More Pope Scoop

TigerHawk has a nice vent against the Islaminuts. See also the Anchoress' review of the Pope's comments.

I will make a couple of comments. First off, there is nothing incompatible with Arabs or Islam or Persia or their history and a modern, functioning government. We seem to forget that a liberal, secular West concerned about human rights is a recent phenomenon: the Christian West has done a fair job - even recently - of producing mass murdering despots. In fairness, the Arab world has quite a bit of catching up to do if they want to match such 20th century examples, such as Nazism, Communism, etc., for crimes against humanity.

As for religious violence, both the Irish and the Basques are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, yet that has not prevented these groups from using terrorist violence to achieve their aims to this day, in one case openly supported by money from the United States. This does not justify "Muslim rage," but it merely shows that such violent and infantile behavior is not exclusively Muslim. So let's check our "holier than thou" attitude at the door.

Further, when this was Shiites v. Sunnis, we did not care so much. Like Darfur or even black on black violence in the inner city, we have traditionally had other things to worry about. But fly a few planes into buildings and open up the possibility of a nuclear dirty bomb in Atlanta and you have our attention.

The United States can not solve this problem. This is a problem for Islam and the Arab world. We can help; we can encourage certain behaviors; we can even GBU or Hellfire a few key terrorists, but structural changes are necessary. Structural changes (such as the emancipation of women) that the West has already made.

TigerHawk is also wrong about the relative progression of the West over the Middle East. This acceleration has happened since the First World War and has coincided with the Wests embrace of human rights and the value of the individual, in particular women. We still have a ways to go, but unleashing the potential of all your citizens is a powerful force...one that Islam has yet to embrace.