In Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” according to a feature published Thursday in the British Catholic weekly The Tablet, “the Prophet Muhammad, along with four popes, is pictured suffering the torments of Hell.” However, as far as The Tablet is concerned, the big news in this 700-year-old literary masterpiece is not that, but a “less well-known” aspect of the epic poem: “how much Dante’s masterpiece owes to the vibrant culture of early medieval Islam.” Well, of course. All over what used to be known as Christendom, the best and the brightest are eagerly twisting themselves into all sorts of knots in order to argue that Islam has always been a part of the West, and not as a historic adversary, either, but as an integral element of Western culture. Why shouldn’t The Tablet join the party?
