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Mujahideen Army threatens Pope with suicide attack
 As security was beefed up around Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday night, the Mujahideen's Army movement in Iraq threatened to carry out a suicide attack against the Pope in revenge for his comments about Islam and jihad.
| Okay. Think about the logic of that. |
On a website used by rebel movements in Iraq, a message posted by the Mujahideen Army said members of the organization would "smash the crosses in the house of the dog from Rome."
| Because he said Islam is too fond of violence? |
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," Fr. Samir K. Samir, SJ one of the Vatican's leading experts on Islam wrote in the Catholic newspaper Asia News.
| I'm not sure brandishing a zipgun and showing your colors will help terribly much in getting away from the reputation of being the juvenile delinquent of religions... |
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," Fr. Samir stated.
| To the extent that reason probably came into being as the ground monkeys attempted to comprehend the world God had made them. I guess I can accept that. |
While European Muslims were quick to attack the pope's words, the continent's political leaders declined to follow. "Whoever criticizes the pope misunderstood the aim of his speech," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with the German newspaper, Bild.
| That's one European leader. Has the count gone up since last night? |
"It was an invitation to dialogue between religions," she said on Friday. Benedict "expressly spoke in favor of this dialogue, which is something I also support and consider urgent and necessary."
| "Dialogue" to the Muslim world consists of us saying we're sorry and them telling us whether the apology had enough grovel in it. |
"What Benedict XVI emphasized was a decisive and uncompromising renunciation of all forms of violence in the name of religion," Merkel noted.
| In response to which we have threats of suicide boomings, attacks on churches, and calls from Muslim clergy for the Pope to be killed. Y'see where I'm trying to find the sense, here... |
This is a "storm in a tea cup" the former archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey told The Jerusalem Post. "Anything Pope Benedict says should be weighed carefully. He is not given to slight or idle remarks," he added, dismissing Muslim charges the Pope had "rubbished" Islam. "If he quoted something said 600 years ago, we should not assume that this represents the Pope's beliefs about Islam today," he said.
| Yeah, Lord. Gotcha. I'm sure that reconciliation stuff's working just fine. It couldn't possibly be that the Learned Elders of Islam are just looking for each and every excuse to demand more and more apologies from the West, the bigger the figure the better, thereby putting the West collectively more and more on the defensive... |
Lord Carey, who chairs the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East has long been active in Christian-Muslim dialogue, and in 2002 signed an accord in Alexandria with the Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo and the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel calling for an end to violence, suicide bombings and a resumption of the peace process in the Middle East.
| That worked well, didn't it? The past four years have been... ummm... well... |
"Muslims, as well as Christians, must learn to enter into dialogue without crying 'foul'," Lord Carey said. "We live in perilous times, and we must not only separate religion from violence but also not give religious legitimacy to violence in any shape or form."
Italian European parliament vice president Mario Mauro condemned as "monstrous" the manipulation of the pope's remarks by Islamic leaders which he claimed were used to "hit out at Christians and the West." The controversy was evidence of the "gravity of the danger we are facing" he told the ANSA press agency on September 15, and urged Europeans to "defend reason" against the onslaught of "Islamist-Nazi ideology that permeates fundamentalist thought."
The Western press was divided over the pope's remarks. The New York Times editorialized on Saturday that the pope must give a "deep and persuasive" apology for his remarks as "the world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly," it said.
Posted by: Fred 2006-09-17 |
