Benedict XVI and the threat of Islam

Robert Spencer:

In choosing Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, the Roman Catholic Church has cast a vote for the survival of Europe and the West. "Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century," historian Bernard Lewis has predicted; however, judging from the writings of the new pope, he is not likely to be sanguine about this transition. For one thing, the new pope seems to be aware of the grave danger Europeans face: he has called upon Europe to recover its Christian roots "if it truly wants to survive."

Benedict XVI has been forthcoming about the reality of how Islam challenges the Catholic Church, Christianity, and even the post-Christian West. He has spoken up for the rights of converts from Islam to Christianity, who live under a death sentence in Islamic countries and increasingly live in fear even in the West.

The new pope has criticized Europe's reluctance to acknowledge its Christian roots for fear of offending Islam's rapidly growing and increasingly influential presence in European countries--a presence that, as historian Bat Ye'or demonstrates in her book Eurabia, has been actively encouraged by European leaders. "What offends Islam," said Cardinal Ratzinger, "is the lack of reference to God, the arrogance of reason, which provokes fundamentalism." He has criticized multiculturalism because it "sometimes amounts to an abandonment and disavowal of what is our own."

He contrasts the modern-day resurgence of Islam with the enervation of Europe, where "we are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires." Islam, on the other hand, is anything but relativistic: "The rebirth of Islam is due in part to the new material richness acquired by Muslim countries, but mainly to the knowledge that it is able to offer a valid spiritual foundation for the life of its people, a foundation that seems to have escaped from the hands of old Europe."

The new pope thus opposes Turkey's proposed entrance into the European Union: "Turkey," he has declared, "has always represented a different continent, always in contrast with Europe." But his objection is not simply geographical--in fact, he opposes the geographical oversimplifications that underlie Turkey's EU bid: "Europe," he has explained, "was founded not on a geography, but on a common faith. We have to redefine what Europe is, and we cannot stop at positivism." A Europe newly defined as in some sense a Christian entity may outrage secularists, but a secular and relativist Europe has so far proved powerless against the Islamization of Europe--despite the fact that that Islamization threatens cherished Western notions of the equality of rights and dignity of all people.

Unfortunately, many European liberals are so hostile to Christianity that they would happily turn Europe over to the radical Muslims in order to "free" it from its Christian past.