Pope Visits Turkey, Makes Things Worse?

The pope has gone to Turkey. The coverage of his trip has been annoying, to say the least. Perhaps the most annoying pope-related news item I have seen is the current cover of Time magazine:

The cover depicts a seemingly-humble, gentle, and peaceful pope - note that his head is bowed. He seems to be facing "Islam." As if Turkey were representative of "Islam," and as if there is such a thing as "Islam"! I mean, there are a million Islams and probably a million Turkeys too. Think of how it would sound if the Iranian press had covered Ahmedinejad's recent visit to the US as a visit to "Christendom." That's how absurd this terminology is.

Note also that the pope is "confronting" Islam - suggesting that Islam is a bad child that needs to be scolded, or maybe given a time-out in the corner or something. Bad Islam! No dessert for you!

And last but not least, the pope is confronting Islam with a crucifix in his hand, with the figure of Jesus leading the way. Now, let's be generous here and say this was probably an unconscious choice on the part of the artist. But surely the image passed the perusal of an editor or two, who should have been smarter and should have pulled the image of something that conjured up the ghost of, oh I don't know, the crusades???!!?! Surely someone at Time realized that this image would capture perfectly the posture that Western (Christian?) leaders have been explicitly adopting for at least the last 5 years, which is one of aggression and bigotry. And yet it went to press. Ugh.

Let's not be surprised when we realize that this visit only manages to make things worse.