Posted on 09/22/2006 6:02:29 AM PDT by NYer
Hundreds of Pakistani Islamists held street protests to condemn Pope Benedict XVI for remarks they regard as anti-Islamic, with one leader saying the pontiff should be crucified.
Demonstrators Friday poured out of mosques after the main weekly Muslim prayers in Pakistan's largest city Karachi, the eastern city of Lahore, the capital Islamabad and other urban centres.
"If the pope comes here we will hang him on the Cross," Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a senior leader of Pakistan's main alliance of radical parties, told around 200 noisy demonstrators in Islamabad.
The alliance, called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal or United Action Front, forms part of the parliamentary opposition and is often heavily involved in street protests in mostly Muslim Pakistan.
Ahmed also said the pope had joined US President George W. Bush's "crusade" against Muslims, referring to Christians who fought against Muslims from the 11th through the 13th centuries.
In Karachi police said at least 100 hardliners shouted slogans demanding an apology from the pope and criticising the United States.
"Religious leaders like the pope should not use (US President George W.) Bush's tone," Merajul Huda, Karachi chief of the hardline Jamaat-i-Islami party, told the rally.
Witnesses said more than 300 people chanted slogans against the pope outside an Islamic school in the central city of Multan. Dozens more massed in Lahore.
Prayer leaders also condemned the pope during Friday sermons around the country.
Anger has gripped the Muslim world since the pope quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who said innovations introduced by the Prophet Mohammed were "evil and inhuman."
The pontiff later said he was "deeply sorry" for the outrage triggered by his speech early this month at a German university, and that the passages quoted by him did not express his personal opinion.
A gathering of hundreds of fundamentalists in Lahore on Thursday said Pope Benedict should be removed from his position for his "blasphemous" comments.
The Pakistani parliament has also condemned the pope's comments and the foreign ministry summoned the Vatican's envoy in Islamabad last week to lodge a protest.
I say we go back to Plan A and bomb them back to the stone age.
The pope didn't go far enough.
From the beginning of the Muslim conquests, the Christians had ceded to the Muslims half of their churches, which were turned into mosques. One of the earliest examples of this kind was in Damascus, where in 705 Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik took the church of St. John from the Christians and had it rebuilt as a mosque, which is now known as Umayyad Mosque; overall, Abd al-Malik is said to have transformed ten churches in Damascus into mosques.
"Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, one of the first churches converted into mosques"
The process of turning churches into mosques was especially intensive in the villages, with the gradual conversion of the people to Islam. During his persecution of the Copts, Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun turned many churches into mosques, both in Cairo and in Egyptian villages, which had no mosques in the earlier generations of Islam. Fatimid caliph al-Hakim converted numerous churches and synagogues into mosques. The chief mosque in Palermo was previously a church. After the Crusades, several churches were turned into mosques in Palestine. Ottoman Turks converted into mosques nearly all churches, monasteries, and chapels in Constantinople, including the famous St. Sophia cathedral, immediately after capturing the city in 1453. To make the buildings fit for the mosques, the Turks destroyed the icons, plundering their precious plating in the process, and defaced the frescoes. The Ottoman sultan Mehmet II was the first to perform a Muslim prayer in what had previously been the St. Sophia cathedral. 
"Hagia Sophia, an Eastern Orthodox church converted into a mosque on the day of the Fall of Constantinople."
In many instances mosques were established on the places of Jewish or Christian sanctuaries associated with Biblical personalities who were also recognized by Islam; the practice was particularly common in Palestine. Caliph Umar laid the foundation of Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount, the most sacred site in Judaism; Dome of the Rock, another Muslim shrine, was also built on the Temple Mount. The mosque of Job in Ash Shaykh Sa'd, Syria, which previously was a church of Job. Cave of the Patriarchs, the second most holy site in Judaism, was converted into a church during the Crusades before being turned into a mosque in 1266 and henceforth banned to Jews and Christians. In October 2005, during the Al-Aqsa intifada, the tomb of the Hebrew patriarch Joseph, and the yeshiva inside Od Yosef Chai, located in Nablus, was destroyed by a Palestinian mob and immediately rebuilt as a mosque with a dome painted green. 
"Al-Aqsa Mosque (pictured) was built on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism"
That would scare me too! LOL
Islam - "The Religion of Perpetual Outrage"
Looking at pigs through night vision lol. I would prefer to see pictures taken with night vision of men dressed in fatigues, ready to do a HALO drop.
LOL! I thought that was a nice touch, too. She/he probably can't even read it.
So they wish martyrdom and sainthood for the pope? Maybe they are not so bad./sarcasm
We probably already have those as tertiary targets.
When the Muslims destroyed the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, they made the enslaved Christians carry the bells to Granada, where the bells were melted down and made into lamps for the mosque there.
back? Short trip.
1. These people are freaks!
2. Cair's silence is deafening.
3. Where's the commentary from other Christian leaders?
4. Islam is a tool of Satan.
"Jews were banned from entering the Cave of the Patriarchs, the second most holy site in Judaism, after it was converted to a mosque in 1266"
"If the pope comes here we will hang him on the Cross,"
Ahmed also said the pope had joined US President George W. Bush's "crusade" against Muslims, referring to Christians who fought against Muslims from the 11th through the 13th centuries.
You know, you just can't make this stuff up. Call Islam a murderous cult, and they want you crucified. I'd think I was watching Monte Python if it wasn't so deadly serious.
They're sure proving the pope wrong. They seem very open to reasonable discussion regarding violence in the cause of religion.
Religion of Rabble.
Those aren't my neighbors (thankfully). No, they are murderous cutthroats with whom no dialogue is evidently possible. Forget bombing them to the stoneage (they are already there) - bomb them to the Cambrian period.
There's no other word for it. Hatred.
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