I agree. It was just an aside from his main topic of "Faith and Reason."
[I]it is correct to condemn all aggressive use of force. The pope, however, never condemned "all use of force".
I never meant to imply that His Holiness was attempting to make a formal pronouncement. I simply meant that within that speech on Tuesday he made a blanket pacifistic statement when he said, "Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul" without elaborating and making any distinctions between aggressive violence and defensive or punitive violence.
To say "their goal in the current jihad is the death of every infidel" is to say "their goal in the current jihad is forcible conversion of non-Muslims to Islam". That is because the only way to achieve the former goal is to convert a part of the present day infidels and kill the rest.
No, not quite. In the classic medieval jihad of "spreading the faith through violence," when a Muslim soldier approached a non-Muslim, the person had the option of throwing his hands up and surrendering, and converting or paying the zakat tax. No one on the airplanes or in the World Trade Center was given the option of converting or paying the zakat. The goal of this jihad is simply the elimination of all non-Muslims. If a few (or even if many) convert, that might be acceptable to them as a side benefit, but it is not their goal.
Dangus, thanks for the lesson!
True, but that attack was also condemned by mainstream Muslims, even those who symapthized with the jihadist ideas otherwise, precisely for that reason.