An AP report from the UN:
The Vatican’s foreign minister said Wednesday that misunderstanding between cultures is breeding a “new barbarism” and expressed hope that reason and dialogue would stop those who use their faith as a pretext for attacks. In a speech on the closing day of the U.N. General Assembly’s ministerial meeting, Giovanni Lajolo said extremists are far from devout and undermine the very religion they claim to defend. “Violent reactions are always a falsification of true religion,” Lajolo said in a passage devoted to the pope’s Sept. 12 speech at Regensburg University in Germany.
It was a profoundly important development in the matter of Christianity and Islam when the Pope said that Jihad was not of God, because Jihad is not reasonable and God must act with Reason. The Pope has said, in effect, that anyone preaching Jihad can not hide under color of religion, because a pro-Jihad claim, in and of itself, is ungodly. Spengler has argued that Jihad is the sacrament of Islam, and if he is anywhere in the ballpark with such an assessment, then a line in the sand now exists between the two religions. We venture to say that the Pope likely took on the issue of Jihad quite specifically and on purpose to draw the line. Now we’ll see what happens.