Thanks to the Pope, Now We're Talking to Muslims

Perhaps I was right after all.

I mean about the controversy over the Pope’s recent remarks regarding Islam.

As far as I could see, very few if any in the MSM and still fewer of the self proclaimed “experts” were giving the Pope much credit for his approach, and so I shared those thoughts.

I enjoy David Warren’s insights and I subscribe to his regular mailings.

Recently he reported on the “unprecedented” letter which 38 Muslim scholars sent to Pope Benedict XVI as a response to the controversy. I smiled when I read his article, as well as the details surrounding the letter by the 38 Muslim clerics.

I especially enjoyed the insight offered in this report by the Christian Science Monitor. (The Christian Science people are kinda scary but you’ve got to give them credit for their reporting on religious affairs.)

The letter by the clerics was

“a product of a growing awareness on the part of Muslim leaders that they don't communicate effectively with the West, particularly since the religion doesn't share a central bureaucracy…”

"The argument has been over the years that the churches and the governments can't find a single [Muslim] body to speak to.

"Even though the [Muslim] religion is traditionally resistant to creating hierarchies, it has to come up with a mechanism of making the opinions of mainstream orthodoxy known…"

If Muslim leaders can accomplish this feat and get the extremists (terrorists, Islamofascists, jihadis, etc.) under control, Benedict may have been crucial in achieving something quite remarkable, something quite…well, God-like.

Don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, the Pope outsmarted us all?

For me there’s no doubt. The Pope had heavenly assistance and insight. Come to think of it, he seems to have that pretty regularly.

Thank God.

[More scholarly and recent analyses on the Pope's address can be found here and here]