Thursday, May 04, 2006

Cardinal Pell


Sydney Cardinal Pell comments on violence in koran.

Usually religious leaders refrain from making comments in relation to other religions as most respect any person’s genuine search for the truth. Ecumenism is part of the Western scene in our day.

However, as we know Islam has presented the West with an intransigent set of dictates that, if enacted, destroy the very foundations of Western civilisation and all that it has achieved. Hence it is not on the level of the other religious groups which live in harmony and mutual respect in western countries.

Cardinal Pell has noted the totalitarian nature of Islam while noting at the same time the influence of post-modernist emptiness and secularism in the west.

He urges westerners to try to get acquainted with the pernicious doctrine in reading some of the Koran - if only to understand something of this assault on the west. He actually tried to read some himself and could not stomach too much of the violence. It is unusual to hear a member of the clergy speak out in this way.

A wake up call for the west.

‘Cardinal Pell said the totalitarian nature of Islamist ideology, and the brutality and rigidity of Islamist rule in Afghanistan under the Taliban would prove unsustainable, like Nazism and Communism, because of the enormous toll they exacted on human life and creativity.

On the pessimistic side, he said he is concerned about the Koran itself. In reading the Koran Cardinal Pell began noting down the calls to violence.”There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages,” he said. ‘