Iraqi Abp: West Doesn’t Understand The Threat
The Archbishop of Kirkuk, Irag has said that the west does not understand the threat posed by Islam.
Kirkuk, Iraq, Feb 11, 2011 / 01:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The secular western world is incapable of fully understanding the threat of a “reawakening of Islam” in the Middle East, according to an Iraqi bishop beset by radical movements in his own archdiocese.
In an interview with the Italian bishops’ SIR news agency, Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk, Iraq, called the Middle East a “scary volcano” because of the possible consequences of widespread unrest.
“There are Islamic forces and movements that wish to change the Middle East, creating Islamic States, caliphates, in which Shariah (law) rules,” he warned.
Radical groups present in Iraq such as al-Qaida and Ansar al Islam are calling on citizens in other Middle Eastern nations to inject an Islamic influence into otherwise general protests in places like Tunisia and Egypt.
For Archbishop Sako these calls have “the clear intention of fueling … a total religious change” in the area.
“They are voices that could find fertile ground in Egypt and elsewhere and therefore should not be underestimated, also because there are regional powers whose leaders have defined these revolts as the ‘reawakening of Islam’,” he said.
In practice, the goal of these fundamentalists is “to create a void to be able to fill it with religious themes, convinced … that Islam is the solution to everything.”
And the west does not get it.
According to the archbishop, Europe and North America are blind to the possibility of such an “Islamization” of the Middle East.
“The western mentality does not allow it to fully comprehend this risk,” he said.
He explained that politics and religion are interwoven in the Middle East, whereas there is “a tremendous void” between them in western nations.
This results in two extremisms, he said. The Middle Eastern mentality is dominated by Islam, while a secularism that denies its Christian roots and relegates Christian values to the private sphere reigns in the West.
And he would know.
Just keep this in mind as you watch the MSM commentary on Egypt and politicians congratulating themselves for supporting “democracy.”
I suspect/worry that there is a 10% chance something akin to western democracy will emerge in Egypt (and I feel this may be too generous), 40% chance that the now-resigned thug will be replaced within 2 years by a thug just like him, and a 50% chance that the country follows the path of “very educated” 1979 Iran into Islamo-statehood.
Archbishop Sako lives at the sharp end of the scimitar, so we should listen.