Thanks for your interesting comments and your kind remarks for the Blog.

I know you dislike the Catholic overreliance on Reason (I, Catholic, deplore it too, and am grateful I need only believe the dogmas, the body of which is quite small). But that overreliance is simply the healthy attitude of Justin Martyr hypertrophied. A far more traditional and numerous Catholic Church is doing very well in Africa and Asia; our future lies there, not in North America or Europe. The Catholic Church: always going wrong, always effecting some very good course correction (with help from above).

Lest you think you smell a fish, I have no wish to convert you. You have the Sacraments, the Apostolic succession. I love John Paul II, but he had a complex. I think the Orthodox Churches, the Church of the East also, the Thomasine Church in Kerala and probably others are doing quite well. Thank you for your work on the web. It’s the best.

Again, there is no question of loving people who think not only differently, but even those who are in error. It is another thing to love them, and a completely different thing to follow their error or let our societies be formed after errors. The example of Christ and the Samaritan as a multicultural attitude is inaccurate, since Christ did not endorse the Samaritan culture but a personal character. On the contrary, He said about the Old Testament that not even a word of it will be abolished. What are you going to think for Muslims who made a joke out of both the Old and the New Testaments? Are you open-minded if you baptize their ‘adaptation’ of Christianity as just “different customs”?

Multiculturalism is not to discern possible partial truths in different beliefs and religions. Multiculturalism is to deny that there exist hierarchies between cultures, multiculturalism is to deny that there exist superior and inferior cultures, multiculturalism is to deny that a culture can be closer to truth than other cultures. Thus, a multicultural state or policy, since it lacks a measure of truth, will be in the society a force of relativism. Relativism is not tolerance, nor open-mindedness. Relativism is stopping searching for truth, is to accept that truth exists everywhere and nowhere - an absurd condition that prepares indifference and nihilism.

The great Aristotle once said, “For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.” I hold dear our Western civilization and our Christian faith, yet an essential part of that tradition behooves us to be open-minded and loving of those who think differently and cherish other customs. Our tolerant of others’ ways does not at all undermine us but rather makes us even stronger; again I cite Aristotle: “Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.”

Just my humble opinion.

You don’t offer “plenty of proof” of muslim contributions to culture. On the contrary. Averroes and in general the muslim commentators of Aristotle offered to culture whatever they offered, not as muslims but as commentators of Aristotle. Do you see the difference? You can not even say that this proves the muslim’s openness to learning, since their example had no continuation, and later muslim generations until today have a little, insignificant, or none at all interest in Greek philosophy, especially as regards the theological side of it. Averroes etc are not even necessary to a student of Greek philosophy; their contribution, even considered not as a muslim one, but just as a side of the influences of Greek culture, is not significant. Perhaps you hold them in a greater esteem, - however, no matter how valuable we agree they were, you still can not use them as symbols of muslim culture, since their attitude does not characterize Islam as such. It was temporary and marginal.

As for Ibn Khaldun, it was him that said, “Watch how all the countries of the world, when conquered by Arabs, saw their civilization being destroyed, their population scattered, even the earth of their ground being transformed obviously!”

We agree somehow on the difference that you see between Turks and other muslims, yet, if our criteria become more demanding, this difference does not remain that great.

What you say about muslim tolerance can be proved in various times and places, but it is not valid at other times and places. It is important also to notice the reason of this tolerance, most often being the profit from special taxes imposed to “non-believers”, and also is important to see the limits of the tolerance, most often, if not always, excluding “non-believers” from political power, prohibiting their education, impeding their economical growth…, even practically treating them as complete slaves.

When the Byzantines said that occupation by Turks would be better than occupation by Catholics they did not mean that Turks had a superior culture to that of the Catholics. On the contrary, they preferred the Turks precisely because of the difference and inferiority of their muslim culture, this way avoiding the danger of the Orthodox being to any degree seduced by the similarity of the Catholic to the Orthodox culture, and, under the difficulties of an occupation, forced to become Catholics. They knew also about the religious tolerance they were going to have, so long as the Ottoman state was interested more in money than in conversion of the “infidels” to Islam.

As for the sub-saharan Africa, I never said that *all the underdeveloped and inhuman regimes are muslim. But don’t forget that Islam is very active even there. Perhaps you don’t have accurate information. Senegal, Gambia and Niger have 75 to 90% of the population muslim. Mali, Sierra Leone, Chad, Sudan, from 50 to 75%. Guinea, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Tanzania 25 to 50%. But the traditional African religions of course are no better than Islam. Yet, even them, at least are religions, no matter how false or inferior - not fabricated ideologies. I emphasize that, because you failed to answer to the main point of this blog post, that Koran is an invented ideological product.