On October 14 and 15, the International Herald Tribune, one of the world’s best newspapers, carried front-page articles on the decline of Christianity in Europe, contrasted with amazing growth in the Southern hemisphere, i.e. in Latin America and in Africa.  While the percentage of Christians in North America declined from 96.6 in 1900 to 83.0 in 2000, and dropped even more in Europe from 94.5 to 76.9 percent, it rose in Africa from 9.2 percent in 1900 to 45.4 percent in 2000.

In both North America and Europe, the decline in Christian conviction and practice among nominal Christians is even more disastrous.  While attendance in German Evangelical (i.e. Protestant, not evangelical in the English sense) churches declines towards zero, church officials are steadily making matters worse by doing such things as celebrating the unions of homosexual couples.  In the United States, the mainline Episcopalian Church has consecrated a “gay” cleric, who left his wife for a man, as bishop, driving increasing numbers of believers, and sometimes even whole congregations, out of the main church body.  In the Quadrennial Lambeth Conference of World Anglican Bishops, it is the Africans and Asians who support traditional biblical morality against English and American “liberalizers.”

South of the equator, as the IHT reports, Christianity is advancing with remarkable speed.  A headline across all of page 4 speaks of “Christianity’s allure, where no one can afford not to pray.”  For traditional, perhaps stodgily traditional, North Americans, the ebulliance and enthusiasm often seen in the south may be disconcerting.  The IHT takes note of some of the wilder phenomena, which have been well described by Phillip Jenkins in The Next Christendom.  Jenkins notes that just as the growth of the early church took place in the context of “signs and wonders,” rapid church growth, often but not always among Pentecostal Christians, is stimulated by extraordinary, at times miraculous, phenomena.  The IHT reports emphasize the degree to which both new and older, established churches offer hope and practical assistance to impoverished people.  It is both interesting and encouraging to note that this major world newspaper, the IHT, has written such a favorable, even enthusiastic account, of the growth of serious Christian bodies, something for which one might look in vain in our foremost newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post with which the IHT is affiliated.  As the IHT reported in commenting on dismal conditions in European churches, the hope for a Christian renewal there may depend on immigrants.

In the United States we are familiar with the “pattern of rule by taking offense.”  Prayer at high school football games in Texas, Commandments on schoolroom walls and in court buildings: all these and others have attracted the attention of the “little axis” of which we have written, often but not always led by the vigilant ACLU.  In the United States it usually takes only one or two persons to take offense, or to worry that someone just might take offense, and treasured symbols and festivals of Christianity are thrown into the garbage can.  Christmas is gone, Thanksgiving is stripped of its religious significance, and of all of the festivals with a suggestion of spiritual power, only Hallowe’en is left — which refers to occult powers, probably not really believed in, but in any case to the sort of thing that the Bible prohibits, rather than praises.  In Germany, Christian festivals and symbols are still allowed, often respected, but at the same time Hallowe’en, which has no traditional base in Germany at all, is enjoying a marketing explosion:  the demand for pumpkins is breaking records.

Italy is the home of the Vatican; its capital city is where pagan emperors yielded their place (after a brief period of Christian emperors) to Christian popes.  Italy’s government is secular with no ties to the Roman Catholic Church, but a 1923 law provides that crucifixes shall be displayed in schoolrooms.  In the small central Italian town of L’Aquila, a certain Adel Smith, president of the Muslim Union (whether local or Italy-wide was not specified), asked to have his children spared the sight of the crucifix on the schoolroom wall.  “The little ones would be confused by the crosses on the wall,” Smith asserted, “unless at least a half-moon is displayed alongside them.”  The judge, Signor Mario Montanero, ordered the removal of the crucifixes, in order to restore religious peace in Italy.  But what of all the other children, Roman Catholic by name, baptized and confirmed?  Would they fail to notice the removal and absence of the crosses?  Could not many more of them be disturbed and made to feel rejected than the Islamic offspring of Signor Smith, whether Italian-born or immigrants?  The principle of rule by taking offense allows, as Upinsky said, the minority to rule the majority.

The fact that the president of the Muslim Union in Italy is named Smith — neither a common Italian name, nor recognizably from an Islamic country — underscores the way in which the aggressiveness of a few, presumably strangers to the society, can deprive the many of their beloved symbols and traditions.  In the case of Alabama’s Chief Justice Roy Moore and the Ten Commandments, a certain Miss Ayeshu Khan presented the arguments of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.  If Miss Khan should be a Christian, we would like to see her take our case to Saudi Arabia.

The worst actors in this situation are not the Signori Smith and the Misses Khan, but judges such as Mastri Montanaro and pusillanimous politicians such as the governor, the attorney general, and the associate justices of Alabama.  They may join in singing “Stand up, stand up for Jesus” in their churches (or a Catholic equivalent for Montanaro if he goes to church), but they are evidently unwilling to stand up for him against the will of a dictatorial court.

While American military forces and civilian personnel seek to root democratic principles in Iraq, the case of Signor Smith vs. the Crucifixes illustrates the fact that one of the less attractive and least democratic features of American life is spreading to Europe — rule by judges.  In Germany similar cases are being brought to eliminate Christian symbols from German schools — a strange development in a country where both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant churches receive state support.  For the present, however, the German high court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, has not proved as compliant in the abolition of religious traditions as our own Supreme Court.

A far smaller percentage of Germans attend church on Sundays than is the case in the United States, but Germans are mystified by the fact that Christmas has become “winter holiday” and that carols and Christmas trees in schools are virtually totally banned in our largely Christian land.

Bad Schmiedeberg, Germany.  Speaking in Christian churches, Lt. Gen. William C. Boykin made the mistake of speaking frankly and telling the truth as he sees it.  His remarks were recorded by a Los Angeles Times reporter, who published portions thereof.  As of this writing, the complete context has not been made available.  He spoke of Islamic terrorists as worshipping an idol — a disagreeable thought, but one that is not foreign either to Christianity or to Orthodox Judaism: “For the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens” (Psalms 96:5).  Each of the three great monotheistic religions must logically regard the other two as defective.  Principles of tolerance and “ecumenical niceness” limit the circumstances under which this can be said publicly, yet anyone well versed in his own religion must admit it to be true.

General Boykin spoke of Satan as the real enemy in the battle he was fighting — again, a perfectly reasonable position.  He did not identify Islam with Satan, nor call Iraq “the Great Satan,” a term frequently used by the Iranians to refer to the United States — without evoking the same horrified rebukes from Moslem leaders that General Boykin’s words evoked in the United States and the American press.  The otherwise often praiseworthy IHT called for his resignation, and even National Review, in a very supportive article defending Boykin, said, “If the general has failed to understand that Islam is not synonymous with the extremist totalitarian ideologies preached by bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and similar types, he should be fired.”

Is Clifford D. May, the author of the apologia for General Boykin, correct in saying that Islam and terrorism are not synonymous?  Strictly speaking, yes, and we may assume that the general knows that.  But just one moment:  who is it that so vigorously defends Islam against the charge of violence?  We note that terrorism is a particular form of violence, one that at the moment is practiced primarily by Muslims, but it is not explicitly called for in the Koran.  However, to say this is a far cry from saying that the two are synonymous and piously bleating, as Miss Condolezza Rice, the President’s national security advisor, did immediately upon hearing of the general’s remarks.  President Bush hastened to assure the Islamic world that he does not agree with General Boykin.

Miss Rice claimed that Islam is “a peaceful religion, hijacked by terrorists.”  But is that true?  If it is true, why is it only Westerners, especially Christians, who say it?  If there are leading Muslim clerics who maintain that Islam is a religion of peace, they are not getting any attention in the national media, where their comments could do great good.  The U.S. government is aghast at the thought that our efforts to stamp out terrorism — which strike virtually only Islamic targets — might be seen as a war against Islam, as a religious war.  The difficulty is that most Muslims, aside from some of those who find themselves in a minority in a Christian state, or in largely Hindu India, have no difficulty in seeing the conflict in religious terms.

A simple way to answer the question of whether Islam is primarily a religion of peace is to look at two maps of the ancient Mediterranean world.  In A.D. 625, there was no Islam.  Much of the Mediterranean basin belonged to the Christian East Roman or Byzantine Empire.  By A.D. 700, Muslim armies had conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula, and was moving into the land of the Catholic Franks — only stopped by Charles Martel at Tours in Northern France in 732.  The much-derided Christian Crusades, often used to explain Muslim hostility towards Christianity, were a Christian response to Muslim-Arab and Turkish aggression, and a response to an appeal by the East Roman Emperor, Alexis I Comnenus, for aid.  The record of the Crusades after 1100 is not glorious.  Nevertheless, in the light of Muslim aggression on three continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe, it is counter-intuitive for Christians and Western civilization in general to apologize for the Crusades.  The key to treating Muslims and Muslim countries fairly, decently, and respectfully does not lie in constantly repeating the falsehood that Islam is a religion of peace.  The nations of the West should face facts, stand up to Islam as well as to the Islamists, the so-called extremists, and offer them what General de Gaulle called “a peace of the brave.”  Bravery, even self-destructive, suicidal bravery, is characteristic of many, perhaps of most Muslims, and they are not impressed by pitiful Western attempts to say, “Can’t we all just get along?”  The zeal with which our leaders and most of our national media rush to attack any public figure who dares to speak the truth is deplorable.

If General Boykin is reprimanded or removed for what he has said in church, it will have a chilling impact on other officers, especially those with strong religious convictions.  A guard dog is not worth much if he cannot open his jaws to bite, or even to bark loudly.

If General Boykin is reprimanded, he may well resign and, if forced to resign as the IHT recommends, or even worse fired, as our article in National Review suggested, America will lose a great soldier for the “speechcrime” of speaking the truth.

“What is man,” the Psalmist asks, “that thou art mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4).  But does Frau Zypries know that God is mindful of her and of the little embryos to which she would deny human worth?  It is not without serious consequences to forget what humans used to think we are.  We were told by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his famous 1978 Harvard Commencement address that the problems that the West faces today come “because men have forgotten God.”  When a society forgets God, its people begin to forget who they are.  There are two sources for our self-understanding in the once Christian West.  One is tied directly to biblical theology, one to the social history of the West, developed in the context of the pervasive biblical worldview, shared with respect to this issue by both Jews and Christians.

The Bible tells us, in the first chapter of the first book, that we are specially created by the Lord God, in his image and likeness (Genesis 1:26ff).  From the period of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment onward, there has been a growing tendency to forget or to reject the idea that humans were purposefully created by a personal God and, therefore, are personally responsible to him.  In the nineteenth century, widespread acceptance of Darwin’s concept of natural selection accentuated the trend, and the twentieth century carried the doctrine further, making it obligatory even in elementary schools.  In the United States, the educational establishment has been intensely hostile to efforts to criticize Darwinism (or neo-Darwinism, as Darwinism in its original form is widely held to be untenable).  Extremely plausible efforts to show that the complexity of all living beings requires an intelligent Designer (Behe, Dembski) are relentlessly suppressed, not because they are not persuasive, but because if they are accepted, the concept of a righteous Judge emerges from the shadows, demanding adherence to a moral code (Huxley).

There is a widespread tendency to debase humanity, males, Europeans, and European Americans.  To express any sense of pride or self-esteem as an American or a Christian is chauvinism, religious intolerance, or both.  To express pride or satisfaction in one’s sexual identity is patriarchalism for a male; to value one’s identity as a human is speciesism.  This self-deprecating mentality has begun to cripple Western man, leading to pusillanimous conduct when courage is needed, and at times to aggressive and hostile behavior, the chief effect of which is to reinforce the shame and self-deprecation of the Western male.  This loss of a proper sense of self and one’s rightful place in the world and in history contributes mightily to the incipient collapse of the West in the modern world.

The first thing that should be said to those afflicted with this tendency is this:  Do not apologize for being. Do not apologize for being human, male, or white.  You did not make yourself, and to apologize for being is to dishonor the Creator.

Without an appreciation of what Sorokin called man’s divine creative mission on the planet, without awareness of the fact that there is a divine Judge to whom all are accountable, human society can easily degenerate into the bellum omnium contra omnes, and in such a situation those who constantly denigrate themselves as arrogant and oppressive will be unable to resist those who seek to oppress them.  By thinking and acting in this way, Western man guarantees the collapse of his society and his civilization.  Even those who do not wish to think in terms of man’s divine creation and responsibility to God should see the danger inherent in constant self-denigration and social self-condemnation, in short, for apologizing for being.  If carried far enough, we shall cease to be and Western civilization with us.

Addressing the question left unanswered by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade, Father Paul Marx, O.S.B., used the expression that means becoming human, “hominization,” and denied that it is a meaningful concept.  “No one asks about ratification,” he said, “when a rat becomes a rat. A rat is always a rat.”  Logically, the embryo, even in its earliest stages, is a human being.  It is a being: it has life and existence, and will continue to live and to exist for a long time, unless its life is interrupted by disease, accident, or violence.  It is also a human; it has human DNA and, even in the earliest stages, contains the information that will determine its characteristics when it emerges into the outside world as a human baby.  It is a being, and it is human:  therefore, a human being.  The U.S. Supreme Court declared in Roe (1973) that it was not in a position to speculate when human life begins.  Any high school biology teacher of that era could have answered the question.  Textbooks in obstetrics-gynecology often begin with the words, “The doctor has two patients, the woman and her baby.”  There was no mention of a point before which the embryo-fetus was not human or not a being.  In 1975, the German high court declared, “The usual language, termination of pregnancy, cannot conceal the fact that abortion is a homicidal act.”  Not all human life can be protected under all circumstances, the German court acknowledged, but it knew that what it was dealing with was human life.  The German constitution, drawn up after World War II, states that all human beings have the right to life (Art. II), something that the U.S. Constitution did not mention, for the simple fact that prior to the twentieth century, it was taken as self-evident.

Under ongoing pressure from those who want to utilize artificially conceived human embryos for research and other purposes, the German government is taking a big step away from the principle worked out in the post-war German constitution. Frau Brigitte Zypries, minister of justice (SPD), has proposed a weakening of the protection hitherto afforded the artificially conceived human embryo.  Her predecessor, Frau Herta Däubler-Gmelin, also a Social Democrat, had held to the older principle.

The situation has been made more complicated by the recent success of a molecular biologist, in raising female ova in the laboratory.  Until Frau Zypries proposed treating embryos conceived in vitro as less than human beings, German political, legal, and medical thinking had been virtually unanimous.  Attacking Frau Zypries in a long essay in the same issue in which the Frankfurter allgemeine Zeitung gave her front-page attention, Christian Schwägerl argues that her position makes the value of human life something that is granted from outside when there is “the possibility of self-determined life.”  Herr Schwägerl argues, quite correctly, we think, that human dignity and the value of human life is inherent in each human being; they are not qualities that must be attributed to the embryo from an outside source.  This is in contrast to the view that an embryo must be recognized by outside authorities as human to possess human dignity.  “Another concept of human dignity,” Schwägerl writes, “which has been dominant until now, maintains that it is not granted on the basis of state criteria, but is inherent in all of the forms of human life, coming from within.  Human dignity transcends fashions, opinions, and definitions…that which is patently human does not need any protection of its dignity graciously granted by the state, but has it within itself.”

It is remarkable and encouraging to find these convictions expressed not in some little pro-life newsletter, but in the FaZ, which can claim the title of Germany’s best newspaper.  Have we ever seen such a defense of the dignity of all human life in the New York Times or the Washington Post, American counterparts of the Frankfurter allgemeine Zeitung?  If they have been there, prominently displayed as is Herr Schwägerl’s article in the FaZ, we have sadly missed them, and would be glad to learn of it.

Germany and the Germans had a hideous record in the 1930’s and 1940’s, and they have not yet fully come to terms with their past.  Today, however, they are fighting for values that America seems to be discarding.  Germans cannot even imagine that we have and that the courts protect abortion up to live birth, including the hideous “partial birth” abortions that the Supreme Court has protected in the past.  The recently enacted federal ban on such atrocities will no doubt be brought once again to the courts, probably to the Supreme Court.  It is to be hoped that at least a few of the judges and justices will share the insights of Christian Schwägerl.

Generic Americans, if we may call them that, largely Christian, largely Caucasian, frequently pious and serious about their religion, are constantly harassed and told to apologize for existing.  The situation is even more extreme in Western Europe, but for our purposes it is sufficient to discuss the woes of American men.  The harassment is not uniform, for black Americans feel exempt from the denigration of whites, and in fact contribute to it with denunciations of racism, but they too are caught in the fusillade directed at Christians, Americans, and males.  Jewish people are not wounded by ridicule of Christianity, at least not directly, but they too are American, white, and half of them are males.  Quite apart from any emotional distress or depression being targeted by constant supercilious or derisive abuse causes, there are practical consequences in social and political life.

For example, it becomes psychologically and temperamentally impossible to deal with active and growing threats to social harmony and social health.  The flood of constant and virtually unrestricted immigration, combined with an undeclared governmental policy that no longer fosters assimilation, threatens to submerge American society.  The tacit promotion of Spanish and the neglect of teaching the English language threaten to make the United States bilingual, a situation that has produced endless tensions and difficulties in other countries.

It is impossible to address the problem of the propagation of homosexual behavior without being subjected to charges of homophobia — a new word coined expressly to defeat efforts to discuss the problem seriously — intolerance, and religious extremism.  Yet the promotion of homosexual behavior, especially among males, inevitably promotes the spread of atrocious diseases and a dramatic reduction in life expectancy  (Satinover et. al.)

The regular and incessant derision heaped upon Christianity and upon Christians bold enough to act in accordance with its teachings quite naturally undermines the moral restraints and the altruistic impulses that Christianity attempts to foster.  The prevailing academic orthodoxy that denies all divine purpose in the origin of man implicitly denies life after physical death and thus both the promise of heaven and the threat of hell.  As the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant argued, belief in life after death is one of the “necessary presuppositions” of moral behavior.  The constant derision of both the presupposition and the practice of Christianity, and by implication of Judaism as well, disorients the moral compass within and leads rapidly to metal detectors within schools.

The war in Iraq, following the terrorist attacks of September 11,  makes it evident that the United States are in effect trying to wipe out an infestation of potato bugs with a flyswatter.  Where we could see our adversary as a national entity, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, we could use our immense material and technological superiority as a sledgehammer to smash the opposition.  Now that the former Iraqi government has been crushed, we are in control, theoretically, of the whole country, but we are subjected to repeated wasp stings by guerillas.  We may swat individual opponents, but we cannot master the situation.  The opposition has a strong moral and spiritual position out of which to attack us, which we can counter only with the paler ideals of democracy, which they cannot comprehend, and freedom, which to them means first of all freedom from us.

One of the many banned words in today’s politically corrected America is crusade.  Although in the middle of the twentieth century the young evangelist Billy Graham had no difficulty calling his mass evangelization meetings Crusades and the late Bill Bright named his student missionary movement Campus Crusade for Christ, today the word is no longer socially acceptable.  The German branch of Bright’s movement calls itself just Campus für Christus,  Campus for short.  Collegiate sports teams once named “Crusaders,” now have more innocuous names.

What the West needs today is a new crusading spirit in dealing with Islam.  This should be in the spirit of Billy Graham and Bill Bright, a zeal to tell the Muslims the Christian Gospel.  Christians can tolerate, help, and even live with Muslims, and should do so, but they cannot accept Islam as an equally valid way to know and serve God.

After the American conquest of Iraq, Franklin Graham’s Samaritan Purse stood poised at the country’s border, prepared to provide vast quantities of needed supplies to the Iraqis.  Voices in the mainstream media condemned the proposed relief effort in which the Southern Baptists were prepared to join, and the Washington Post called for the Pentagon to rescind its approval for Samaritan’s Purse to operate in Iraq (David Limbaugh, 221-2).

Christians should not apologize for calling Islam a false religion, as Franklin Graham did: that is the only thing that a convinced Christian can think, although these are times when it may not be prudent to say so.  Christians, whether aid workers, missionaries, or military personnel, should not be expected to refrain from talking about Jesus, for the same one who commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves is the one who said, “No one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6).

The new crusading spirit should approach Muslims not with fire and sword, but with food, water, and medical supplies where those are needed, and always with the Gospel and the New Testament, which are needed everywhere.

Western Europe and North America regularly tolerate Muslim efforts to proselytize, as is in fact required by the Helsinki Treaty on Human Rights.  Muslim-ruled nations disregard this treaty even when they have signed it, and often threaten death for conversion to Christianity.  Islamic states and individual Muslims should be treated with fairness and decency, in the case of individuals with love also, but with respect to both states and groups of people, viewed with alertness and a watchful eye for manifestations of hostility and violence toward Christians.

On St. Martin’s Day (November 15, the day of the cooked geese in Austria), the IHT editorial page praised the so-called courage of the nine members of the Alabama Judiciary Committee who removed the elected Chief Justice Roy Moore from his office.  It noted that if only one had demurred, he would have been able to keep his post.  And what had Chief Justice Moore done?  He had made the error of supposing that there is such a thing as a divine Law that is above the laws of man (and woman, of course), and in the light of which we human beings should draw up our laws.  He spoke of “state sovereignty.” Did he not remember that state sovereignty was abolished in 1865, with fire and sword, by relentless Union armies?  Justice Moore’s actual offenses were only verbal.  The IHT spoke of the monument as “the size of a washing machine,” adding a bit of insult to the injury of removing it.

Around Europe, others are being taught the lesson that speech is no longer free.  We have discussed the case of Bundestag representative Martin Hohmann, who was thrown out of his party, the CDU, for remarks he made, which were interpreted as showing that he is anti-Semitic.  General Günzel, who was summarily fired for having written Hohmann a letter praising him (shades of Trent Lott praising J. Strom Thurmond!), also had his letter interpreted as revealing anti-Semitic prejudice.

Dare we say, without being labeled anti-Semitic ourselves, that what these expulsions mean is that in Germany as in the United States, free speech is no longer the rule and that it is absurd to fire worthy public servants by interpreting their free speech to reveal politically unacceptable attitudes?  The head of the CDU, Frau Angela Merkel, was distressed because 28 representatives voted against expelling Herr Hohmann, and several abstained.  This means that she does not totally control the votes of her party (no strange thing to Americans) and, therefore, that her hope to become prime minister is damaged.  The CDU has been bombarded with letters and e-mails supporting Hohmann.

It seems that in Germany, too, as in the U.S.A., the so-called conservative party has difficulty standing together and finds it impossible to protect one of its members from vindictive actions resulting from the exercise of just a little bit too free speech.

Vienna, St. Martin’s Day (November 15), 2003.  Just as Americans have the tradition of eating turkey on Thanksgiving Day, the Austrians like to eat roast goose today.  The origins of this tradition are obscure, but the havoc it wreaks among the geese of Austria is not.  If the news that one gets here in Vienna is at all representative of what is going on in the great world of nations, then one very large goose is being cooked, namely that of President George W. Bush.  On Wednesday, November 12, ARD, Channel One of Germany’s national television network, devoted almost its whole Tagesthemen (day’s topics) to American author, filmmaker, and agitator Michael Moore and his campaign against President Bush and the Iraqi war.  Moore repeated more than once his assertion that Mr. Bush was not elected, that the American people did not choose him.  He will be gone by 2004, because he is not who the American people wanted, and he sends American boys (and an occasional American girl) to get killed in his Iraq war.  The war, we all know, is about oil, and all of the rebuilding in Iraq will be done to profit American Big Business.

The prominence given to strong, persuasive anti-Bush propaganda on German national television draws attention to two problems, and in fact exacerbates the first of them, namely the widespread disdain for and contempt of the U.S. president in central Europe.  It is now taken for granted that the war in Iraq is an ongoing and worsening failure, that it is primarily the result of a bad decision on Mr. Bush’s part, a decision that was based first of all on ignorance of Middle Eastern reality and second on the desire to establish the United States as the world’s hegemon.

 The apparent ignorance of the United States administration in dealing (a) with Islam, (b) with Iraq, and (c) with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is appalling, all the more so if it is genuine ignorance and not merely a pretense adopted in the hope that it will win friends and influence people, which it certainly isn’t doing.  For example, in a speech November 10, Secretary of State Colin Powell criticized the Imams of Iran for “dragging the holy robe of Islam in the gutter” by supporting or, as the case may be, not denouncing terrorism.  Whenever someone seen as a right-wing or fundamentalist Christian attacks an abortion facility, the U.S. media are quick to blame Christians in general; more orthodox Christians have to engage in verbal gymnastics in an effort to shake the undeserved blame from their own robes (to use the Secretary’s imagery).  To those familiar both with the Bible and Christian tradition on the one hand and with the Koran and Muslim tradition on the other, it is evident that suicide bombings are far more compatible with Islam than the murder of abortionists is with Christianity.  But that reality, which every historian of religion should recognize, seems to elude the attention of our most responsible leaders, as well as of our media.

• According to a report in the IHT for October 29, the Italians, too, had concentration camps during World War II.  They used them to confine prisoners from Yugoslavia, many of them anti-Italian guerrillas, as well as wives and children.  By prudently changing sides in 1943, Italy became an ally and was spared the threat of war crimes trials.

• Over the weekend of November 15-16, two synagogues in Istanbul were wrecked by suicide bombers with scores of casualties.  These murderous actions may in the long run — alas! — produce less real retribution than the incorrect speech of Germans such as Herr Hohmann and General Günzel and the incorrect loyalty of Chief Justice Moore.

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Notes on Sources

For “Christianity on the March,” see the International Herald Tribune, Oct. 14 and 15, pp. 1 and following;  for “Italy and the Crucifix,” see Die Welt, October 28, p. 1;  for “A Goose is Cooked,” see the International Herald Tribune and major Vienna newspapers for November 9-13; for “In Addition to Which,” see Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand. Deutschland im Bombenkrieg (Munich: Propyläen, 2002).