The Pope also said that there exists Islamic doctrine that eschews violence, didn't he?
I don't mean any offense by this, but I'm going to have to take Johnson's view over yours, as you should well take his or any historian of your choosing, over my mine, as Johnson had access to documents and info that you and I don't. Assuming of course, that you are not a historian of his caliber and CV.
What seemed obvious to me, and the point I was trying to get at was that once this mutual disclaimer is out of the way, a better climate is created for 'dialogue.' Though it is doubtful, absent the emergence of a Islamic Churchill or Bonhoeffer and the likes of the Churchmen that surrounded him, it will still come to naught.
And as far as your comment on women and Islam, to me that's where their disease lies. They absolutely hate women, and I don't quite understand why? A couple of years ago there was an article written about the stoning of an 'adulteress' that really made me nauseous.
No offense. He was simply generalizing his viewpoint, and there are other views from equally well-founded scholars. I think he overlooks the political, on-the-ground situation.
As for the Islamic doctrine, as the Pope pointed out, the no-compulsion doctrine was early (when Mo was weak) and was then superseded by the doctrine of conversion by force.
I agree that they are unlikely to be able to produce anyone who can seriously dialogue with the Pope, simply because - as he pointed out - Islam rejects reason and has virtually no foundation for its part of the dialogue, which requires two equal parties.
One of the interesting things that I have seen mentioned only once is that by the conclusion of the conversation of Paleologus with the Muslim scholar, the Muslim had begun to feel a burning within him, that is, a desire for truth, and the dialogue ends very ambiguously, with the impression that the sincere Muslim has been convinced of the truth and will go and seek it. This is an interesting point, because I do think that the Pope is also calling us to (a) know our own faith and (b) evangelize the Muslims.
It's going to be hard under the burka though! I think they hate women because Mohammed obviously had some problems in that area. Any man who would "marry" a 6 year old and congratulate himself on waiting until she was 9 to have full sexual intercourse with her clearly had problems. This was not even an accepted practice in his time, certainly not among Christians and Jews.
And the fact that Islam has rendered Muslim men class-bound, powerless in front of their imams or even older men, given them a distaste for labor (which is considered demeaning in Islamic cultures), and focuses mainly on their sexual pleasure, which is permitted with everything from small boys to barnyard animals to 20 minute "pleasure marriages" with prostitutes, indicates some of its shortcomings that the Pope was probably too polite to address!
The only thing that puzzles me is why feminist groups are so silent, or even come out cheering for Islam. Don't they know what their life would be like under Islam? But the whole problem with liberals is that they think they're so special that nothing will ever affect them.