Holding something hostage by being interested in something else?

It never ceases to amaze me the xenophobia people have concerning Islam.  At first I would dismiss it as the ignorant rambling of the uneducated, but now I’m not so sure.

An obsession with Islam threatens to distract the Catholic Church from dialogue with other religions, according to the top Vatican official in charge of interfaith relations.

“In a way we are being held hostage by Islam a little bit,” said Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, in an interview published Tuesday on the Catholic Web site Terrasanta.net.

“Islam is very important, but there are also other great Asiatic religious traditions,” he said.

Indeed there are other great religious traditions, but don’t blame Islam if people aren’t interested in them!