Posted on 11/16/2001 1:08:51 PM PST by veronica
JERUSALEM - Working under cover of darkness, Muslims in Jesus' boyhood town of Nazareth have begun constructing a mosque alongside the Basilica of the Annunciation, despite protests by the Vatican and Israeli authorities.
The Vatican, in a statement issued in Rome, called on the Israeli government to stop "Muslim extremists" from building the mosque next to the church marking the site where Christians believe the angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to Jesus.
"Building the mosque here will in effect put this holy place in a state of permanent siege and make its gate a gathering place for the most hostile elements," the statement said, according to the Vatican news service Fides.
Israeli authorities charged today that the work constituted a provocation and threatened to stop the construction by force, even as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins. Local Christians warned the work could re-ignite the interreligious violence that erupted at the site last year.
Construction on the mosque began Monday, without the necessary permits, but the Israeli Lands Authority ordered it halted. The Wakf, or Islamic Trust, stopped the work today but said it will start again if it does not get the necessary permits within a week.
Witnesses said crews were working at the site Monday and Tuesday nights in an apparent attempt to keep the construction secret.
A lawyer for the Muslims, Dan Shafrir, said the construction had been going on day and night. The Israeli Lands Authority promised to help the Islamic Trust obtain the permits for the Muslim-owned land if the construction was stopped, Shafrir said.
"We're not hiding anything from anyone," Shafrir said. "Whether or not we get the permits, we will continue construction in a week."
The construction was halted only temporarily, and steel beams arrived at the site today, said Ahmed Saleh Hamudeh, the head of the Islamic Trust in Nazareth.
Christians are a minority in Nazareth, and tensions over the mosque have been running high between the Christian community and the Muslim majority in the city of 70,000. Nazareth is the largest Arab city in Israel.
Under pressure from Christian leaders, including the Vatican, the previous Israeli government worked out a compromise in 1999 to defuse a tense situation in which Muslims were praying in a large tent a few meters from the church, as a planned millennium visit by Pope John Paul II neared. The Vatican had hinted the issue could force the cancellation of the pope's visit, which took place as scheduled in March 2000.
According to the agreement, the tent was removed, and a mosque would be built on one third of the 2,000-square-meter plot, but only after the millennium year.
Church leaders in the Holy Land complain that Israel made excessive concessions to the Muslims, while ignoring promises made to Christian leaders, including the pope.
Despite the pledges of the previous government, Israeli officials are indicating that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will not allow construction of the mosque.
"A decision on the matter will be made by the government" due to the sensitivity of the issue, Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon said. "We are absolutely against the work going on at the moment."
Israel believes that starting construction days before the start of Ramadan is a cynical use of the holiday by the Muslims, with the hope authorities will not act to stop the work, a government official said on condition of anonymity.
The authorities will forcibly halt the work if necessary, the official said.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, himself a Muslim, sided with the Christians in the dispute, saying in December 1999 that the Muslims should not build the mosque so close to the church.
The Muslims say a Crusader-era sage is buried at the site, and they hoped to build a large mosque there. Church leaders wanted the plot for a plaza to accommodate millennium pilgrims.
What is so ludicrous about keeping a product of immense value and immense labor under secure protection? Surely you are aware that medieval copyists did everything by hand, and that there was a market for Bibles just as there was a market for Relics(despite the Ecclesial prohibition on the sale thereof). If there was only one copy of the Bible within twenty miles, and opportunistic thieves about, why not have security?
What is truly ludicrous is to judge events of the past as if they happened yesterday in Fresno. If you have no concept of the cultural context in which these things happened, then you will stay in a state of perpetual shock, as you seem to be.
Why don't you respond to what I actually wrote rather than posting such an empty retort?
1. Nothing in my post suggests that I am in shock, perpetual or otherwise.
2. I am well aware of the cultural contexts. (see my last comment in the post)
3. Whatever the context, the fact that there are episodes in the history of Christianity which were shamefully un-Christ-like is not disputed by anyone who is both honest and informed.
If you want to debate me, please respond to the points I have made. I don't play games.
Prove it. Please cite any contemporary Catholic sources that agree with this. (Non-Catholic sources can't be trusted on this subject).
And just where were the Catholics supposed to have done this persecuting. The Pilgrims were English, you know, and there hadn't been a Catholic ruler in England since before Queen Elizabeth. The Pilgrims migrated over 50 years after the time of Mary Tudor, during her reign the Pilgrims hadn't come into existence. The Pilgrims were persecuted by the Anglicans (Episcopalians).
Go back and put on your hood and burn another cross.
What we should do is send over Little Abner to bombard them with pork chops. Al Capp should only have lived to see these days.
Another intellectual giant makes his mark.
Just another example of the 'Black Legend' of English propaganda. If the Spanish were so much worse than the English, why is it that the numbers of Indian descended people in Latin America is larger than the number of Indians who lived there at the time of Columbus. At the same time the numbers of Indian descended people in the countries colonized by England is far smaller than the number of Indians who lived there at the time of Columbus.
And this is despite the fact that the North American Indians had generally given up human sacrifice prior to colonization, while the Indians in Latin American routinely practised it. (The point of this is that despite their horrific practices, Latin American Indians were not decimated as were those in North America.)
I remember Lil' Abner fondly from my youth. This strip, and Alley Oop were the first ones I'd turn to in the Sunday comics.
Now, with regard to persistent prattle pointing to a putative pork pacification program...
Commanders in the field are doubtless under considerable pressure to keep a lid on some of the more extreme porkification possibilities. We have 'allies' whose allegiance is shaky at best who also regard pork as taboo.
This being said, there are nevertheless many isolated, low profile 'pork incidents' occurring daily, many of which we'll eventually hear about. Some will be humorous, some will be a little harder-edged.
All will involve the...
Suckers being the Christians and Jews who think Islam brings a message of peace. Islam brings a message of Jihad, of conflict, of a mad god Allah.
I hope you'll reconsider this. If a thing exists in its own right, by its own right, without reference to anything outside itself and not subject to any external control, it must be almighty, eternal, and divine. Only God can have such attributes. From time to time I accuse fundamentalist "Bible-believing" Christians of bibliolatry because they make such claims for Holy Scripture. I happen to believe that many Jews are susceptible to a similar temptation when it comes to the Zionist State.
Ah, I understand where you are coming from now. Yes, I agree with this explanation.
I happen to believe that many Jews are susceptible to a similar temptation when it comes to the Zionist State.
I don't know about "many", but there are some, no doubt.
Anachronism. Puritanism sprang up several decades after Roman Catholicism was outlawed in England.
In the colonies, Maryland's royal charter permitted freedom of religion, which allowed Catholics to worship unmolested by the authorities. Puritans from New England moved into Catholic-but-tolerant Maryland and, after procuring a Protestant legislative majority, managed to outlaw Catholicism even there. This image of "biting the hand that feeds you," is similar to what the Albanian immigrants did to Kosovo.
Lovely people, the Puritans. Real role models.
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