http://edouardalxandre.livejournal.com/535846.html

About SB’s query as to what “irked” Muslims prior to Iraq: I know that he, like most Americans won’t listen, but EVERYWHERE I went in the Muslim world during the decade of the 90s (when I lived mostly in Asia), I was CONSTANTLY being asked, “Why are you Americans (they presumed I was an American, because of whom I was working for) so opposed to the rights of the Palestinians?” We complete underestimate the religious solidarity of the Muslim world.

If you admittedly haven’t read the book to which you link, then any criticism of its rhetoric can’t be taken seriously. How about criticizing books that you’ve taken the time to read?

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2008/07/scaremongering_and_muslims_as.html

I agree with you that there is an element of scaremongering and generalizing going on about the “Islamic menace” — after all, we have thousands of Muslim soldiers fighting in the U.S. armed forces
against Al Qaeda. Nonetheless, it follows that if there is an faction of Muslims who are seeking to do precisely that — destroy the west and restore the caliphate — the concern expressed by Weigel and others is not entirely unfounded.

Despite some disagreement over foreign policy, there are affinities between Weigel and Benedict on Islam — particularly on the imperative of Islam finding within itself grounds to accommodate religious pluralism.

And, no, I have not read the book.

Figured as much.

Of course it is a good basis for earnest and respectful dialogue — but I seem to recall the point Benedict was making was that such voluntarism was to be opposed:

Beyond this is the realm of God’s freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazm and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God’s transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy … God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf.

The extent of Weigel’s application of the Regensburg dialogue to the jihadist threat is as follows:

As Pope Benedict pointed out in [the Regensburg Address], the key theological move that underwrites today’s jihadist ideology (and practice) is the identification by jihadists of God as Absolute Will. If that is what jihadists believe God to be (irrespective of the degree of warrant that concept can find in classical Islam, which is disputed), then jihadists are, within their own frame of reference, justified in belieivng that God can command anything — even the irrational. And so, in extension of the thought of Sayyid Qutb, contemporary jihadists believe that murder of innocents is not only morally acceptable, but morally required, if such murders advance the cause of Islam. Thus the origins of one of today’s most lethal weapons: the so-called “suicide bomber” . . . [p. 48]

Obviously, the key focus of Benedict’s Regensburg address wasn’t on Islam or any variant thereof (it was moreover a critique of a deficient understanding of reason in the West and the “de-Hellenization” of Christianity — something the majority of Muslims and media alike missed in the heady days of “Regensburg Rage”). That said, I think the infamous fourth paragraph and B16′s assertion that “Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul” has some relevance to the present situation. Fr. James V. Schall made the same point, although I guess this brands him as a dreadful neocon as well.

But Weigel goes on to suggest that Benedict’s thought — not only his criticism of voluntarism but Christianity’s understanding of analogy between God and man and the intimacy of faith and reason — may be an impetus for a renewed Muslim-Christian dialogue. Especially in finding a basis for an Islamic appreciation of religious pluralism (such as was accomplished in the West):

[Weigel]: . . . Christianity’s convictions about the rationality built into the world by the world’s creator were one important source of “modernity,” if by that term we mean the scientific method, historical-critical study, [and] goverment by the arts of persuasion, . . . are there in Islam’s theological self-understanding, themes analogous to Christianity’s theologically driven convictions about the rationality of the world, themes that could, over time, make Islam’s encounter with modernity more fruitful for both Islam and the modern world?

So, just out of curiousity, have you actually read Weigel’s book?

And, no, I have not read the book. I find him a tedious writer. I think Michael Sean Winters had it right when he claimed that Weigel has written the same book ten times!

At least give them credit that they can not like us on their own grounds and not that it’s something that we did wrong to “make” them hate us. It’s condescending and elitist.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199901/koran

I think Christopher Hitchens wrote something wise shortly after the attacks:

There are those Muslims who want the power that free inquiry confers, without either the free inquiry or the philosophy and institutions that guarantee that free inquiry. They are faced with a dilemma: either they can abandon cherished religion, or they can remain forever in the rear of human technical advance. Neither alternative is very appealing; and the tension between their desire for power and success in the modern world on the one hand, and their desire not to abandon their religion on the other, is resolvable for some only by exploding themselves as bombs. It’s very difficult to understand the machinery of hatred, because you wind up resorting to logic, but trying to understand this with logic is like measuring distance in kilograms. Many in Islamic nations are envious. To them, life is an unbearable burden. Modernism is the only way out but that is frightening. It means they have to compete. It means they can’t explain everything away with conspiracy theories. Talent and the free inquiry necessary to cultivate it support jealousy among the constrained. As Muslims believe they are in possession of the final revealed truth, and that they have a testament and a tradition of sayings of the prophet that in essence answer all human questions, by that light all questions ought not only to be answered but are answerable. While no doubt there are Christians and Jews who feel similar about their favored scriptures, Islam must now live in a world of competing ideas. Yet they have created societies in which it is possible, perhaps, to dispute what the Koran and Hadith mean, but not their underlying authority to answer all questions. It is still not safe in a Muslim country to say ‘There is no God and Mohammed was therefore not his prophet.’ In summary, we have: metaphysical superiority, technical and intellectual retardation, self-hatred caused by the impurity of their own desires, no practical means of escape from genuine quotidian humiliations, and the promise of rewards for their families on earth and for themselves in the outer world.

So what was it that irked “people in Muslim countries” prior to the “past eight years”? That is, prior to the 1993 WTC attacks, the Cole bombing, the Khobar Towers attack, the Kenyan embassy attack, and 9/11 itself? Might have to come up with a non-Bush-blaming theory for that one.