Lifeofthemind,

I just read the Spengler article and liked it very much. I must admit, however, that I have a view quite opposite of the Jesuit Paulo dall Ogglio (I’m an ex-Jesuit seminarian). There is nothing we can really do to permanently appease Islam. Its scriptures, consistently upheld as right from the mind of “Allah” (in Christianity we would call it ipsissima Dei)contain numerous injunctions of permanent hostility and war against we the kafirs. I have my doubts that Father dall Ogglio has ever read the Qur’an or the most authoritative ahadith, Bukhari and Muslim. If he did then he would conclude that his attempts at snake charming are very limited holding actions. He’s afraid of seeing his life’s work go for naught. I think he has a limited view of the sweep of history. As for his cherished “friendships” with Muslims and their clerics, is he not aware that Muslims are commanded by Allah to not take unbelievers as friends? And what appears to him as interfaith dialog is most certainly their way of ensnaring him into a false sense of security.

Very many Muslim apostates who are deeply versed in their scriptures and the traditions say that Islam cannot be reformed. When you take out everything retrograde, reprobate, violent, misogynistic, imperialistic, intolerant, weird, and, frankly, evil there is very little left to it. People like Ali Sina, Ibn Warraq, and Walid Shoebat find nothing redeeming or reformable. Sina was a Muslim scholar and former cleric in Iran (before the revolution). He’s gone into every nook and cranny of Islam and finds it all: offensive, a fraud, violent, evil, irrational. He’s done a scorching analysis of Muhammad’s life – a psychobiography – that exposes the enormous evil of the man and what he gave birth to.