Posted on 09/18/2006 8:23:58 AM PDT by Borges
Al Qaeda militants in Iraq vowed war on "worshippers of the cross" and protesters burned a papal effigy on Monday over Pope Benedict's comments on Islam, while Western churchmen and statesmen tried to calm passions.
The statement by an umbrella group led by Iraq's branch of al Qaeda came after the Pontiff said on Sunday he was deeply sorry Muslims had been offended by his use of a medieval quotation on Islam and holy war.
"We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya," said a Web statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council.
"We shall break the cross and spill the wine ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome ... (May) God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen," said the statement, posted on Sunday on an Internet site often used by al Qaeda and other militant groups.
In Iraq's southern city of Basra, up to 150 demonstrators chanted slogans and burned a white effigy of the Pope.
"No to aggression!," "We gagged the Pope!," they chanted in front of the governor's office in the Shi'ite city. The protesters also burned German, U.S., and Israeli flags.
A speech by Pope Benedict last Tuesday was seen as portraying Islam as a religion tainted by violence, causing dismay among Muslim states where some religious leaders called it the start of a new Christian crusade against Islam.
The Vatican has instructed its envoys in Muslim countries to explain Pope Benedict's words on Islam.
Benedict's new Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said the Holy See's nuncios (ambassadors) in Muslim countries would be visiting government and religious leaders.
French President Jacques Chirac refused on Monday to criticize the 79-year-old Pontiff, but called for a more diplomatic use of language.
"It is not my role or my intention to comment on the Pope's statements. I simply want to say, on a general level ... that we must avoid anything that excites tensions between peoples or between religions," Chirac said on Europe 1 radio.
"We must avoid making any link between Islam, which is a great, respected and respectable religion, and radical Islamism, which is a totally different activity and one of a political nature," Chirac added.
ARCHBISHOP DEFENDS POPE
The head of the world's Anglican church, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, defended Benedict.
"The Pope has already issued an apology and I think his views on this need to be judged against his entire record, where he has spoken very positively about dialogue," said Williams, the spiritual leader of 77 million Anglicans worldwide.
Williams told the BBC that all faiths could be distorted, and the Pope was simply giving an example of that.
"There are elements in Islam that can be used to justify violence, just as there are in Christianity and Judaism."
In Iran, a government spokesman said on Monday Pope Benedict's regret was a "good gesture" but not enough.
The Pope had referred to criticism of the Prophet Mohammad by 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who said everything the Prophet brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
Questions had been raised on whether a papal visit to Turkey in November could go ahead, but the government, while calling his remarks "ugly," said there were no plans to call it off.
The Pope, head of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics, said the quotation did not represent his personal views, but failed to satisfy some Islamic groups seeking a full apology.
In Somalia, an Italian nun was killed on Sunday in an attack one Islamist source said could be linked to the dispute. A Vatican spokesman hoped the killing was "an isolated event."
A senior Chinese Muslim expressed anger over the Pope's comments, Xinhua news agency said on Monday. This was in contrast to Chinese reticence over last year's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a Danish paper that sparked violent Muslim protests elsewhere in the world.
"In his speech, Benedict insulted both Islam and the Prophet Mohammad. This has gravely hurt the feelings of the Muslims across the world, including those from China," Xinhua quoted Chen Guangyuan, president of the Islamic Association of China, as saying.
China insists its Catholics belong to a state-backed church that does not recognize the Pope's authority. Muslims are also under state control.
About 100 Indonesian Muslims protested peacefully over the Pope's remarks outside the Vatican embassy in Jakarta on Monday.
The Arabs do nothing to keep people under their thumbs however do they? Like forcing women to wear burkas, forced conversion by the sword, lopping off people's heads who disagree with them, not allowing education to women, declaring fatwas and jihads against anyone who they perceive as an enemy... they are just innocent little lambs in all this aren't they??
As we would be without self-appointed gods.
Would you care to mention the deaths caused by atheistic governments (Communism) in the name of the State as among those to be condemned or are you only here to harp on Christians?
Many people are not interested in "appropriate conclusions".
They're going to believe what they want to, and wave their tiny little fist at their creator.
Unlike the god of Islam, however, the true God does not need us to have His back. He isn't threatened by their ingratitude/defiance.
Christianity has done more to bring about civilization and humane efforts than any atheistic system ever has.
meant to include you in post #126.
Shall we ban secular humanism for the hundred million people murdered by Communists and statist totalitarian governments or the tens of millions slaughtered by liberal abortionists and geeky scientist nerds splicing embryonic stem cells? They're ahead on the body count.
Someone (a very bright someone I might add) once said.
Jesus came to make ALL religion obsolete, AND DID...
Get with the program...
That medicine, the arts, literature, et al, did in fact flourish in the Caliphate between 800 and 1000 is undeniable. That would be a fact not yet mentioned in this discussion.
It would not refute my major premise, which was that Muslims were attacking and the Christian West responding. The Seljuk Turks, who had recently overcome the Arabs, had renewed the war on the West and were on the march. They would continue that march right up to the gates of Vienna in the 17th century (defeated there, if memory serves, by the Pole Sobieski). So, one can have great culture and a ravenous, bitterly agressive foreign policy at the same time.
That is what Alexis saw and what he asked for help combatting. Urban saw that this help could both perhaps put Alexis in his ecclesiastical debt and, more probably, release the Holy Land from the Muslim interdict under which the Turks put it in the mid-11th century. I note that the Arabs had permitted pilgrims before but that the Turks both stopped this and then turned on Byzantium with the intent of conquering it.
They eventually succeeded, of course, not least because Western Latin Catholics could not understand or come to any agreement with Eastern Greek Orthodox. A blot on the Church Universal, to be certain, but not one which has anything to do with why the Crusades were undertaken.
As someone else said, they were in fact defensive wars. Some indefensible things happened (not least the sack of Constantinople in 1204), but that's what happens in a lot of wars undertaken for any of the reasons humans light into each other. Religious wars have intensity, to be sure, but you might want to just review a few newsreels of WWII. Now you might call that a religious war, after all, Hitler and Stalin were intent on obliterating Judaeo-Christianity. That sounds at least anti-religious. But the West did not respond for religious reasons, nor was the war prosecuted as a jihad or crusade. Yet, it was brutal beyond any previous measure. So one can have total non-religious war, can't one?
In any case, your original premise was shallow and poorly-phrased, at best. You ruffled feathers for no good reason and likely put off people who might have been willing to chat with someone less dogmatic about their revulsion for organized religion in general and Christianity in particular.
Poor move, Vulture, overall, but you likely do have a good head on your shoulders, one you should feed with more pro-Christian material more often, IMHO.
yeah, the whole world would be great if everyone thought just like you...I'm sure 100 million victims of communism would agree.
Man you really need to read more. Your examples are very poor. Romans killed Christians not because to their religious views, but because early Christians were trouble makers seeking to weaken the power of the Roman state. Rome was very tolerant of local religious views
The Crusades were the west FINALLY defending itself from a hostile violent Islam that was throating Western Europe.
The Spanish in South America wittiness wide spread human sacrifice and decided SA civilization was not worth respecting.
that we must avoid anything that excites tensions between peoples or between religions," Chirac said on Europe 1 radio.
Just what we'd expect from Chirac and many other western leaders. I think the time is long overdue for the west to be just as visibly outraged at Muslim behavior. It is unacceptable and the west values free speech no matter who is offended. If they don't like it, TOUGH.
They don't want an apology. They want the Pope to crawl on his hands and knees to them and beg for mercy. If the Pope does it shame on him.
LOL, in 700AD that ENTIRE region was Christain, Greko-Roman, Western. Civilization, education, learning, all flurished. Then came Islam, it took a while but Islam managed to reduce one of the finist of civilizations to the ignorant tribalism that is now and has been for many many hundred of years. Go peddal your revisionist history else where.
It's always helpful to ping the moderator when posting to or about the moderator.
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And to the moderator - I have no agenda other than to speak truth freely (mostly quoting other sources) without posting any personal feelings - unlike a lot of FReeper with their obsenities and single minded opinions. I see their spewed venom no different than the venom spewed by those they seek to criticize. For all intents and purposes I have said my final word here and will not post again if you want to censor what I have said.
119 posted on 09/18/2006 1:26:59 PM CDT by Jersey Freethinker (People should read the Bible)
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I would take heed of that parable VERY carefully if I were Jersey Freethinker. He can consider himself an enemy of Jesus Christ for what he has said here today.
It may be easy to sit behind a keyboard today and insult God, His Holy Word, and those who follow Jesus, but there will come a day when he has to face his maker like the rest of us.
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