It is 1517 in a small town in Germany and a humble Augustinian monk is nailing a paper with some thoughts to the chapel door in the town’s castle.

These thoughts had been preying on his mind for a number of years ever since his visit to Rome.

That scrap of paper on the chapel door was later to resound throughout Christendom to the extent that it made England’s Magna Carta seem like a run-of-the mill memo.

And the humble monk turned out to be God’s second greatest gift to the Roman Catholic Church.

It is exactly someone like that humble monk that Islam now needs.

Mohammed came 600 years after Christ, that humble monk’s hammering on that chapel door took place almost 600 years ago.

That is exactly where Islam is today: where the Roman Catholic Church was 600 years ago.

Unless it is blessed with a Second Coming, a Second Coming in its version of a Martin Luther, Islam will forever remain a creed that has been imposed on one rather than a creed that one gravitates to.

Joe Genovese

Birkirkara