It takes courage to speak out against the threatening presence of Islam in today’s world. And it takes courage to defend those who have the courage to speak out. Eight years ago, after Benedict XVI gave his controversial Regensburg address, most European commentators were shamefully timid in their response. Most refused to raise their heads … Read more
During the financial crisis of 2008, one of the pressing questions of the day had to do with whether or not various giant corporations—AIG, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, GM, and others—were too big to fail. The consensus among policymakers at the time was that these companies had to be bailed out by the government, or else … Read more
U.S. government officials were caught off guard by the recent rapid rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria and its plan to establish a sharia-ruled caliphate state. Either they weren’t getting enough intelligence from their agents in the field, or else they lacked the framework for processing the information. Since the American Embassy in Baghdad … Read more
The distinguished political philosopher Leo Strauss was supposed to have said that the only two things in life really worth talking about are God and politics. That’s because at a most fundamental level they are inextricably intertwined. A skewed notion of the very nature of God and whether man acknowledges him—or tries to substitute himself … Read more
Recently two prominent American bishops joined two leading Shiite Muslim scholars in Iran in issuing a statement on weapons of mass destruction. According to the statement, “Christianity and Islam cherish a common heritage that emphasizes, above all, love and respect for the life dignity, and welfare of all members of the human community.” It went … Read more
Distilling some of the ideas in my book on Thomistic angelology, I published a previous column in Crisis on the massive intelligence and powers of angels. The flip-side of these spiritual faculties, as Aquinas points out, is the existence of a dark kingdom, using the same intelligence and power to prevent the spread of God’s … Read more
“Say too little and people will be killed; say too much and people will be killed.” I don’t remember the source of the quotation, but it succinctly captures the dilemma that world leaders face in deciding how to respond to Islamic violence. Catholic leaders face the same dilemma. When Muslims murder in the name of … Read more
Conservative Catholics have been faring badly in the fight against militant secularism, so it’s understandable that they would be looking for allies to stand alongside them in the culture wars. Some Catholic intellectuals seem to think that Muslims are our natural allies in this struggle because they supposedly share similar values and because, like Catholics, … Read more
GLAAD is the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation. The OIC is the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation, a 56-state organization which constitutes the largest voting bloc in the UN. At first glance, the two groups would not seem to have much in common—particularly when one considers the general antipathy toward homosexuals in the Muslim … Read more
In his 2005 book, The West’s Last Chance, Tony Blankley noted that there is a “natural human instinct to forget the distant past and to assume that the more or less benign trends of the recent past will continue.” Nevertheless, observed Blankley, “shocking divergences from the status quo have defined the path of history.” But … Read more
Like many Americans, I didn’t know much about Islam before the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. And, to tell the truth, even after 9/11 I wasn’t inclined to look too deeply into the matter. The events of 9/11, disturbing as they were, were not quite enough to overcome a certain inertia in me. … Read more
Much attention has been paid to Pope Francis’ observations about economic life in Evangelii Gaudium. Relatively little attention, however, has been paid to the pope’s remarks about Islam in the same document, even though they may turn out to be of much greater consequence. One sentence in particular needs to be called into question. When … Read more
If someone puts himself in the shoes of the atheist, the tenets of so many religions may seem like adult fairy tales—or maybe not even the “adult” type. Over here, he finds the Hindus and Buddhists, telling us that after death we will undergo reincarnations dependent on our spiritual state or karma, until (for many … Read more
Recently Douglas Murray, a British writer and commentator, published Islamophilia: A Very Metropolitan Malady. In this book he describes how political leaders, celebrities, academics and others, are literally stumbling over each other, vying to heap the most praise on Islam as a religion. We’re talking about a religion that, as I indicated in a previous … Read more
Sometimes the story goes like this: The Catholic Church attacked the Holy Land in 1095 and relations between Christians and Muslims have been poisoned ever since. This simplistic interpretation is not only false, it misses the real significance of the Crusades. They reacquainted Europe with her past, helped bring her out of the so-called Dark … Read more
The mainstream American right has remained almost entirely silent about the recent suicide of the French historian, Dominique Venner. The reasons for this, I do not know—perhaps it is a squeamishness about the symbolism of his final act, or a lack of understanding of it. Perhaps it is a refusal to see what the people … Read more
The 1964 Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis redintegratio, was quite clear: The newly launched ecumenical movement had as its sole goal, the reunification of Christians. The appeals for reunification would be directed to baptized Christians, “those who invoke the Triune God, and confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, doing this not merely as individuals … Read more
Often buried within the international section of American national newspapers may be found accounts of Muslim vandalism against Christian churches, so say nothing of Muslim attacks on the Christians of the Middle East. Just last week a Muslim mob badly damaged a Coptic Christian church outside Cairo; local police merely watched. No prosecution of this … Read more
It passed almost unnoticed, but last month Benedict XVI significantly upped the ante in an argument he’s made one of his pontificate’s centerpieces. To the horror, one suspects, of some professional interfaith dialoguers and wishful-thinkers more generally, the pope indicated the Church should recognize that some types of religion are in fact “sick and distorted.” … Read more
In a frequently misquoted line from the Life of Reason, George Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Cultural amnesia, helpless or deliberate, does enable people to rewrite history without compunction, and it also makes it easy for others to believe the fiction as fact, or to suppose in … Read more