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Carey backs Pope and issues warning on 'violent' Islam
THE former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to violent Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Popes extraordinarily effective and lucid speech.Lord Carey said that Muslims must address with great urgency their religions association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the clash of civilisations endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole. We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times, he said. There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths. Lord Carey, who as Archbishop of Canterbury became a pioneer in Christian-Muslim dialogue, himself quoted a contemporary political scientist, Samuel Huntington, who has said the world is witnessing a clash of civilisations. Arguing that Huntingtons thesis has some validity, Lord Carey quoted him as saying: Islams borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. Lord Carey went on to argue that a deep-seated Westophobia has developed in recent years in the Muslim world. Lord Carey, who has continued to work in interfaith collaboration since his retirement in 2002, said that the relationship between Islamic countries and the West was the most dangerous, most important and potentially cataclysmic issue of our day. He described the two civilisations as polarised and uncomprehending and said that the Danish cartoons controversy last March showed two world views colliding in public space with no common point of reference. He said the West had been largely responsible for redrawing the map of the Middle East and it was the moral relativism of the West that has outraged Muslim society. Most Muslims believe firmly that the invasion of Iraq is 2004 was solely about oil, he said. He went on to defend the Popes fundamental thesis, that reason and religious faith can be compatible. The actual essay is an extraordinarily effective and lucid thesis exploring the weakness of secularism and the way that faith and reason go hand in hand, he said. He said he agreed with his Muslim friends who claimed that true Islam is not a violent religion, but he wanted to know why Islam today had become associated with violence. The Muslim world must address this matter with great urgency, he said. Can someone explain how they let this guy go and got the Druid? Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-09-20 |
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