Demonizing the Pope

The biased media fans the flames of bigotry, taking the pope's words out of context. Already an Italian nun has been murdered in Somalia, shot in the back as she worked in a hospital.

David Warren,RCP:

The manufacture of grievances, to justify strident demands for their redress, is the tyrant's stock-in-trade. It is what took Adolf Hitler to power over the Germans, and it is what today's Islamic fanatics depend upon to control the Muslims, and push them towards an apocalyptic jihad against the West. Moreover, the basic tactic of bullying is to demand apologies for exaggerated or imaginary offences. It is to make the decent kneel before the indecent.

If these fanatics succeed in demonizing the pope, then God help us all. And probably Pope Benedict himself recognizes this most clearly.

Previous posts here and here.

UPDATE: Apropos, here is some more straight talk Down Under, from the Howard government's spokesman on multiculturalism in an address to 100 influential imams. Via Instapundit:

Mr Robb also called on them to shun a victim mentality that branded any criticism as discrimination.

"We live in a world of terrorism where evil acts are being regularly perpetrated in the name of your faith," Mr Robb said at the Sydney conference.

"And because it is your faith that is being invoked as justification for these evil acts, it is your problem.

UPDATE: Bret Stephens, WSJ, RCP on liberals failing to see they are most at risk, and letting others fight the battle. He quotes from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Muslim woman legislator who was forced out of the Netherlands (that famously liberal country) and found refuge in the US:

But the really "lethal mistake," she says, "is the confusion of Islam, which is a body of ideas, with ethnicity." Liberals especially are reluctant to criticize the content of Islam because they fear that it is tantamount to criticizing Muslims as a group, and is therefore almost a species of racism. Yet Muslims, she says, "are responsible for their ideas. If it is written in the Koran that you must kill apostates, kill the unbelievers, kill gays, then it is legitimate and urgent to say, 'If that is what your God tells you, you have to modify it.'