Cologne's yield: the West without defenses

(To Giampiero Venturi)
12/01/16

In September of 2006 the then Pope Benedict XVI speaking at the University of Regensburg, quoted Dialogues with a Persian of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II. The Pope was referring to the passage in which the use of force for the conversion to a faith or an idea was deprecated and specifically the emperor indicated Mohammed and the sword of Islam.

Pope Benedict's phrases quoted words of peace, the result of reasoning based on the observation of manners and customs. In the dialogues of Manuel there is a close comparison between legislative systems and different cultures, between Muslims, Jews and Christians in particular. Just read to understand that there is nothing aggressive, either in the book or in the Pope's quotation.

The reactions to the words of Benedict XVI were fierce. Even before in the Islamic world, they were extremely violent in the West. The liberal progressive world, always attentive to the fascination of reason, awaited the German pope from the day of his election as Pope and the occasion was greedy. Eugenio Scalfari on the Republic and above all the radical consciences of authoritative progressive thought workshops such as the New York Times they were there, ready to crossfire. The Pope who bore the name of Benedict, patron of Europe, could not even be granted arbitrariness of free speech. The sacred principle that many heads "without master" were willing to sacrifice themselves, for the Pope it was not worth. Not even if the words had been extrapolated from the complete speech and quoted a text from 600 years before: no, Pope Benedict was burned at the extreme stake of freedom (of others).

Nothing could be more useful than that episode to understand the ideological short circuit in which the right-thinking West is fulminating: the freedom of others to destroy us is so important that anyone who thinks about it must be prevented from being free.

New Year's violence in Cologne and other German cities brings us to the same level of analysis. Above all, the reactions of the last few hours that reproduce the carousel of the distinctions and of the "however" more worried about avoiding associating Islam to violence than to be indignant at the violation of the most basic freedoms.

Had they been the symbols of the European tradition, white and Christian to be profaned, we would have had no problems. We would even find acolytes of tolerant fanaticism ready to share. This time, however, the short circuit is total because New Year's psycho-physical violence has had as its object women, annoyed in their right to move and above all to be such. In Cologne, with a practice well rooted in Islamic cultures, the right to do or to act, but even to be, has been violated.

The ideological embarrassment is evident. Forced to choose between the basic principles of feminist thought and fundamentalist immigrationism, the chic & choc thinkers nibble and appeal to the last possible hiding place: the watchword becomes "do not make a bundle of all the grass". The numbers don't matter, the statistics sometimes don't matter.

Instead it would be enough a bit of common sense and above all ideological humility to understand where you are wrong, before it is late: the risk of identifying Islam with violence and civil delay is no more serious than that of underestimating its spread tout court in a society secularized, fragile Western nation, at the mercy of arrogance and impunity traded by right.

It would be enough to count the countries with an Islamic majority with democratic traditions or throw an eye to the Pakistani, Saudi, Malaysian and Moroccan criminal systems. It would be enough to reflect on the principles of reciprocity or on the social status of women in Senegal, Sudan, Brunei, Qatar, Mali, Turkmenistan. It would be enough to travel a little and realize how dangerous the idea of ​​unilateral progress is at all costs.

Radical minds so ready to declare obscurantist a comma of Cardinal Ratzinger or homophobic a sneeze by Putin bow their eyes to an embarrassing macroscopic phenomenon even for a mediocre intelligence. No trace even of the combats daughters of female emancipation always ready to evade what remains of the western male. But this is the wind now and freedom is valid depending on who asks it: whoever shot at zero against Pope Benedict is the same person who wrote a year ago I am Charlie after all…

If the ideological prejudice is able to go beyond common sense it is difficult to say. The fury of reason is able to blind even itself. The enemy of the West is not Islam, but its self-harm. Precisely Benedict XVI quoted Pascal as saying that reason not subjected to absolute principles makes one blind. Even his atheist admirer, Oriana Fallaci, was right when he argued that the West is defenseless because it has long since stopped loving itself. A bizarre sense of freedom and an instrumental idea of ​​tolerance mean just that.

Poor us, poor Europe, poor world.

(photo: XNUMXth century miniature of the battle of Nicopolis)