Posted on 10/30/2005 4:51:06 PM PST by mhuye
The Prince of Wales will try to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam this week because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11.
The Prince, who leaves on Tuesday for an eight-day tour of the US, has voiced private concerns over America's "confrontational" approach to Muslim countries and its failure to appreciate Islam's strengths.
The Duchess of Cornwall will accompany her husband The Prince raised his concerns when he met senior Muslims in London in November 2001. The gathering took place just two months after the attacks on New York and Washington. "I find the language and rhetoric coming from America too confrontational," the Prince said, according to one leader at the meeting.
It is understood that Prince Charles did not - and does not - believe that the actions of 19 hijackers should tarnish the reputation of hundreds of millions of law-abiding Muslims around the world.
Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, was also at the meeting at St James's Palace. "His criticism of America was a general one of the Americans not having the appreciation we have for Islam and its culture," he said.
Mr Mahmood and other Muslims present stressed that Prince Charles did not go so far as to criticise the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. More recently, he has been careful not to express his views on Iraq.
The Prince also spoke of his sympathy for America after the terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of almost 3,000 people. He said he wanted to promote better relations between the different religions of the world.
Those present at the meeting in 2001 included Sir Iqbal Sacrani, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, and Hashir Faruqi, the chief editor of Impact International, an Islamic affairs magazine.
Prince Charles, who is about to embark on his first official foreign tour since his marriage to the Duchess of Cornwall, wants Americans - including Mr Bush - to share his fondness for Islam. He has agreed to attend a seminar on religions at Georgetown University, Washington, on Thursday: the only event where he will not be accompanied by the Duchess.
"The seminar will look at how faith groups can alleviate social problems in their community," a royal aide said.
The Prince and Duchess will attend a lunch and dinner with President Bush and his wife, Laura, at the White House on Wednesday.
Prince Charles has done more than any other member of the Royal Family in history to understand Islam. He said in 1994 that when he became Supreme Governor of the Church of England, he would rather be "defender of faiths" than "defender of the faith".
A year earlier Prince Charles made a speech, acclaimed throughout the Arab world, on relations between Islam and the West. He urged the West to overcome its "unthinkable prejudices" about Islam and its customs and laws.
He spoke warmly of the West's debt to the culture of Islam and distanced moderate Muslims from misguided militants. "Extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity," he said.
A senior aide to Prince Charles said yesterday: "The Prince has never promoted political messages around religion. He has simply said that he wants a greater tolerance and understanding of each other religions which will, in turn, promote better relations between faiths."
A spokesman for Clarence House declined to discuss the Prince's comments four years ago. "We never discuss private conversations," he said.
Prince Charles has been wooing the US media ahead of next week's tour when he will visit New York, Washington and San Francisco. It is considered a risky venture because Diana, Princess of Wales, who died eight years ago, was so revered in the US.
In an interview to be shown on CBS's 60 Minutes today, he speaks of his desire to enrich people's lives through his work. "I only hope that when I am dead and gone they might appreciate it a little more," he jokes.
Wahi: the Supernatural Basis of Islam
I highly recommend it to those of you who are interested in an analysis of Muhammed's mental disorder. It is written from a Hindu perspective. There are a few paragraphs with which I disagree, but I believe they have the prophet pegged. If you don't have time to read it now, please bookmark.
There must be one or two of them still living in exile somewhere in France.
Well said!!!
Prince Harry's swastika-wearing. now makes sense.
Have they been more tolerant of us since 9-11 and I just missed it?
This from the polo chump. He spends more time playing polo and tending gardens, while the rest of the free world is going after the Islamofascists.
Hopefully, he will pass before his mum, eh?
Bush's response to the British Brat: "Go home before I bitchslap your Grandma!"
Perhaps Mummy should keep him home.
http://www.exodus2006.com/fab/other.htm
Plead what you want, Charlie. I plead for the majority of the male citizens of the UK (including you) to realize that they have cajones and start behaving like men before its too late.
Inbred moron - perfect!
Just shows that a title and a bloodline do not received wisdom make.
Even more pathetic - he's a morganatic prince. His mother (hers lived to 101) will insure that he never becomes King.
Should have stuck to his gardening.
We Jews and we Christians need no lectures on political correctness about the Religion of Murder, especially from His Royal Sillyness.
Amen to fixing up his own religion ... I should think also he should try to go down to the Muslim communities right there in London and have a friendly tea with these folks.
C ya Charlie
Go home, a-hole.
Reading about this puffed up buffoon's plan to get all of the religions to respect and love each other...
reminds me of Clinton's newest endeavors to bring about world peace...all by himself...
The egos of some people totally dwarf their sense of reality....
PUH-leeze...Chuckie and Bubba...why don't you both go buy an island somewhere and do the world a favor..and stay there.
In a real way I detect an enormous self pity in Charles.
Charles was raised in an era when the British monarchy was expected to embody stiff upper lip, iron self control, emotionally dead Victorian public school values. It takes a tremendous amount of emotional deprivation (like removing maternal love from his childhood) to produce a cold fish like Prince Charles. But all along he was told that it was his duty so suck it up and dry your eyes.
But what does he find ? People loved the Diana who wore her heart on her sleeve and they didn't love him. Maybe he had been raised to embody values that nobody wanted or believed in anymore. Maybe all that emotional deprivation and unhappiness was for nothing.
Charles strikes me as a man who feels cheated, betrayed. He was sold a bill of goods all his life and it was for nothing.
"Prince" Charles is a horse's ass and his forefathers would turn over in their graves listening to his inane drivel.
He might as well try to convince us his current equine-faced consort is as good looking as the woman he drove into depression and divorce.
Britain and western Europe are Christian territory. They HAVE been so for well over 1000 years. Yet he is advocating that the very prople who would NEVER permit proselytzing of Chistianity in ANY of their own countries, be extened the red carpet in his - and OURS.
Islam is a cult not a religion. Cults kill people who seek to leave the group, cults kill people who attempt to GET people to leave the group, cults kill people who criticize the group.
Islam does ALL of this and more. In addition, in EVERY country in which it is the "official religion" its adherents persecute followers of other faiths openly or make life so miserable for them that thay are religated to second class citizenship.
Yet this horse's ass deigns to come here and spout the kind of drivel we all too often practise, unfortunately on our own, i.e. that Islam is just another religion like any other. Ask the Bahais, the Copts, the Sikhs, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Zoroastrians, the Chaldean Christians, and the Jews about "peaceful" Islam.
They are all either killers or people who want to convert us to their belief system.
What planet is this guy on???
I think Farmer George would be horrified at the antics of his 5G grand-nephew.
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