Islam and evolution toward the West...impossible?

According to BXVI, yup (courtesey the Corner):

The Asia Times Online columnist Spengler notes that Pope Benedict XVI is recently reported to have observed that Islam cannot reform itself along the lines the West is depending on. The reason is very simple: unlike Judaism and Christianity, which take the Bible to be the inspired word of God, mediated through humans and therefore subject to interpretation, Islam believes the Koran is the literal and direct word of God, dictated to the Prophet. If you believe this, then it's easy to see why diverging too far from the plain text of the Koran is blasphemous (and we know what happens to those deemed to have blasphemed against Islam). Spengler is amazed by the silence from the Western media over this remarkable statement attributed to the current Pope -- a statement Spengler endorses -- and he suggests that we shrink from acknowledging it because the consequences of the Pope being right about this is too horrible to contemplate.


Um, yeah. This is too horrible to contemplate. I mean, whew. If you believe that the Koran is the direct word of God dictated by the Prophet then blasphemy is pretty easy to come by. Can you imagine what would've happened to Christianity if we took everything in the Bible as literal? I mean, the no cutting your hair thing that the Amish cite would've had most of us dead by now as "infidels"....woo boy. This, combined with the sobering concluding chapters in George Weigel's The Cube and the Cathedral don't paint the happiest picture for world affairs, especially in Europe...