At the close of a compelling, thoroughly documented address (delivered April 2, 2006, at The Legatus Summit, Naples, Florida) entitled, “Islam and Western Democracies,” Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, posed four salient questions for his erstwhile Muslim interlocutors wishing to engage in meaningful interfaith dialogue:

1) Do they believe that the peaceful suras of the Koran are abrogated by the verses of the sword? (see here, pp. 67-75)

2) Is the program of military expansion (100 years after Muhammad’s death Muslim armies reached Spain and India) to be resumed when possible?

3) Do they believe that democratic majorities of Muslims in Europe would impose Shari’a (Islamic religious) law? (see here)

4) Can we discuss Islamic history (here and here) -- even the hermeneutical problems around the origins of the Koran (see here, here, here, and here) -- without threats of violence?

Media attention was focused almost exclusively on the Cardinal’s statement that, “In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages”—an unassailable observation, given, for example that sura (chapter) 9 alone comprises in its entirety a series of timeless war proclamations against Jews, Christians, and pagans (i.e., the latter being Hindus, Buddhists, and Animists)—recording, as per believing Muslims, the “uncreated word” of Allah himself...