The Pope's Problems with Islam

[Sean Osborne]

I recieved the following in an email. The problems the Pope faces and the problems Roman Catholicism face with respect to Islam are primarily due to the actions and offical statements each has made. This report makes this quite clear. See bold text below. The remedy to these problems is inherent and just as clear by reversing direction and re-instating the previous position held by the Roman Catholic Church.



He bears no malice, but he is a worried man
By Damian Thompson
(Filed: 16/09/2006)

It is ironic that Benedict XVI finds himself accused of crude anti-Islamic prejudice after quoting a medieval emperor's opinion that Mohammed's violent teachings were "evil and inhuman". For no pope in history has made a deeper study of Islam. Having explored every verse of the Koran, and engaged in long debates with Muslim scholars, he rejects the simplistic notion — held by fundamentalist Christians, and by the Roman Catholic Church until the middle of the 20th century — that Islam is evil. Yet he is convinced that some of its doctrines are morally indefensible. In Benedict's view, a profound ambiguity about violence lies at the heart of Islam, arising from the Prophet's belief that faith can be spread by the sword. Mohammed, after all, was a general whose troops beheaded hundreds of enemy captives. Asked recently whether he considered Islam to be a religion of peace, the Pope replied: "Islam contains elements that are in favour of peace, just as it contains other elements." Christianity, by contrast, he sees as a religion of pure peace — which is why he adopts a near-pacifist approach to conflict in the Middle East. Where the pontiff differs from his predecessor is in his impatience with what might be termed "Islamic political correctness". John Paul II hoped that prayer could bring Christians and Muslims closer together, and famously prayed alongside Islamic leaders at In other words, the Pope subscribes to a version of the "clash of civilisations" theory, which sees a fundamental incompatibility between Western and Islamic cultures. In his opinion, the primary aim of Christian-Muslim discussion is to avoid conflict. (EDIT: TOO LATE !!! - War has long been declared upon us all by Islam.) For example, he supports the right of Muslim children to be taught their own religion in European schools — but on the strict understanding that their communities respect human rights. Benedict's lecture at ThompsonRegensburg University merely sought to elaborate his existing views. Beautifully written and constructed, it was intended for scholars interested in the relationship between God, rationality and coercion. Although he described the Muslim approach to violence as defying God-given rationality, the Pope had no intention of offending ordinary Muslims or creating media headlines. Yet the leader of the world's Roman Catholics has done both. How could a man who is so notoriously careful with words have committed what, in the eyes of liberal society, is a diplomatic blunder? The answer may be that underlying Benedict's nuanced world view is a deep-seated fear of Islam, which crops up in the daily conversation of Italian Catholics and stretches as far north as his Bavarian homeland. He does not believe that the Koran condones terrorism; he bears no animosity towards peace-loving Muslims; but he is worried that the aggressive ethos of authentic Islam may provoke a crisis in Western society. And if the price of making that point is a "diplomatic blunder", then so be it.

[Sean Osborne]

The Pope must not underestimate the islamofascists. For that matter, none of us should... but he most of all. I suspect his assassination is being actively plotted.

Vatican Stops Short of Apology as Muslim Leaders Decry Comments

Saturday, September 16, 2006

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI "sincerely regrets" offending Muslims with his reference to an obscure medieval text that characterizes some of the teachings of Islam's founder as "evil and inhuman," the Vatican said Saturday.

But the statement stopped short of the apology demanded by Islamic leaders around the globe, and anger among Muslims remained intense. Palestinians attacked five churches in the West Bank and Gaza over the pope's remarks Tuesday in a speech to university professors in his native Germany.

In a broader talk rejecting any religious motivation for violence, Benedict cited the words of a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith."

The pontiff didn't endorse that description, but he didn't question it, and his words set off a firestorm of protests across the Muslim world.
The new Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said the pope's position on Islam is unmistakably in line with Vatican teaching that says the church "esteems" Muslims.

Benedict "thus sincerely regrets that certain passages of his address could have sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim faithful and should have been interpreted in a manner that in no way corresponds to his intentions," Bertone said in a statement.

He noted that earlier during his German trip, Benedict warned "secularized Western culture" against holding contempt for any religion or believers.
Bertone said the pontiff sought in his university speech to condemn all religious motivation for violence, "from whatever side it may come." But the pope's words only seemed to fan rage.

Bertone's statement, released Saturday by the Vatican press office, failed to satisfy critics, although British Muslim leaders said it was a welcome step.

Mohammed Bishr, a senior Muslim Brotherhood member in Egypt, said the statement "was not an apology" but a "pretext that the pope was quoting somebody else as saying so and so."
"We need the pope to admit the big mistake he has committed and then agree on apologizing, because we will not accept others to apologize on his behalf," Bishr said.

There was no indication whether the pope would do so. His first public appearance since his return from Germany was set for Sunday, when Benedict planned to greet the faithful at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence in the Alban Hills near Rome.

Morocco recalled its ambassador to the Vatican on Saturday to protest the pope's "offensive" remarks, and Afghanistan's parliament and Foreign Ministry demanded the pope apologize.

Turkey cast some doubt on whether Benedict could proceed with a planned visit in November in what would be the pontiff's first trip to a Muslim nation.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted the pope apologize to the Muslim world, saying he had spoken "not like a man of religion but like a usual politician."
Asked if Muslim anger would affect the pope's trip to Istanbul, where he hopes to meet with Orthodox leaders headquartered there, Erdogan replied, "I wouldn't know."

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of the world's 200 million Orthodox Christians, issued a statement saying he was "deeply" saddened by the tensions sparked by the pope's comments.
"We have to show the determination and care not to hurt one another and avoid situations where we may hurt each others' beliefs," the Istanbul-based Patriarchate said.

In West Bank attacks on four churches, Palestinians used guns, firebombs and lighter fluid, leaving church doors charred and walls scorched by flames and pocked with bullet holes. Nobody was reported injured. Two Catholic churches, an Anglican one and a Greek Orthodox one were hit. A Greek Orthodox church was also attacked in Gaza City.

(EDIT:: Excuse me, but islamofascists will seize upon any excuse to attack Jews and Christians whenever and whereever they can. The Pope made some comments... so the islamofascist response is to attack, firebomb and burn ALL Christian churches?

Wake up people, wake the hell up!)

A group calling itself "Lions of Monotheism" told The Associated Press by phone that the attacks were a protest of the pope's remarks on Islam.
During his speech, Benedict stressed that he was quoting words of a Byzantine emperor and did not comment directly on the "evil and inhuman" assessment. On Saturday, Bertone said that "the Holy Father did not mean, nor does he mean, to make that opinion his own in any way."
Benedict quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and an educated Persian on the truths of Christianity and Islam.

"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," the pope said. "He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."'

The grand sheik of Cairo's Al-Azhar Mosque, the Sunni Arab world's most powerful institution, condemned the pope's remarks as "reflecting ignorance."

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose Southeast Asian nation has a large Muslim population, demanded that Benedict retract his remarks and not "take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created."

In a first reaction from a top Christian leader, the head of Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church criticized the pope. "Any remarks which offend Islam and Muslims are against the teachings of Christ," Coptic Pope Shenouda III was quoted as telling the pro-government newspaper Al-Ahram.
The Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah and Lebanon's top Sunni Muslim religious authority also denounced the pope's comments.
British Muslims sought to calm the situation, praising the Vatican statement on behalf of the pope.

"We welcome his apology and we hope now we can work together and build bridges. At the same time we would condemn all forms of violent demonstration," Muhammad Umar, chairman of Britain's Ramadhan Foundation, a youth organization, told Sky News.

But Muhammad Abdul Bari, general-secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the pontiff needed to repudiate the emperor's views he quoted to restore relations between Muslims and the Roman Catholic Church.

In India, Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, who is president of the Indian Catholic Bishops Conference, said the Christian community in that country must face Muslim protests over the pope's speech "with Christian courage and prayer because truth needs no other defense," according to AsiaNews, a Vatican-affiliated news agency.

[Aplomb]

Here's an excellent piece from the Catholic perspective:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/c...a1a7e1c804&p=1

Rioters' madness shames Muslim world

Reactions of some fanatics does not help open dialogue

Father Raymond J. de Souza, National Post

Published: Saturday, September 16, 2006

The eruption of rage in some quarters of the Islamic world against Pope Benedict XVI requires that several tough things be said.

Painful though it may be, speaking frankly is necessary if there is to be honest and open dialogue between the Abrahamic faiths. Given the reaction to Benedict's address, though, one wonders if that dialogue is even possible.

The Pope devoted almost 4,000 words to examining the relationship between faith and reason, and the prospect for dialogue between modernity and the world of religion.

In the course of that address he quoted a dialogue recorded between the Byzantine (Christian) Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an erudite Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam. The dialogue took place during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402.

During their conversation, the Pope said, the Emperor "turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.' "

Benedict was quoting a 14th-century Christian emperor, under siege from the Ottomans, defending the position that spreading religion by violence is contrary to the nature of God. The Emperor, quite reasonably given his circumstances, suggested to his Persian interlocutor such a view did not prevail in Islamic thought.

In response to this historical excursus in an academic lecture by one of the world's most erudite theologians, we are witnessing a wave of madness and malice, no doubt an embarrassment to millions of Muslims.

Roman Catholics are likely angry. Relations between adherents of the two religions simply cannot develop without all conducting themselves as mature adults.

It does a disservice to children to call the wild-eyed statements and deranged behaviour of the past days childish.

It is not only the obscenity of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist terrorist band suppressed in several Muslim states, demanding an apology from anyone, let alone the Holy Father.

It is not only the grandstanding Pakistani politicians passing resolutions condemning a papal speech few read, and even fewer understood. It is not only the extraneous charges about the Holocaust and Hitler by the agitated and excited.

It is that we have seen this before.

When Pope John Paul II made his epic pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Palestinian Muslim representatives jostled him on the Temple Mount, shouted at him, and, in one episode of maximum rudeness, abandoned him on stage during an interfaith meeting. Bashir Assad, the Syrian President, treated him to an anti-Semitic rant when the late pope visited Syria.
Catholic goodwill toward global Islam is severely attenuated by such continued maltreatment of our universal pastors.

And it is well past time that the maltreatment of history ceased too.

The irony of the accusations that Pope Benedict has a "Crusader mentality" is that he was speaking about the period in which the Crusades themselves took place.

Catholics have for quite some time now confessed the sinful and wicked shadows that marked the Crusades, but any suggestion the whole affair was about rapacious Christians setting upon irenic Muslims must be rejected.

After all, the formerly Christian lands of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia Minor were not converted to Islam by Muslim missionary martyrs.

Those lands were conquered by the sword.

The Crusader idea was that they could be recovered. Who wronged who first is a fruitless historical inquiry, but historical honesty requires an admission that Muslims wronged as much as they were wronged against.
The sword of Islam is carried today by self-professed jihadis. In most countries with Muslim majorities, Christians do not have the full freedom to practise their faith without fear.

Whether private harassment or state-sanctioned torture, Christians the world over know all too well that the sword of Islam has not been sheathed. No doubt the extreme reaction to Benedict's address will serve the purpose of keeping local Christians in their place throughout the Islamic world.

Pope Benedict is a gracious man and a Christian disciple, so it is likely he will extend an olive branch to Islamic leaders. He will likely speak to his fellow Catholic prelates about the way of the Cross, and that the disciple cannot be greater than the Master. And will no doubt pray that his fellow children of Abraham might turn away from the sword of conquest, and of terror.

It is a prayer for conversion of heart -- a prayer urgently needed for the mad and the malicious.

'YOU WILL FIND THINGS ONLY EVIL AND INHUMAN ...'

In his lecture, delivered on Tuesday at the University of Regensburg where he once taught theology, the Pope called for a dialogue of cultures "so urgently needed in the world today." His larger point is that the West's separation of faith and reason into different spheres (with reason elevated above faith) is offensive to other traditions, including Islam, and is a barrier to understanding. He takes as his point of departure the dialogue between the erudite 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam.

In the seventh conversation ... the Emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The Emperor must have known that Sura 2:256 [of the Koran] reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." It is one of the suras of the early period, when Muhammad was still powerless and under [threat].

But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Koran, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels," he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The Emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably (syn logo) is contrary to God's nature.
Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats ...

"To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death ..."

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.

Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn [an 11th-century Arab theologian] went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

[R]eason and faith [must] come together in a new way ... Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid.

Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions ...

"Not to act reasonably is contrary to the nature of God," said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures.

© National Post 2006

[Sean Osborne]

I suspect his assassination is being actively plotted.

I did not stutter when making the above statement.


http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/somali-cleric-calls-for-popes-death/2006/09/16/1158334739295.html

Somali cleric calls for pope's death
September 17, 2006

A HARDLINE cleric linked to Somalia's powerful Islamist movement has called for Muslims to "hunt down" and kill Pope Benedict XVI for his controversial comments about Islam.

Sheikh Abubukar Hassan Malin urged Muslims to find the pontiff and punish him for insulting the Prophet Mohammed and Allah in a speech that he said was as offensive as author Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses.

"We urge you Muslims wherever you are to hunt down the Pope for his barbaric statements as you have pursued Salman Rushdie, the enemy of Allah who offended our religion," he said in Friday evening prayers.

"Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim," Malin, a prominent cleric in the Somali capital, told worshippers at a mosque in southern Mogadishu.

"We call on all Islamic Communities across the world to take revenge on the baseless critic called the pope," he said.

Reached by telephone on Saturday, Malin confirmed making the remarks that were echoed in less strident form by other senior clerics in the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS).

Another SICS executive member, Sheikh Ahmed Abdullahi, vented similar anger at the pope's "barbarous criticism" but stopped short of calling for his murder.
"He must apologise because he has offended the most honorable person who ever lived in the world," Abdullahi said.

The German-born leader of the Roman Catholic Church has been condemned in the Muslim world for comments he made at a Tuesday lecture, in which he implicitly denounced links between Islam and violence, particularly with reference to jihad, or "holy war."

The pope also quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who said innovations introduced by the Prophet Mohammed were "evil and inhuman.

Somalia, a Horn of Africa nation of some 10 million mainly moderate Muslims, has been wracked by instability for the past 16 years but has recently seen the rise of fundamentalist Islamists who seized the capital in June.

Al Qaeda and the islamofascists of Somalia recently defeated the combined arms of various US-supported (some support, eh?) tribal chieftans, and now control most of Somalia.

[Sean Osborne]

“Catholics have for quite some time now confessed the sinful and wicked shadows that marked the Crusades, but any suggestion the whole affair was about rapacious Christians setting upon irenic Muslims must be rejected.

After all, the formerly Christian lands of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia Minor were not converted to Islam by Muslim missionary martyrs. Those lands were conquered by the sword.”

Rioters' madness shames Muslim world Reactions of some fanatics does not help open dialogue Saturday » September 16 » 2006 National Post Saturday, September 16, 2006 CREDIT: Alexander Hassenstein, Getty Images Pope Benedict XVI greets a crowd in front of a church in Munich on Sunday. Words from a lecture he gave on Tuesday touched off protests across the Muslim world. The eruption of rage in some quarters of the Islamic world against Pope Benedict XVI requires that several tough things be said. Painful though it may be, speaking frankly is necessary if there is to be honest and open dialogue between the Abrahamic faiths. Given the reaction to Benedict's address, though, one wonders if that dialogue is even possible. The Pope devoted almost 4,000 words to examining the relationship between faith and reason, and the prospect for dialogue between modernity and the world of religion. In the course of that address he quoted a dialogue recorded between the Byzantine (Christian) Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an erudite Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam. The dialogue took place during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402. During their conversation, the Pope said, the Emperor "turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.' " Benedict was quoting a 14th-century Christian emperor, under siege from the Ottomans, defending the position that spreading religion by violence is contrary to the nature of God. The Emperor, quite reasonably given his circumstances, suggested to his Persian interlocutor such a view did not prevail in Islamic thought. In response to this historical excursus in an academic lecture by one of the world's most erudite theologians, we are witnessing a wave of madness and malice, no doubt an embarrassment to millions of Muslims. Roman Catholics are likely angry. Relations between adherents of the two religions simply cannot develop without all conducting themselves as mature adults. It does a disservice to children to call the wild-eyed statements and deranged behaviour of the past days childish. It is not only the obscenity of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist terrorist band suppressed in several Muslim states, demanding an apology from anyone, let alone the Holy Father. It is not only the grandstanding Pakistani politicians passing resolutions condemning a papal speech few read, and even fewer understood. It is not only the extraneous charges about the Holocaust and Hitler by the agitated and excited. It is that we have seen this before. When Pope John Paul II made his epic pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Palestinian Muslim representatives jostled him on the Temple Mount, shouted at him, and, in one episode of maximum rudeness, abandoned him on stage during an interfaith meeting. Bashir Assad, the Syrian President, treated him to an anti-Semitic rant when the late pope visited Syria. Catholic goodwill toward global Islam is severely attenuated by such continued maltreatment of our universal pastors. And it is well past time that the maltreatment of history ceased too. The irony of the accusations that Pope Benedict has a "Crusader mentality" is that he was speaking about the period in which the Crusades themselves took place. Catholics have for quite some time now confessed the sinful and wicked shadows that marked the Crusades, but any suggestion the whole affair was about rapacious Christians setting upon irenic Muslims must be rejected. After all, the formerly Christian lands of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia Minor were not converted to Islam by Muslim missionary martyrs. Those lands were conquered by the sword. The Crusader idea was that they could be recovered. Who wronged who first is a fruitless historical inquiry, but historical honesty requires an admission that Muslims wronged as much as they were wronged against. The sword of Islam is carried today by self-professed jihadis. In most countries with Muslim majorities, Christians do not have the full freedom to practise their faith without fear. Whether private harassment or state-sanctioned torture, Christians the world over know all too well that the sword of Islam has not been sheathed. No doubt the extreme reaction to Benedict's address will serve the purpose of keeping local Christians in their place throughout the Islamic world. Pope Benedict is a gracious man and a Christian disciple, so it is likely he will extend an olive branch to Islamic leaders. He will likely speak to his fellow Catholic prelates about the way of the Cross, and that the disciple cannot be greater than the Master. And will no doubt pray that his fellow children of Abraham might turn away from the sword of conquest, and of terror. It is a prayer for conversion of heart -- a prayer urgently needed for the mad and the malicious. 'YOU WILL FIND THINGS ONLY EVIL AND INHUMAN ...' In his lecture, delivered on Tuesday at the University of Regensburg where he once taught theology, the Pope called for a dialogue of cultures "so urgently needed in the world today." His larger point is that the West's separation of faith and reason into different spheres (with reason elevated above faith) is offensive to other traditions, including Islam, and is a barrier to understanding. He takes as his point of departure the dialogue between the erudite 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam. In the seventh conversation ... the Emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The Emperor must have known that Sura 2:256 [of the Koran] reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." It is one of the suras of the early period, when Muhammad was still powerless and under [threat]. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Koran, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels," he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The Emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably (syn logo) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats ... "To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death ..." The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn [an 11th-century Arab theologian] went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry. [R]eason and faith [must] come together in a new way ... Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions ... "Not to act reasonably is contrary to the nature of God," said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. © National Post 2006

[Sean Osborne]

The Pope's problems with Islam are our problems with Islam, that is to be prefectly clear, the entire Judeo-Christian and Non-Islamic worlds problem.

I believe we have arrived to the purpose of this thread. That lesson even now the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church is having to learn. It is a lesson many will have to learn, or re-learn as the case may be because some of us have the attention span of a 5-year old child.. It is a lesson I originally taught to a professed Muslim.

Back on the Anomalies.Net religion forum -- THREE AND ONE HALF (3 1/2) YEARS AGO -- I stated the fact that that this problem we now have was not our problem but It was a problem for Muslim's that only Muslim's could solve and that unless they did so - and with the utmost urgency - we would be forced to solve their problem for them.

I made this statement to a Muslim going by the screen name "M.H. MUBARAK" (Real name: Nathan Trump).

Part of what I stated in that thread was the following:

http://communities.anomalies.net/for.../32#Post162783

Until you Islamic preachers of "peace" take up the issue with these murders...you have no place to preach "peace" to us. ... Control your own extremists or WE WILL CONTROL THEM FOR YOU. ... I am telling Mr. Mubarak, and all others of his faith, that they must reign in these wahabbist nutcases and denounce their calls for Jihad against us all, they must publicly separate themselves and their version of Islam from these murderous animals. ... His [M.H. MUBARAK's] reply is above for all to read. His, and Islam's silence on these issues of Jihad is deafening. Let him go the Saudi Arabia and preach his message to those who really need to hear it.

If they fail to do so, and very quickly, then they will only have themselves to blame for the consequences of their inaction.

This is the lesson the Pope now must learn, and just as quickly. Ditto for all the rest of those who have not done so up to this point.

IN FACT Just yesterday the Government of Australia instructed the leaders of Islam, the leading Muslim's Imam's in Australia, the exact same thing.






http://www.news.com.au/sundayheralds...47-662,00.html
Muslims read riot act

Lincoln Wright
September 17, 2006 12:00am

AUSTRALIA'S Muslim leaders have been "read the riot act" over the need to denounce any links between Islam and terrorism.
The Howard Government's multicultural spokesman, Andrew Robb, yesterday told an audience of 100 imams who address Australia's mosques that these were tough times requiring great personal resolve.
Mr Robb also called on them to shun a victim mentality that branded any criticism as discrimination.

"We live in a world of terrorism where evil acts are being regularly perpetrated in the name of your faith," Mr Robb said at the Sydney conference.

"And because it is your faith that is being invoked as justification for these evil acts, it is your problem.

"You can't wish it away, or ignore it, just because it has been caused by others.

"Instead, speak up and condemn terrorism, defend your role in the way of life that we all share here in Australia."

Mr Robb said unless Muslims took responsibility for their destiny and tackled the causes of terrorism, Australia would become divided.

Mr Robb, the parliamentary secretary for immigration and multicultural affairs, said it was important for migrants to learn English.

"I see as critical the need for imams to have effective English language skills -- it is a self-evident truth that a shared language is one of the foundations of national cohesion," he said.

On the eve of Mr Robb's release today of a discussion paper on a new citizenship test, the chairman of the Government's Muslim Reference Group, Dr Ameer Ali, said Opposition Leader Kim Beazley's idea of a values test was silly, as was the need for a universal English test.

He called for an orientation program for new migrants akin to a university student's orientation week.

[Aplomb]

The Pope has been communicating with Muslims in just such a manner. Here's something from Fox News on it from over a year ago. Apparently, if he has needed to learn anything recently, it is simply to leave Mohammed out of it.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166296,00.html

Pope: Muslims Should Fight Terror, Too

Saturday, August 20, 2005 COLOGNE, Germany — Pope Benedict XVI (search) decried the "cruel fanaticism" of terrorism Saturday and urged Muslims to join Christians in trying to combat its spread. In blunt remarks, he told a gathering of Muslim officials in Germany that Muslim leaders had a "great responsibility" in properly educating their younger generations. "I am certain that I echo your own thoughts when I bring up as one of our concerns the spread of terrorism," Benedict told the Muslim leadership, mainly Turks, in his most extensive remarks on terrorism during his four-month papacy. "Terrorist activity is continually recurring in various parts of the world, sowing death and destruction, and plunging many of our brothers and sisters into grief and despair." Benedict did not mention specific attacks or assess blame, but it appeared significant that he chose a Muslim audience for his remarks on terrorism. "Those who instigate and plan these attacks evidently wish to poison our relations, making use of all means, including religion, to oppose every attempt to build a peaceful, fair and serene life together," he said. The meeting, during Benedict's four-day trip to Germany for World Youth Day (search), was part of the pope's outreach to non-Catholics to achieve common positions on social issues and world peace. There are some 3.5 million Muslims in Germany, one of the highest figures in western Europe. Going into Saturday's meeting, he had been cautious about making any links between terrorism and Islam, rejecting the idea that the world faced a "clash of civilizations" and reportedly overruling an aide who wanted to brand the July 7 London bombings (search) as anti-Christian. But in warning Saturday that the world risked exposure to "the darkness of a new barbarism," he stressed that Muslim leaders must "guide Muslim believers and train them in the Islamic faith." "Teaching is the vehicle through which ideas and convictions are transmitted. Words are highly influential in the education of the mind. You, therefore, have a great responsibility for the formation of the younger generation," the pontiff said. By working together, Catholics and Muslims could "turn back the wave of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people and hinders progress toward world peace," he said. The pope spoke of terrorism striking in "various parts of the world" but did not mention any specific attacks. Israel sharply criticized the Vatican last month after Benedict condemned terrorist attacks in Britain, Egypt, Iraq and Turkey but did not mention a suicide bombing in Israel that killed five Israelis. Benedict also alluded to another of his themes — the need for reciprocity in religious freedom for Christians and other minorities in some Islamic countries. He did not name any but said "the defense of religious freedom ... is a permanent imperative and respect for minorities is a clear sign of true civilization." The meeting with Muslims came a day after Benedict visited the Cologne synagogue to meet with Jewish leaders and met with Protestant and Orthodox Christian representatives. Earlier Saturday, Benedict met with Gerhard Schroeder (search) and the German chancellor's challenger in Sept. 18 elections, Angela Merkel (search), in a courtesy visit. Merkel, leader of the Christian Democratic Union and the daughter of a Protestant minister, said after the meeting that "it was a great joy to see the Holy Father. It was great to meet a German pope on German soil." Schroeder, who also is Protestant, as are about a third of Germans, had no immediate public comment.

[Sean Osborne]

The Pope has been communicating with Muslims in just such a manner. Here's something from Fox News on it from over a year ago. Apparently, if he has needed to learn anything recently, it is simply to leave Mohammed out of it.

Aplomb,

If one were to take Mohammed out of Islam... what is left?

N O T H I N G

[Sean Osborne]

A TimesonlineUK report hits on some key issues. I've made some of these points myself in other topics within this forum recently.



http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...361716,00.html

Focus: Pope vs Prophet Pope Benedict, once known for his tough views, seemed to have mellowed. But his remarks on Islam have sparked violence and anger. They are typical of the man they once called God’s rottweiler, reports John Cornwell

With two unfortunate words, “evil and inhuman”, applied to the prophet Muhammad, Pope Benedict XVI last week in the sleepy confines of a Bavarian university lecture room set back relations with Islam several eras. The comment has called down the wrath of Muslim extremists and the shocked dismay of Islamic moderates. Threats have been issued not only to the papacy but the entire billion-strong community of Catholics. One popular jihadist website operated from Kuwait declared that Catholics “are doing everything in their power to extinguish the light of God” and called for violent retribution. The Pope’s equivalent of a foreign minister, secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, read out an apology at a news conference in the Vatican yesterday, saying the Pope’s position on Islam was in line with Vatican teaching that the church “esteems Muslims, who adore the only God”. The Holy Father was very sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers, it said. But the statement has sparked outrage throughout the Islamic world and called into doubt the likelihood, not to mention advisability, of his planned visit to Turkey in two months’ time. There have already been violent protests in Turkey and the Middle East. Yesterday Palestinians wielding guns and firebombs attacked five churches in the West Bank and Gaza, including the Anglican church in Nablus, setting its front door ablaze. In Gaza City militants sprayed the facade of the Greek Orthodox church with bullets. The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said yesterday: “The Pope spoke like a politician, not like a man of religion . . . In an era when a dialogue has been initiated between religions, values and civilisations, it is very unfortunate that these remarks have been made against Islam.” He added that he too was now uncertain whether Benedict should still visit Turkey. Benedict has also, crucially, exacerbated deep divisions within his own church between traditionalist Catholics and moderate progressives. Those Catholics who had come to feel comfortable with the mild and elderly professorial Pope, relieved that “God’s rottweiler” was not about to declare jihad on the liberal wing of his own church, are utterly dismayed at this apparent show of Ratzinger’s ageing teeth. In the lecture last Tuesday at the University of Regensburg, where he had once been a professor, the pontiff had been addressing the relationship between faith and reason, a favourite topic of Catholic theologians ever since the Middle Ages. In the intimate and academic confines of the lecture room, the Pope inserted that single incendiary sentence, quoting a medieval text referring to a debate between the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus and a Persian Muslim. “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new,” he quotes the emperor as saying, “and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” Defenders of the Pope’s quotation, starting with Father Federico Lombardi, the official Vatican spokesman, have tried to emphasise the context rather than the offending words. Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, argued that the Pope’s words had been misinterpreted. “Muslims must learn to accept criticism,” Carey said. “If the Pope quoted something from 600 years ago we should not assume this represents his view of Islam today.” But the words will be remembered long after the context has been forgotten. The Pope had been pleading for all religionists to renounce violence, and arguing that there should be no gulf between religion and reason, suggesting that Islam was not a religion of reason — a theme he has emphasised in the past. But his damaging words contain a startling lapse in historical accuracy, in the opinion of Muslim historians. It is commonly accepted that it was Islamic and Arabic culture that kept alive the philosophy of Aristotle through the Dark Ages and made the Catholic reconciliation of faith and reason possible in the work of Thomas Aquinas. One senior Anglican source said: “If anything, Islam was the religion of reason ahead of Christianity. Mathematics and medical science were developed in the Islamic world. The clash between reason and medievalism has Muslims on the side of reason.” Moderate Muslim opinion is also baffled by the insensitivity of the Pope. Adnane Mokrani, a Rome-based Muslim theologian, said of the Pope’s quotation: “To use polemical texts from seven centuries back is not a suitable starting point, given that the current situation between Christianity and Islam is different.” The Muslim Council of Britain, the largest Islamic body in the country, has demanded an immediate retraction. The extremist Muslim group Hizb-ut-Tahrir also condemned the Pope’s words. Imran Waheed, spokesman for the group, said: “The comments follow consistently negative, violent and extreme descriptions of Islam — the use of the term Islamo-fascist by George W Bush, and evil ideology by Tony Blair, and the gratuitous publication of the offensive Danish newspaper cartoons throughout Europe earlier this year.” Ever since 9/11, unofficial sources I have spoken to in the Vatican have voiced fears of a strike on St Peter’s basilica and the Vatican City. Pilgrims entering St Peter’s Square now have to pass through x-ray checkpoints and last week Al-Qaeda-linked websites were indeed targeting the Vatican. One carries an image of the black flag of Islam flying over the apostolic palace, the Pope’s residence. A message posted by a senior Al-Qaeda figure said: “We are certain that the infidelity and tyranny of the Pope will only be stopped by a major attack.” Inside the Vatican it is being said unofficially that Benedict was trying to pre-empt an aggressive letter aimed at the papacy by the president of Iran, which was why he cited the debate involving a Persian. Vatican sources say the Pope will clarify his words at his audience in St Peter’s Square today. The editor of The Tablet, Catherine Pepinster, commented: “It seems surprising the Pope’s comments were not checked by one of his expert aides.” The predicament of this Pope, however, is strangely anomalous. He was the theological backstop for so long that he presumably does not feel the need for advice. At the same time, there has been a significant shift within the Vatican’s governance that has seen a weakening of the department responsible for international affairs, the Secretariat of State. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, secretary of state under John Paul II and for more than a year under Benedict, might have been a restraining influence. But he has been something of a lame duck this past year in the expectation of his retirement at the age of 78. Ironically the transition to his successor Cardinal Bertone took place before the weekend in the midst of the uproar. On Friday, while Muslim leaders united in outraged condemnation of the Pope, Bertone, Sodano and Benedict were downing truffles and sparkling wine to celebrate the handover. Yet by any yardstick Benedict’s words have betrayed his long-term antipathy towards Islam. Vatican watchers are now remembering the unprecedented privilege he granted last year of an extended interview to the late Oriana Fallaci, an Italian Islamophobe. A consistent theme of Benedict’s preaching as Pope has been the erosion of Christianity in Europe, and, by implication, the danger of the spread of Islam. He is thought also to oppose the inclusion of Turkey in the European Union. The origins of the Pope’s abrasive comments date back to a seminar at his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo in September last year. Some 40 of his former students gathered to talk about Islam and Catholicism. The Pope is reported to have said dialogue with Islam was difficult. A Jesuit professor, Khalil Samir, who took part in the seminar, says Benedict deplored the fundamentalism of Islam and its rigid reading of texts without room for interpretation. Muhammad, the Pope said, was treated like a “tape recorder”, as he expressed the word of God directly, “which is absurd”. The church and the papacy in particular have long had problems with the existence of other religions, let alone tolerance of them. It started with the crusades in the early Middle Ages, continued with the Reformation (the memory dies hard that the Guy Fawkes plot was a Catholic conspiracy to destroy the establishment of Protestant England). Through the 19th century the popes set their faces against the notion of religious freedom and separation of church and state. A succession of pontiffs, notably Pope Pius IX (1846-1878), declared that respect for other religions was a form of “insanity”. A stunning historic U-turn occurred at the reforming Second Vatican Council of the mid-1960s. The church, after a battle royal between cardinals, finally endorsed a model of respect for other religions that looked similar to America’s respect for religious pluralism. Catholic traditionalists, however, have never liked this tardy acceptance of religious difference: after all, how can you believe your Pope is infallible and that Catholicism holds the full content of truth if you grant that other religions, and other Christian denominations, are also an authentic path to salvation? John Paul II, whose views on religious freedom were honed in communist Poland, went along with the new religious pluralism of Vatican II while it spelt out the right of Catholicism to exist in an atheistic state. That is, until he saw what happened to his native Poland after the fall of communism: McDonald’s, western music, pornography, abortion, swept through his beloved country. Pluralism, the idea that people should be allowed to follow their own beliefs and value systems, or none at all, became in John Paul’s view a recipe for cultural relativism: “a new form of totalitarianism”, he called it. The answer was the single infallible magisterial truth proposed by Catholicism. Through a quarter of a century of John Paul’s reign the theological underpinning of his statements was nuanced by none other than Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In 1999 it was Ratzinger who wrote a document for the entire world, albeit signed by John Paul, stating that all religions were defective other than the Catholic faith. There was outrage, but there was no retraction. Whatever the Pope intended to impart to his audience at Regensburg, the effect has been to alienate rather than forge connections with Islam by pointing up what he sees to be a striking contrast between the two faiths. The best that can be said in this instance is that he has played unintentionally into the hands of Islam’s critics, thus raising the likelihood of inter-religious violence. The Muslim theologian Adnane Mokrani is insistent that the Pope has made a huge error of judgment: “In today’s climate it would have been much more productive to find common ground, inciting followers of both faiths to dialogue.”

[Aplomb]

http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=7234

17 September, 2006
ISLAM – VATICAN
Amid criticism and violence the first balanced views about the Pope’s speech appear
Former Iranian President Khatami and current Indonesian President Susilo warn against jumping to conclusions.
Rome (AsiaNews) – Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said the full text of the Pope speech in Regensburg should be read before making any comments on its contents. “I hope that the reports in this regard are misinterpreted as such remarks [as reported in the press] are usually made by uninformed and fanatic people but my impression of the pope was rather an educated and patient man,” Khatami said after his return to Tehran from a two-week visit to the United States. Khatami’s is the first balanced statement to come out of the Muslim world with regard to the Pope’s remarks about statements made by Manuel II Palaiologos, who said only evil things have come from Islam. Today during the Angelus, Benedict XVI again insisted that the Byzantine emperor’s words do not reflect his views. As made clear in yesterday’s press release by the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the text of the Pope’s proclusion (inaugural address) shows that the Pontiff only wanted to express his “rejection of the religious motivation for violence, from whatever side it may come”. So far reactions in the Muslim world, which have ranged from outrage and criticism to violence, have been based solely on media excerpts. There are not as yet any translations of the Pope’s speech into Arabic or any Eastern languages. Like Iran’s Khatami, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has also been more balanced in his reaction. Speaking from Havana (Cuba) where he is attending a summit of non-aligned countries, he said that “Indonesian Muslims should have wisdom, patience, and self-restraint to address this sensitive issue. . . . We need them so that harmony among people is not at stake”. Susilo, who presides over the fate of the largest Muslim country in the world, urged the Holy See to “be very quick to respond this very sensitive issue by issuing some corrections and constructive gestures that would decrease tension” between Muslims and Christians. In the meantime protests and violence continue in some parts of the Muslim world. Some 200 Iranian clerics and seminary students gathered on Sunday in Qom, 135 kilometres south of the capital Tehran, to protest against what they called anti-Islamic remarks by Pope Benedict XVI. In protest against the pope's remarks, the country's clergy seminary centre said all seminaries throughout the country would be closed on Sunday. In the West Bank two churches suffered damages when stones and Molotov cocktails were thrown at them.

[Aplomb]

While what the former Iranian president said may have been surprising, but this certainly isn't:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...429245,00.html

UNIDENTIFIED gunmen shot and killed an elderly Italian nun at a hospital in the Islamist-controlled Somali capital, witnesses and medical workers said.


The attackers entered the Austrian-funded SOS Hospital in southern Mogadishu's Huriwa District and opened fire, killing the nun before escaping in the ensuing confusion, they said.

And I bet you've been expecting this one, too:
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/0....hyi6hm06.html

Iranian hardline newspapers said there were signs of an Israeli-US plot behind remarks by Pope Benedict XVI that linked Islam to violence and created a wave of anger across the Muslim world.


The daily Jomhuri Islami said Israel and the United States -- the Islamic republic's two arch-enemies -- could have dictated the comments to distract attention from the resistance of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah to Israel's offensive on Lebanon.

"The reality is that if we do not consider Pope Benedict XVI to be ignorant of Islam, then his remarks against Islam are a dictat that the Zionists and the Americans have written (for him) and have submitted to him."
"The American and the Zionist aim is to undermine the glorious triumph of Islam's children of Lebanese Hezbollah, which annulled the undefeatable legend of the Israeli army and foiled the Satanic and colonialist American plot," it said.
Fellow hardline daily Kayhan, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said there were signs of Israeli inteference aimed at creating conflict between Islam and Christianity.

"There are many signs that show that Pope Benedict XVI's remarks regarding the great prophet of Islam are a link in a connected chain of a Zionist-American project," it said.
"The project, which was created and executed by the Zionist minority, aims at creating confrontation between the followers of the two great divine religions."

[American Patriot]

I would say the Pope has a very BIG problem and it's NOT related to religion any more.


Pope Targeted in Suicide Attack
NewsMax ^ | 9/18/06



Pope Benedict XVI has been targeted by the Mujahideen's Army movement in Iraq for a suicide attack, according to the Jerusalem Post.


The threat — revenge for the Pope's recent comments about Islam and jihad — was posted on a Web site used by rebel movements in Iraq. A message posted by the Mujahideen's Army said members of the organization would "smash the crosses in the house of the dog from Rome."
European religious and political leaders have backed the Pope in the wake of the Muslim protests over his academic lecture at Regensburg University Tuesday, saying the Pope's words had been misinterpreted.


"Rather than criticizing Islam, the Pope is actually offering it a helping hand by suggesting that it do away with the cycle of violence," Father Samir K. Samir, one of the Vatican's leading experts on Islam, wrote in the Catholic newspaper Asia News.


The Pope's academic lecture "was trying to show how Western society — including the Church — has become secularized by removing from the concept of Reason its spiritual dimension and origins which are in God," Samir stated.

[Sean Osborne]

I would say the Pope has a very BIG problem and it's NOT related to religion any more.

Pope Targeted in Suicide Attack

Rick, Expound on this a bit...

How is the announced assassination of the Roman Catholic Pope not related to religion when it is by Islamofascists defending Islam and the Qur'an?

In my second post to this thread I stated...

The Pope must not underestimate the islamofascists. For that matter, none of us should... but he most of all. I suspect his assassination is being actively plotted.

[Backstop]

Calling for the assassination of the Pope...

Shooting nuns in the back...

These truly are bad times.

It's almost difficult to believe.

[Sean Osborne]

Calling for the assassination of the Pope...

Shooting nuns in the back...

These truly are bad times.

It's almost difficult to believe.

Yeah exactly.

Things like this have never occured in the historical record or at least I've not found reference to things being so confused, logic and common sense stood upon its head, everything seeming to be upside down.




Ha, we ain't seen nuthin' yet.

[Backstop]

Ha, we ain't seen nuthin' yet.

That's what concerns me...

[American Patriot]

How is the announced assassination of the Roman Catholic Pope not related to religion when it is by Islamofascists defending Islam and the Qur'an?

The Soviets tried to kill, both Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan within a few days of each other.

Oh, no one remembers that? The slug that tried to kill Reagan was a kookie American, you say? I say BULLSHIT. John Hinkely I believe was paid for by the Soviets... somehow, I can't prove it, but Reagan was trying to destroy the Soviet Bloc.

John Paul was trying to push solidarity for Poland, his homeland. The man that tried to kill him was a muslim-Egyptian... That wasn't religion, both were politics.

There's not one doubt in my mind that it was the USSR funding that stuff.

Benedict has an issue now with threats on his life and religion is IRRELEVANT to the threats. Sure, the fools doing it are claiming religion. The Pope is the leader of the Catholic Church, but now it's politics. As a matter of fact, not ONE of seven Crusades was "religious", even though that is what everyone SAYS. If you read your history, it was always about politics.

I think that the world has seen the end of the Crusades in the respect that we saw them before, but if they get at the pope, then guess what? There's gonna be another, which is PRECISELY what these pigs want.

So, it's POLITICS.

What I was really getting at, though, is he has a SECURITY ISSUE now, more than a religious issue.

[Segestan]

The Pope need Not have apologized , in any manner, for those person’s who have acted in the name of ‘Mohammedanism’ , acted throughout history nor in modern times, nor should he have expected that his retelling of those times of Muslim conquests and Christian responses to them should have become today,being heard in a public platform have been understood as a reasonable , as a uniting act of will between Muslim and Christian peoples. If the Pope feels compelled, through his duties to the Church to retell history , than he can expect that his retelling will today as was then, lead to anger not compromise. A of retelling of history should be correct historically correct from the view of Christianity, told it as it were , Not as Politics today nor fanciful ideas might seem to demand in the modern world , if he does a retelling than he should be prepared to’ Take the Cross’ in the Name of His savior just as his forefathers. Be prepared to become compelled by his own sense of moral duty to His Savior, to His Church and to his Ancestors compelled by virtues over the divide that has lead others onto the world stage of Right and wrong, rather than see reason the result , a reason that unreasonably expects others to lay down personal beliefs in the name of humanity to man and thus a uniting of a world in conflict. Is it reasonable to ask for reason? Or is it reasonable to expect history to remain divided and dynamic? The difference in ideologies can claerly be seen in the raised fist of Islam vs the open hands of Christians.

[Aplomb]

Here's an analysis that I find much more accurate and insightful than most, wherein so many others have declared that the Pope is an ignorant man who doesn't know our enemies or even our world around us. Ever since gave this little instructional, informational speech, the media took that one statement and ran with it, but I have been thinking since the 12th, it is impossible for him not to have known what was going to happen (as if he isn't aware of the media's clever deceitful ways, or the violence of which he spoke suddenly disappearing miraculously) and so he is accomplishing his goal, to get the discussion going and open some blind eyes, and simultaneously challenge Moslems to take the high road in interpreting and practising Islam. This is very good. Loss of life is not good, but that is to be expected regardless of what he says. Jesus said it and Pope Benedict XVI performs it well: "Be wise as serpents but gentle as doves."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...kosev.asp?pg=1

Papal Power
The new Pope is fighting for hearts and minds in Europe.
by Lee Smith
09/19/2006 12:00:00 AM

Jerusalem
POPE BENEDICT XVI has sort of apologized for offending Muslims, and some Muslim leaders have sort of accepted. The Shia cleric usually described as Hezbollah's one-time spiritual guide, Hussein Fadlallah, has invited the Pope "to carry out a scientific and fastidious reading of Islam." Otherwise, Fadlallah warned, Benedict might "succumb to the propaganda of the enemy led by Judaism and imperialism against Islam."


Maybe that is why Muslims are still burning effigies of the Pope--to teach interfaith dialogue to a 79-year-old theologian who is apt to be misled by those lying, intolerant Jews. After all, it is almost a week since the Pope spoke about Islam before an audience in his native Germany:

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

As many have already pointed out, the words were taken out of context. As the Pope himself explained, they are not even his own words, but were rather excerpted from a dialogue between a 14th-century Byzantine emperor and a "learned Persian." The text cited discusses the role of reason in Christian thought and uses Islam as a point of comparison: In "Muslim teaching," the text asserts, God's "will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality."

Let us posit that the Pope himself is a rational man, moreover that he is also aware of current events and, in particular, the general tenor of Islamic political activism around the world these last few years. So, in quoting a text arguing that the Muslim concept of God is not rational but is rather predicated on violence, what sort of response would a rational man expect from Muslim masses who, among other enthusiasms, torched European embassies this past winter to express displeasure over a series of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad as a source of irrational violence? Is it not unreasonable to assume that such a speech would provoke yet more irrational violence?

Nonetheless, the Pope apologized--though as some Muslim officials correctly noted, the pontiff says he is sorry for "the reactions" to his speech, not the speech itself. But it taxes the rational intellect to believe he did not know what sort of furies he was tempting. After all, the Holy See is not the State Department, and the Vatican's interest in Islam did not begin with September 11, nor even with the discovery of oil on the Arabian Peninsula. The New York Times writes that "the Vatican does not have enough experts on Islam to gauge reaction to any papal statements," but the church has been contemplating its historical rival for about 1,300 years longer than the paper of record.

Ratzinger himself is both an intellectual familiar with church history, and a skilful political operator. Unlike his predecessor Wojtyla, he did not come to Rome as an outsider, but rather learned how to acquire and exercise temporal power within the world's oldest and perhaps most unforgiving political institution. If Benedict had not known what sort of response his speech was likely to get, then the college of Cardinals elected the wrong man.

There was some hope among clerics and Catholic laypeople that, after the death of John Paul II, the Church might tap a candidate with a more pastoral vocation, a Latin American cardinal, say, or an African one. However, the historical legacy of the Church, as well as its wealth and political power, resides mostly in Europe, and in Ratzinger the Vatican has a leader who took his regnal name from one of the co-patron saints of the continent. Maybe aspects of the Church's future are elsewhere as well, but Europe is the other rock the Church is built upon and Benedict means to protect that foundation.

Sure the Pope is concerned about Islam, as are all Europeans. His sentiments about Muslim Turkey not belonging to Christian Europe are well-known. "Europe is a cultural and not a geographical continent," Ratzinger said back in 2004, a year before he became Pope. But he has stated repeatedly, and even in this recent address, that the major threat to Europe comes from secularism.

Here he is like many European Muslim leaders and ideologues, Tariq Ramadan for instance, who believe that the continent has been overcome with a spiritual malaise, a lack of purpose and self-esteem. Unlike secularism, Islam is a worthy competitor for men's souls--it is just an inferior doctrine, self-evidently so because it did not produce Europe. Moreover, and this is the point of the text Benedict cites, Islam is incapable of producing a Europe because its conception of God does not assume a rational divinity.
Now the Pope says this excerpted text does "not in any way express my personal thought." Really? So, the Vicar of Christ does not believe that Catholic doctrine is superior to Muslim teaching? Sure he does. The Pope does not want Christian Europe to regain its spirituality by becoming less rational, like Islam, but through an expanded concept of reason--one large enough to encompass a creator who is Himself rational.

AS THE CHILDREN OF A rational God, all men can think rational thoughts, but few are capable of philosophy. Early Christian and Islamic thinkers, especially those influenced by Neo-Platonism, understood the problem: The majority of men can only comprehend one level of reality, and only then through the use of symbols. Hence, what is most interesting about the Pope's speech is that he is operating on two different levels: There is philosophy, reason, and logos for one type of understanding, and there are symbols for another. Here, the symbols are those of the Catholic Church--the papacy itself--which he himself barely even hints at. Benedict left it to his dialogue partners to fill in the rest, and now every burned effigy of the Pope is a prick in the conscience of Catholics the world over.

Sure the European intellectual class believes the Pope is a moron for getting so many Muslims angry, but the elite is not his primary audience; rather, he was speaking over their heads to the masses of ordinary Catholics. What will they believe in? What will they live for and die for? Maybe the Church.

It is hard to get people to live, never mind die, for principles based entirely on reason. Most people need something real to fight for, something tangible. And this is the dilemma of liberal democracies that bin Laden, Nasrallah, and Ahmadinejad, among others, have rightly identified. It is only rational that the citizens of such a state would prefer to enjoy the privileges of such a life than to die. However, the jihadi intelligentsia have also made a less than thorough study of the war that they have chosen.

For instance, Israel is a liberal democracy, but as my colleague here in Jerusalem, Middle East analyst Jonathan Spyer, explains, "Israel's democratic structures are embedded in something older and deeper: The rooting of sovereignty in the shared history of the Jews, the Jewish connection to ancient Israel, and the story of its destruction and rebirth. This is a strong, resonant presence in the lives of many Jewish Israelis and it evokes a profound loyalty."
Or take the Bush administration's Middle Eastern democracy project. There are many people in the region willing to die for their ideas, but almost none of them are reform-minded Arab liberals. On one side, there are Islamists and various other fighters who want the Americans to leave their land forever, and on the other side are American soldiers who do not want their nation to suffer the outrages of Muslim-world politics ever again.

These are real things, tangible concerns, and the Pope is seeking to renew similar sentiments in Christian Europe. And in doing so he has reminded us how a 2000-year-old institution moves vast numbers of people and plays great power politics while the rest of us, even those on the right side in the GWOT, have been arguing over how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. How many troops do we need in Iraq? Is Islamofascism an apt phrase? If we revisit the Geneva conventions, won't that expose our troops to mistreatment by the jihadi forces arrayed against us? How can we get the left to see that Hamas and Hezbollah do not, in fact, share its progressive principles? What would Orwell say?

Stalin famously asked of the Pope "how many divisions has he got?" Well, of course we know now that the USSR was a mayfly on the ass of the ages, but the more interesting fact is that many of Stalin's troops were ranged against their own countrymen to ensure they fought the Germans rather than retreat. It's hardly an efficient use of one's divisions, but Stalin apparently understood the limited appeal of the Soviet idea. For the church, though, men will go to great lengths, they will live and die, all in the name of a man who died some 2,000 years ago on a wooden cross.

[Aplomb]

http://www.zenit.org/english/

Code: ZE06091920
Date: 2006-09-19
Papal Telegram on Death of Nun in Somalia
"A Seed of Hope to Build an Authentic Fraternity Among Peoples"
VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 19, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is the telegram Benedict XVI sent today through Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to the superior general of the Consolata Missionaries expressing his condolences for the death of Sister Leonella Sgobarti. The woman religious was killed Sunday in Mogadishu, Somalia.

* * *

Reverend Mother Gabriella Bono
Superior general of the Consolata Missionaries

Informed of the tragic death of Sister Leonella Sgobarti cruelly killed in Mogandishu, the Supreme Pontiff wishes to express his closeness to that missionary institute, as well as to the relatives of the mourned religious who carried out with joy an appreciated work at the service of the peoples of Somalia, especially in favor of nascent life in the area of health care formation.

In firmly deploring all forms of violence, His Holiness hopes that the blood shed by such a faithful disciple of the Gospel will be a seed of hope to build an authentic fraternity among peoples, in mutual respect of the religious convictions of every one, and while raising fervent prayers for the repose of the meritorious missionary, he imparts his comforting apostolic blessing to her fellow sisters, relatives and all those who mourn her violent passing away.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone
Vatican secretary of state

[Translation by ZENIT]

Our great Vicar of Christ is no dhimmi.