Let me confess. I had little or no interest in the recent election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. I however, was drawn to this commentary when I read its title: Pope Benedict XVI: Enemy of Jihad.

The title is revealing: in a way, and perhaps unintentionally, it signals the reopening of the historical war between Christianity and Islam. Out of curiosity, I began a mini-research, and found some not very surprising information. Based on this, I can conclude early that the new Pope promises a Return to Rigidity, a path his predecessor had set; far more alarming is the information about his past.

As a minor detail, the current Pope’s name has a history of 1430 years: Pope Benedict I was elected in 575. Back to Benedict XVI’s past, which is dotted with brilliances of intolerance. Now that the media has drilled it into everybody’s heads, the Pope’s Joseph Ratzinger’s performance as a young un of one of the branches of the Nazi party–although Ratzinger was never a formal Nazi party member–is no secret.

Two years later Ratzinger was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp. Ratzinger has insisted he never took part in combat or fired a shot - adding that his gun was not even loaded - because of a badly infected finger. He was sent to Hungary, where he set up tank traps and saw Jews being herded to death camps.

Apart from these incidents, it is interesting to note what people who were asssociated with, or observed him say. The Jews have reservations.

Although there is no suggestion that he was involved in any atrocities, his service may be contrasted by opponents with the attitude of John Paul II, who took part in anti-Nazi theatre performances in his native Poland and in 1986 became the first pope to visit Rome’s synagogue.
“John Paul was hugely appreciated for what he did for and with the Jewish people,” said Lord Janner, head of the Holocaust Education Trust, who is due to attend ceremonies today to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
“If they were to appoint someone who was on the other side in the war, he would start at a disadvantage, although it wouldn’t mean in the long run he wouldn’t be equally understanding of the concerns of the Jewish world.”

Coming home, the Indian Catholic community is joyful, specifically a certain Father Abraham Kakkanattu from Kerala. Apparently, the current Pope had financed the building of a Church in Kerala many years ago.

Father Abraham Kakkanattu, director of the Pushpagiri Medical College in Thiruvalla, is the first Indian who can claim that Pope Benedict XVI is a friend of the Catholic Church in India. [...] “Madai told me that in all likelihood Ratzinger was to become the archbishop of Munich in a couple of months and that he would be able to help me,” Kakkanattu told IANS from Thiruvalla.

“I sent a detailed estimate to him.”

In 1977, Ratzinger became the archbishop and in a couple of weeks Kakkanattu received the help, perhaps more generous than he expected. “Within a few days I received an amount of 20,000 German Marks ($13,360) with which I could build the church.”

And a certain Archbishop Daniel Acharuparambil quotes Joseph Ratzinger as admiring Yoga.

Acharuparambil, who continued as a rector for eight years, remembers Ratzinger as a widely read man, highly inquisitive about yoga.

He believed yoga, through meditation and contemplation, was the perfect health approach, said Acharuparambil,…

For a person who was highly inquisitive about Yoga, it is astonishing that the current Pope never knew the basic end at which Yoga aims: self-realization. He merely calls it a “perfect health approach!” That smacks of downright condescension: okay, I admit your culture has some worthy aspects, too. But the Pope doesn’t come across as the saint he is purported to be when he at other instances, speaks derogatorily about other religions.

In 1997 Ratzinger annoyed Buddhists by calling their religion an ‘autoerotic spirituality’ that offers ‘transcendence without imposing concrete religious obligations’. And Hinduism, he said, offers ‘false hope’; it guarantees ‘purification’ based on a ‘morally cruel’ concept of reincarnation resembling ‘a continuous circle of hell’.

But this is not all. The Pope identifies enemies of the Catholic Church. According to the Holy See’s prediction,

The Cardinal predicted Buddhism would replace Marxism as the Catholic Church’s main enemy this century.

If this is not hate speech what else can you call it? The problem of the toothless Catholic Church can therefore be solved only by a return to fundamentalism; by identifying, or inventing enemies where none exist. It recognizes Islam as its enemy but is too powerless to speak out boldly. So it goes ahead and begs tries to bargain for peace and goodwill. Writing on the death of John Paul II, Christopher Hitchens says,

Finally, if the pope is to have so much credit for the liberation of Eastern Europe, he ought to accept his responsibility for the enslavement of the Middle East. He not only opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein in 2003, but the use of force to get him out of Kuwait in 1991. I have never read any deployment of Augustinian argument, in the latter case, that would not qualify it as a just war. Moreover, the pope made a visit to Damascus not long ago, and sat quietly outside the Grand Mosque while the Assad regime greeted him as one who understood that Muslims and Catholics had a common enemy—in the Jews who had killed Christ. (That he may already have been senescent at this point is not an answer: It is a problem, though, for those who believe that he was Christ’s vicar on earth.)

This can be interpreted–and has been, by many scholars–in numerous ways. One perspective is that Islam and Christianity are the only two fundamentalist religions, which still continue the battle for supremacy of souls. Other religions stand in their way–specifically, Judaism and Hinduism, which are powerful in their own right, and have sizeable following in today’s world. One way to destroy and/or convert them is by making a temporary truce between Islam and Christianity. It is also significant that the call for truce is unidirectional: Islam wants no such thing from Christianity. Because Christianity has lost its edge, with thousands of people–former Christians–in the West embracing Hinduism and Buddhism. As a religion per se, Christianity all but exists in name: it doesn’t enjoy state patronage to the same extent–or doesn’t exert state policy in the way Islam does. A related issue worthy of notice (and worry) is that Islam influences state policy in non-Islamic countries. And the concepts of multiculturalism, pluralism, free speech, etcetra make matters worse. No Church in say, France or the US can prohibit a Christian from voluntarily embracing Islam, no court in Holland will base its judgment on some sermon/story in the Bible.

The Church as a result, had to search for fresh hunting grounds: Africa, and Asia. Witness the rapid, mass conversion programmes in India. It is rumoured that the Church spends about Rs.350 crores ($ 81395348) a year for conversion programmes in Bangalore alone–that’s nearly about a crore per day. A few weeks ago, a prominent historian told me something worth pondering. The Vatican is worried—or shall I say, is convinced that it is waging a losing battle against Islam. Its perception is that Christianity lost its place of birth to Islam in the 1st millennium with the fall of Constantinople; in the 2nd millennium, it is in the danger of losing Europe. And there is an unsubstantiated rumour, he told me, that this sudden spurt of missionary activity is geared towards mobilizing as many “soldiers of Christ” as possible. Because the Vatican cannot rely on democratic governments to supply them soldiers for religious warfare, they’re tapping newer and newer sources. When the battle comes, the Elders at the Vatican are convinced, the neo-faithful will heed the Call to serve Christ.

So, when the FrontPage Magazine’s article–which I linked to in the beginning–gives us lengthy quotes from the current Pope, I felt it was essential to probe a wee bit deeper. The background I’ve given so far fits in. Sample this statement where Pope Benedict XVI comes across both as an Islamic apologetic as well as a dogmatic religious head who wants to set the clock back.

“What offends Islam,” said Cardinal Ratzinger, “is the lack of reference to God, the arrogance of reason, which provokes fundamentalism.” He has criticized multiculturalism, “which is so constantly and passionately encouraged and supported,” because it “sometimes amounts to an abandonment and disavowal of what is our own.”

The first part of this quote is really good. So, Islam’s anger with reason is the reason we shouldn’t offend it? Which fits in with the second part: multiculturalism is bad because it makes us disavow native traditions. This is precisely a call to return to organized religion: abandon reason, and all progress that we’ve taken for granted. By casting his aspersion on multiculturalism, the Pope has called for a return to intolerance: diversity shouldn’t exist or shouldn’t be tolerated. The Rev. Pope perhaps has forgotten that medieval Christianity also (violently) opposed reason, which is why it was abandoned steadily and by large numbers. So if you want to counter Islam by returning to that strain of Christianity, well, there’s little difference to be made.

And further horror awaits the reader.

“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.”

One more apology. Islam, if I can conclude from my studies, has no spirituality at its foundation. It is a call for waging a continuous war against all non-believers. As merits, it has some passages that deal with ethics, morals, good conduct, charity and such. But these can hardly be called spiritual. The list of behaviours prescribed to a model Muslim is almost opposite to what the world considers as acceptable: I can cite but a few examples–music is forbidden, art (specifically painting) is prohibited, cutting off the girl child’s clitoris is an act of purification (because it gives pleasure to women thereby leading them to entice men to stray from the good path), and rape laws are a cruel joke. The greatest attraction of Islam is perhaps its concept of universal brotherhood, which is something no other organized religion has been able to achieve. However, in practice, most Islamic sects/states are at war with each other. The Pope has also erred in using the term “rebirth” for Islam in all its hoary history saw several periods where it seemed to be on the decline: the dismantling of the Mughal empire, the crushing of the Ottoman empire, and the subsequent chaos in the Middle East are few prominent instances. The fervour has remained intact if only eclipsed at intervals. Islam has precisely bounced back with renewed energy each time it was pushed to the corner: more examples–the combined forces of the Bahamani that crushed the Vijaynagar empire, the sequence of events that led to the Partition, the various trysts with Israel, or the most recent example, the Sept 11 attacks.

The former Hitler Youth member continues,

“Europe … 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…

Predictably, the Pope has also blamed secularism. What is important is the Holy See’s knowledge of history. Europe was actually colonized using religion; specifically, after Christianity acquired state sponsorship via Constantine: Wikipedia has all the gory details. Throughout its history, Europe was more divided than united. One should not forget that Europe was responsible for two of the most savage wars the world has seen not to mention its equally violent colonial expeditions, which erased entire civilizations. While Christianity is in no way responsible for the world wars, my mention of this is merely to prove that the Pope’s statement is flawed: there was no “Europe” in the sense of a united, single political unit at any time in history. If the Pope is trying to equate today’s clueless European Union to a similar Europe of the past, it exists only in his imagination. The EU is a loose amalgamation held together by the glue of necessity and common enemies: Islam and the US. In addition, it is notable that the Pope, while talking about Europe’s history, has failed to mention its pre-Christian history: the Roman empire that spread across most of Europe and parts of Asia can by no stretch of imagination be called Christian. Or does the Pope purport to deny the existence of pre-Christian Europe?

On his remark about positivism, I’ll content myself with reproducing this definition by Edmud Leach:

Positivism is the view that serious scientific inquiry should not search for ultimate causes deriving from some outside source but must confine itself to the study of relations existing between facts which are directly accessible to observation.

So, the Pope wants something “more than positivism.” He wants a “Christian” redefinition. Perhaps the same definition, which characterized the medieval Europe of burnt witches and murdered scientists. But I’m only speculating.

The problem with this article like so many others written in this vein, is that it uses a blinkered approach to analyze the cause of the problem of Islamism. Rather than looking at the causes for Islamization of Europe from other angles, this approach narrows down the field of vision. They could start by answering some questions:

• Why is there a sort of universal taboo on speaking out (i.e., in public) against the fundamental tenets of Islam?
• Why is Europe–and pretty much most of the democracies–so woolly in its approach towards the inherent violence in Islam? Is it fear masked as (over)sensitivity?
• Why is Islam so successful in ensuring that it and consequently, its followers, are not to be hurt despite what they say or do in countries where they are migrants?
• Why is it, despite possessing superior technology in warfare, that powerful nations are unable to counter Islam’s threat properly?
• What is the reason for the short-sighted policies that let Islamic fundamentalists eat away the core of democracies from within?

Because the Pope has criticized Islam sparingly, it doesn’t automatically make him an anti-Jihadist. He is if anything, a more fundamentalist Pope than his immediate predecessors. Newint has thrown some light on this.

Once settled he was quick to make a mark with his old-fashioned dogmatism and conservative values. He was particularly upset by what he saw as destructive, liberalizing influences unleashed at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). These ‘wild excesses’ extended to the introduction of a non-Latin Mass after Vatican II which Ratzinger characterized as a ‘tragic breach’ in tradition. But the Cardinal’s discomfort with modern life and yearning for the good old days also extended to the social realm, especially into the areas of gay rights and women.
In 1986 Ratzinger issued a letter to the Catholic Bishops in which he wrote that homosexuality was a ‘tendency’ towards an ‘intrinsic moral evil’. A few years later, in 1992, he rejected the notion of human rights for gays, stressing that their civil liberties could be ‘legitimately limited’. He followed up by remarking that ‘neither the church nor society should be surprised’ if ‘irrational and violent reactions increase’ when gays demand civil rights. Not a man to mince his words, Ratzinger urgently set to work to ferret out gay-sensitive clergy.

The good Cardinal also extended the Papal principle of ‘infallibility’ by declaring that the ordination of women was impossible because John Paul II said it was so. Ditto for the use of the word ‘priest’ by the Anglican Church: not on, said Joe, because Leo XIII in 1896 said it wasn’t allowed.

[...]

Ratzinger helped put together The Church and the Mistakes of the Past, a stirring apology for 2,000 years of violence and persecution by the Catholic Church, which the Pope released last March. ‘Even men [sic] of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel,’ said Ratzinger. Homosexuals were noticeably absent from the 50-page text.

Welcome, Pope Benedict XVI.