(Italian) Leader: Terrorists Planned To Attack Vatican On Christmas

what is your opinion about one of ours shooting it down since it wasn't on our land?

No problem if it was over the high seas. If it was over Italian territory, only with the concurrence of the Italians. It would be a closer question for me if it was a US flagged aircraft over foreign territory.

Foreign flagged aircraft, over foreign soil, no request from that nation's government, my answer would be no.

I am not a Catholic, so I don't look at the Vatican as a "religious shrine".

What an odd thing to say.

Perhaps I need to explain myself.

I don't personally look at the Vatican as a place intrinsically holy because it is the residence of the Pope and St. Peters or even some "holy" relics. That doesn't mean others don't see the Vatican as that. Some, no doubt, do. However, it is not central to the entire Christian world for it's faith. Destroy it completely (which is unlikely), and Christianity will motor on.

So, I do see the Vatican as a place of great religious significance, but not crucial for either the confirmation or continuance of faith. Others, however, may deem it so. But not me, and probably not most Christians.

For Muslims, however, Mecca is indispensible. It anchors one of the 5 pillars of their faith, the Hajj.

This once-in-a-lifetime practice of their faith, namely the crucial pilgrimage of the Hajj, is the journey required to Mecca where the Kaaba was supposedly built by Abraham. All Muslims must journey the Hajj and perform it to that specific place, Mecca. Without physical Mecca (which contains it's religious significance), Islam is rootless physically and spiritually.

This is probably why many Muslims feel if they can destroy the Vatican they will have beheaded Christianity. They don't separate the physical place from the spiritual significance. Likely, they think the physical destruction of the Vatican would be a spiritual death-blow, much as would the physical destruction of Mecca.

Without the Vatican, Christianity will survive even though culturally impoverished and visually wounded. But, the Vatican is not necessary for Christianity to either exist or survive.

Mecca is much more significant and is at the root in the Muslim faith. It's destruction would not only destroy the Queen Bee, but their belief in the omnipotence of Allah, as he surely would not allow such a centrally important place to be obliterated.

But, the destruction of Mecca would come only at the great cost of a paroxysm of violence throughout the world as the faithful Muslims vent their murderous anger on all things deemed related to that destruction. It would be a bloodletting unparalleled, period. But in the end, that nest of bees would wither and die without either the hive or the Queen. Such destruction is practically unthinkable and should only be a last, final resort to prevent a Muslim victory over the world. It would be far preferable to have Muslims willingly leave their faith than kill them.

So, I do see the Vatican as a place of great religious significance, but not crucial for either the confirmation or continuance of faith. Others, however, may deem it so. But not me, and probably not most Christians.

Actually you are probably wrong there since "most Christians" are Catholic.

We are?

What do they have planned for the future, lobbing grenades into kindergarten schools?

They are limited only by whether or not they can.

We are?

Don't know about you, but I am.

There are 1,342,946,000 Christians in the world. 1,026,501,000 of them are Catholic, or over 75%, so that would be "most."

Actually, yes. To the Islamic fascists, war to the death means just that - ours or theirs, and they fully intend to win. They are also no longer content to enslave, now they want genocide.

So, I do see the Vatican as a place of great religious significance, but not crucial for either the confirmation or continuance of faith. Others, however, may deem it so. But not me, and probably not most Christians.

Actually you are probably wrong there since "most Christians" are Catholic.

Help me out here a bit. Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong.

Are you saying the destruction of the Vatican would destroy the faith of many, if not most Catholics? If so, why?

Help me out here a bit. Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong. Are you saying the destruction of the Vatican would destroy the faith of many, if not most Catholics? If so, why?

No I wasn't suggesting that. His post implied that Catholics make up just one subset of Christianity. My point was to show that Catholics make up the vast majority of Christians (over 75% as noted above). I have not weighed-in on the implications of the hypothetical destruction of the Vatican, nor will I.

You continue to dig yourself deeper.

Perhaps if you stop using the word Christianity when commenting on the significance of The Vatican, and understand what it means to the Catholics of the world, your explanation may change.

Destroying Mecca changes nothing for the Muslims, other than uniting them. The place would still be there long after whatever buildings make it up are bombed to pieces.

You can't destroy faith by destroying the outward signs of that faith, but you CAN create martyrs, and unite a religion by destroying those things that it finds significant.

"Without physical Mecca (which contains it's religious significance), Islam is rootless physically and spiritually."

Quite the contrary, the destruction of Mecca would set in place a world-wide jihad as called for by the Qur'an. You see, the vast majority of those quotes that are being thrown about out of context to "prove" how violent Islam is, are taken from segments instructing the faithful on what to do to defend the faith.

We nuke Mecca, and we will accomplish exactly what bin Laden and the Islamicists wish to accomplish...the rise of a strong Caliphate, with the extremists at its head.

Terrorists planned to attack the Vatican with a hijacked plane on Christmas Day

I don't believe they want to destroy the Vatican because what they really want to do is conquer it and turn St. Peter's Basilica into a mosque.

I don't think you read my Post #42 closely.

Islam is a religion of extreme externals. Nearly every move of the believer is bounded by religious traditions and commands, from the complicated motions and verbage required in prayer to the correct way to handle your personal sanitary needs or blow your nose. It is the ultimate religion of "works" and "rules".

Wrapped up closely within this structure is the crucial importance of Mecca and Medina and the religious shrines and traditions associated with them and required by the Hajj.

Rather than go into detail, I refer you to this book (in pdf) by Edward Sell, a British scholar who did extensive research on this religion. See The Faith Of Islam. For further reading, also see other books available here

When reading Sell's work, go to pg 331-347 (pdf pg 346-362) for intimate details on the Hajj. Pay particular attention to Sell's conclusions on pg 347 (pdf pg 362) and you will see the same conclusion I asserted.

I am not of the resident "Nuke Mecca!" clan, which shows up ranting for this destruction on this forum every time a car bomb goes off in Baghdad. Contrary to their view, the destruction of Mecca and it's environs should be contempated only as a last resort, the Armageddon Option - akin to America being in Hitler's Bunker in May, 1945 with no other way out.

As I have stated (as do you), the ensuing Jihad over this destruction would be terrible to behold. But it may in the end be the only thing which could ultimately bring down Islam into the ashes of the rest of the world if the only alternative is the total destruction of the West with only Islam left standing.

The destruction of Islam is not necessary to ensure the survival of the West, the secularization of Islam will bring that about with less catasthropic consequences to humanity.

The destruction of Muslim extremism however, is the goal here.

The destruction of Islam is not necessary to ensure the survival of the West

True. It wasn't the case 1000 years ago and it isn't today.

the secularization of Islam will bring that about with less catasthropic consequences to humanity.

Easier said than done. For this to happen, entire cultures within the Muslim world need to be changed. This is part of our goal in Iraq. Democracy and Western ideals of secular law are generally incompatible with the Koran and other writings of Islam. Difficult, but it must be done at least to the extent they are not an active threat to all other civilizations and they turn back inward.

The destruction of Muslim extremism however, is the goal here.

Certainly. The terrorists must be destroyed or completely neutralised. With them, there is no compromise and no possible peaceful future for the rest of humanity which doesn't follow Islam.

In the end, perhaps the best we can hope for is more of the same; royal families, heavy handed state fascism or military rule. They have heretofore been the successful working models of Muslim states. Islam is not a religion that lends itself at all to republican principles.

"This is part of our goal in Iraq. Democracy and Western ideals of secular law are generally incompatible with the Koran and other writings of Islam."

I'm not so certain as to just how true this is, as I've been scrolling through various screeds by Sayyid Qutb and other ideologues that led up to Osama bin Laden and I'm honestly struck by how recent a phenomenon a lot of the beliefs that we now associate with Islam now are. For example, the idea of jihad as being a non-state enterprise that anybody can engage or this whole notion of "shopping around" for fatwas to justify one's activities with a religious seal of approval.

Traditionally, Islam has viewed jihad as being a state enterprise that is issued forth by a nation's ruler (either a caliph acting as a spiritual descendant of Mohammed or a monarch acting under the Muslim form of the divine right of kings) and that is probably the best way to run any kind of a system - states are generally *far* more conservative in waging wars than non-states, especially assymetrical ones, because there is so much potential loss for them. And the fatwa shopping appears to have been a direct result of the loss of a sane theological executive in Islam in the form of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s and the British decision to hand over a good chunk of the Arabian Peninsula to the al-Saud clan and their Wahhabi surrogates.

Keep in mind that when Wahhabism first cropped up in the early 1800s it was primarily the religion of bandits because its Trotsky-esque "smash the state" view that everything had been corrupted after the death of Mohammed and needed to be purified all over again through violence - a perfect justification that helped the sand raiders of ancient Arabia transform themselves from common thugs to into Holy Warriors(TM). When they finally took Mecca, they smashed all of the Sufi shrines and symbols of Ottoman authority because they saw themselves as being part of a utopian revolution - the same thing that the communists did in Russia and China, abeit from a secular perspective.

The Ottoman military slapped the Wahhabis down and drove them back into the desert, where they wouldn't re-emerge for another century or so until World War 1. And after destroying the Ottoman Empire, the Europeans basically put the wolves in charge of the hen house throughout the Muslim world, and not just in regards to the Wahhabis - the Alawites who form the core of Syria's Baathist Party are the descendants of the same people who were lapdogs to the French back in the colonial days.

In other countries where Wahhabism is either a minority or has been forcibly contained (Morocco, Tunisia, Indonesia, ect.) most of the population is fairly open to Western values and the like. One might ask the question, as John Derbyshire over at the NR's "The Corner" has, as to why, if Wahhabism is so popular in countries like Saudi Arabia or Sudan, does it require such an enormous police state to maintain itself?

"Difficult, but it must be done at least to the extent they are not an active threat to all other civilizations and they turn back inward."

I think that process has already begun and that the destruction of al-Qaeda and the fall of the Wahhabi clerics in Saudi Arabia as well as the NIF tyrants in Sudan will hasten it swiftly. Keep in mind that in 1941 Shintoism was the key threat to Western civilization. Japan is still a majority Shinto/Buddhist (many Japanese consider themselves to be members of both faiths) today as it was in 1941, but they are far from being a threat to Western civilization. I see little reason why the same end-result could not occur within Islam.

"In the end, perhaps the best we can hope for is more of the same; royal families, heavy handed state fascism or military rule. They have heretofore been the successful working models of Muslim states. Islam is not a religion that lends itself at all to republican principles."

Well, if the general population in any one country wants a king they can have them - I would certainly rather monarchies like those in Jordan or Morocco to the "modern" one-party states that hold sway in Libya, Sudan, Syria, and formerly Iraq if it comes to that. However, Indonesia is now a fledgling democracy which, while dealing with problems not unlike those of Mexico, seems quite open to republican principles. Pakistan was formerly a democracy and if the Wahhabi influence can be broken there could easily be one again. The same goes with Turkey or the millions of Russian Muslims who have taken full advantage of the freedoms that have followed the fall of communism in the old Soviet Bloc. The same could easily be said of Indian Muslims.

I'll tell you, if they tried THAT to the Vatican on Christmas Day, I would be all for a crack team going into MECCA and obliterating the black quaballah, once and for all. I think Israel could do that for us.

At least paint "Morrison Lives!" on the side of it.

Good input. Thanks.

Doubtful...

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pershing.htm

Oh well -- thanks for the rumor stoppage.

It is getting to the point that I feel like I need to run the time of day through Snopes! :)