Upping The Ante In Pope-Islam Row

If you thought it brave -- or foolish -- of Pope Benedict to quote a medieval emporor on Islam consider Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Cantebury, citing this statement yesterday by political scientist Samuel Huntington in a defence of the Pope:

“Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”

Carey's speech is an act of uncommon heroism. The man is well known for his efforts to bring the Muslim and Anglican community together, and on a larger canvas, the Muslim and Western worlds. He lives in a country bristling with Islamist extremists, so those who will be persuaded to violence by his statements are close at hand.

Yet his speech was strong and direct. Reports the Times of London:

THE former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to “violent” Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Pope’s “extraordinarily effective and lucid” speech.

Lord Carey said that Muslims must address “with great urgency” their religion’s association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the “clash of civilisations” endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole.

“We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times,” he said. “There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths.”

The article quotes no response from representatives of the Religion of Peace. Expect the rational to be muted and the irrational to be demonstrative.

Hat-tip: memeorandum

Related Tags: Carey, Lord Carey, Islam, Benedict