If only this were true ...

Muhammad Tahir, "The Pope's Special Forces" (Ummah Pulse, February 29, 2008), writes: "Jane's, the world's premier provider of military and strategic intelligence, describes Special Forces personnel (e.g. the SAS) in the following terms:

"These soldiers are different: they have to be intelligent, lateral thinkers, superbly fit and have the mindset that keeps them going when others would give up."

One part of the story concerns the Jesuits as the "special forces" of the Pope, at least historically:

Who are the Jesuits? One revealing description states them to be "what was effectively an elite force of intellectual missionary priests... always at the service of the universal Church."

John Ralston Saul, in his book Voltaire's Bastards, describes the Jesuits as "intellectual mercenaries", whose intellectual talents were placed at the Church's disposal to achieve whatever ends the Church required. He argues that they are the originators of the "tyranny of Reason" - the modern day trap of horrible outcomes (the Holocaust, the nuclear bomb, the global arms industry) which arise from perfectly sound logical thought processes.

The other part of the story concerns "the media launch of a certain Felix Koerner on the BBC who "is a prime mover in the Turkish secularist establishment's latest attack on Islam." Read on.

[Hat tip to M.W.]