Yes, Pope Benedict XVI fits into that long line of polemicists who have in- or unintentionally run afoul of the Muslim world as Der Spiegel argues here. Rushdie, Hirsi Ali and of course Theo van Gogh come to mind. But if we use that analogy than almost immediately it becomes evident that the Pope’s comments have most likely not been that inadvertent after all. At least I believe that this pontiff is far too clever and experienced to have miscalculated the impact of his comments, he was after all the ideological force behind his media savvy predecessor, John Paul II.

The question now of course is if the free wrold needs to rally behind what Christopher Hitchens calls a “moribund church” or the force of secular reason in dealing with radical Islam. The Pope has put his option the table, but I fear that there will not be that many takers. On the other hand we know that reason and secularism are, despite their compelling nature, not exactly providing the morally strong cohesion that we need going forward. And therein we find the hard problem: the West remains far more divided than its current opponents who despite their own internal divisions have embraced something that we seemed to have lost a long time ago. Like him or not, our German pontiff is probably one of the few to have articulated that particular weakness.