<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The great divide </b>
Udayan Namboodiri
<b>The Pope, by issuing a historic apology, has tapped a groundswell of rage. Many Christians are reading the irrational outburst following his Regensburg address in the language of the 14th century Byzantine emperor whom the Pontiff quoted. They wonder whether the time has come to stand up to the blackmail of fundamentalists which is harming the cause of ordinary Muslims and, of course, global peace </b>
On Sunday, September 17, Pope Benedict XVI became the first Pontiff in the history of the Roman Catholic Church to appear on the balcony of his residence at Castel Gandolfo outside Rome to apologise in person. He admitted to causing hurt to the feelings of Muslims in his September 12 speech. It should be noted that when his predecessor, John Paul II, had, on March 12, 2000, issued a sweeping apology for all the sins committed in the name of Christ in two millennia - Inquisition, abatement of Holocaust, violence, persecutions, blunder, et al - it was described as the "most audacious initiative ever".
Without prejudice to the merits or demerits of the case against him, we have to admit that this is a Pope with a personable style. After his Regensburg address, a man who has been riled before as "God's Rottweiler" and "Panzer Pope" seemed to be deserving of the image of aggressive Pontiff in the Inquisition mode which his detractors in the Liberal-Jihad-Peacenik triumvirate had fitted out for him. Though no media house risked taking out a survey on what people, including Muslims, really thought of his remarks, he had, by an almost universal, broad-brush judgement, inaugurated the "clash of civilisations". Yet, when the same man appeared practically in sackcloth and ashes, cries of "not enough" rang out. Even now, close to a week since that historic sorry, many in the Islamic world seem intent upon keeping the issue alive.
Muslims in Turkey, Iraq and the Palestinian territories demanded that Pope Benedict make a clear apology for his remarks on Islam, instead of simply saying only that he was "deeply sorry". Elements in the Turkish Government wanted to know whether he was retracting out of fear or conviction. From his cell in jail, Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who tried to shoot Pope John Paul II in 1981, wrote to the Holy See to cancel the Pope's November visit because his life may be in risk. A nun was shot dead in Somalia. Threats were issued to Church figures and the Al Qaeda also jumped into the fray necessitating the doubling of the security around the Pontiff. In Iran and Indonesia, many wanted him to practically grovel. In India too, there were demonstrations in Delhi's Jama Masjid, followed by the usual solemnising in the secular media. In Mogadishu, an influential cleric called Sheikh Abubakar Hassan Malinto reportedly urged his followers to "hunt and kill whoever offends our Prophets Mohammad on the spot".
It seems what got the goat of the Islamists and their friends is the element of fear which underwrote the Papal apology. Only fear and nothing more. As the supreme head of the Roman Catholic Church whose spiritual authority also extends over the rest of the Christian world, he may have been genuinely worried over the fate of innocent men, women and children whose lives hinged on his making that apology. Those on the other side of the divide would have liked him to withdraw the entire speech - text, sub-text, context and all - but he didn't. Soon, the Western media, or at least the more distinguished elements within it, came out in his support. Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Cantebury, defended the Pope making an "extraordinary effective and lucid speech". In a way he wrapped up the feelings of the non-Islamic world in the post-9/11 era when he said: "We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times. There will be no significant material and economic progress until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and event heir most cherished shibboleths."
Many felt that the Pope had caved in to bigotry. The media in the West began to reflect a gradual realisation that not one of the Islamic clerics or Left-Secular giants who swear so often that Islam is a tolerant religion, bothered to apologise for the poor nun who got shot. For that matter, wrote an influential Australian columnist in The Daily Telegraph, Sydney: "Given the outrageous and bloody responses to the Danish cartoons last February and the lethal and destructive outbreak of hysteria across the Islamic world triggered by the scholarly address on the nature of God delivered by the Pope last Tuesday, which has not been condemned by anyone of any significance in the Australian Muslim community, it is hard to imagine..."
This Saturday Special's main article by Father Dominic Immanuel is the first by a figure in the Indian Catholic Church to resonate with the global concern of an end to scholarly insights, to the power of dialogue. The Other Voice, by academician Nehaluddin, is a lash against the Pope for forgetting about the sins of Christianity. Over and above the debate one thing is clear. The Pope has unwittingly given Islamic fundamentalists, and by extension global Left-Liberal clusters, a gift. And the gift is this: They wanted an end to debate and dialogue, continuous victimhood as sufferers of a siege. Now they have a kind-sized opportunity to ratchet up their rhetoric.
Henceforth it's gong to be: "See, that is what we face - insult above injury in the form of Iraq and Palestine".
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Papal call for a new crusade </b>
Nehaluddin | Secretary General, People's Democratic Front
Pope Benedict XVI has given fresh impetus to post-9/11 Islamophobia by recalling a vision of Islam which was relevant in the 14th century
Pope Benedict XVI delivered his controversial speech in Germany the day after the fifth anniversary of September 11. His recounting of a 14th century dialogue makes it difficult to believe that his reference to an inherently violent strain in Islam was entirely accidental. He has, most unfortunately, withdrawn from the inter-faith initiatives inaugurated by his predecessor, John Paul II, at a time when they are more desperately needed than ever. Coming as it does after the Danish cartoon crisis, his remarks carry dangerous portents. They will convince us more that the West is dangerously Islamophobic. And engaged in a new crusade.
For, we simply cannot afford this type of bias. The trouble is that too many people in the Western world unconsciously share this prejudice, convinced that Islam and Quran are addicted to violence. The 9/11 terrorists, who in fact violated essential Islamic principles, have confirmed this deep-rooted Western perception and are seen as typical Muslims instead of the deviants they really were.
The early conquests in Persia and Byzantium after the Prophet's death were inspired by political rather than religious aspirations. Until the middle of the eighth century, Jews and Christians in the Muslim empire were actively discouraged from conversion to Islam, as, according to Quranic teaching, they had received authentic revelations of their own. The extremism and intolerance that have surfaced in the Muslim world in our own day are a response to intractable political problems - oil, Palestine, the occupation of Muslim lands, the prevalence of authoritarian regimes in West Asia, and the West's perceived "double standards" - and not to an ingrained religious imperative.
With disturbing regularity, this medieval conviction surfaces every time there is trouble in West Asia. Yet, until the 20th century, Islam was a far more tolerant and peaceful faith than Christianity. Quran strictly forbids any coercion in religion and regards all rightly guided religion as coming from God. Despite the Western belief to the contrary, Muslims did not impose their faith by the sword.
There are innumerable verses in Quran extolling the merits of peace, and a peaceful solution to life's problems including a preference for peace over war. Quran treats Christians and Jews as "People of the Book", despite the fact that they did not accept the Prophet's message. It praises Jesus as "Ruh-Allah" - one touched by the spirit of Allah. Mary, mother of Jesus, is accepted as virgin, although Quran is equally clear that Jesus is a Prophet, and not the son of God.
In truth, the Prophet of Islam, Mohammed, never ever really called for spreading religion with the sword. Quran states in Surat (chapter) al-Nahl, v. 134: "Invite to the path of thy Lord with wisdom and good advice, and argue with them kindly, for Thy Lord is well aware of those who go astray and He is aware of those who follow true guidance." Indeed, the very next verse states: "If thou should punish (aggressors) punish only in proportion to the aggression inflicted upon you, but if ye be patient, it will be better for the patient."
Let us take Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in terms of population in the world, as an example. Historically, it is well known that no Muslim Army had ever set foot on the huge archipelago. Yet all those millions chose to embrace the religion endeared to them by Arabian merchants and sailors who had exemplified to the natives the Islamic ideals of honesty, purity and faithfulness.
Furthermore, the Pope should have realised that he lives in a glasshouse. I want to remind him of the history of the Catholic Church upon the helm of which he now sits. It was the Church that burned scientists alive, it was the Church that invented the Indulgences and Simony systems, it was the Catholic world that invented the Inquisitions, the pogroms, and all other abominations associated with its dark practices against critics and opponents, including Christians who didn't extend fealty to Rome.
The Crusades? The Holocaust? Must we re-open these dark chapters again? Do we have to remind His Holiness that in the past century alone, over a hundred million Christians were killed by other Christians in numerous wars, including two World Wars? They have themselves been guilty of unholy violence in crusades, persecutions and inquisitions and, under Pope Pius XII, tacitly condoned the Nazi Holocaust. May we remind His Holiness that he himself 60 years ago was a member of the Hitler Youth? And then how about the spread of Catholicism in South America? Was it done through the example of 'platonic love' and 'self-abnegation'?
But the old myth of Islam as a chronically violent faith persists, and surfaces at the most inappropriate moments. As one of the received ideas of the West, it seems almost impossible to eradicate. Indeed, we may even be strengthening it by falling back into our old habits of projection. As we see the violence - in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon - for which we bear a measure of responsibility, there is a temptation, perhaps, to blame it all on "Islam".
Pope Benedict's Regensburg speech cannot meaningfully be seen other than in the context of the invasion and occupation of Muslim lands by Western armies. He is a war propagandist for imperialism.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Never trust a Christo-Islamic fascist when they talk about secularism in India. They have never wanted secularism, the liars just want global domination. Hindu reason and power will prevail and will eventually lead to a decline of Abrahamic fascism.
<!--QuoteBegin-agnivayu+Sep 23 2006, 06:37 PM-->QUOTE(agnivayu @ Sep 23 2006, 06:37 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Never trust a Christo-Islamic fascist when they talk about secularism in India. They have never wanted secularism, the liars just want global domination. Hindu reason and power will prevail and will eventually lead to a decline of Abrahamic fascism.
[right][snapback]57792[/snapback][/right]
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...and signs are slowly beginning to appear. The turning away of europe from the church, the increasing radicalization of the US Xtian groups wnd the subsequent recognition of the problems with Xtianity by teh US public, the daily free peek show about the true nature of Islam....
All these are slowly bringing people back to their roots. People will realize that Christianity and Islam -grotesque distortions of Sanatan Dharma- are are all rules and regulations about whom to hate and how...there is no spirituality at all in them.
A proliferation of articles, websites etc revealing the truth about these religions is already happening..
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The great divide
Udayan Namboodiri
The Pope, <b>by issuing a historic apology, </b>has tapped a groundswell of rage. Many Christians are reading the irrational outburst following his Regensburg address in the language of the 14th century Byzantine emperor whom the Pontiff quoted. They wonder whether the time has come to stand up to the blackmail of fundamentalists which is harming the cause of ordinary Muslims and, of course, global peace
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Pope did not apologize for what he said, he said he felt sorry muslims feel that way and/or for their actions later on.. Didn't he?
Muslims and the Pope should fight and argue hard and create hatred and animosity between Catholics and Muslims. This is only be good from a Hindu point of view ....Abrahamic fascist infighting.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> <b> The Pope is not alone </b>
A Surya Prakash
After launching a sustained and multi-pronged attack on Pope Benedict XVI, radical Islamists have managed to extract a partial retraction from the head of the Roman Catholic Church for his recent remarks on Islam, but the central point made by the Pope that religion and violence do not go together, is unassailable. Looking at the scale of the demonstrations against the Holy Father, it would appear as if he is the first person in history to have candidly aired his views on Islam and about Islamic scriptural support for violence against non-Muslims. However, that is hardly so. He is certainly not the first religious or political leader of consequence to have spoken up against justification of violence in Islam. And going by the reactions of other religious leaders, it is certain that Pope Benedict XVI will not be the last.
In his speech at a German university, the Pope quoted a medieval emperor who had said Prophet Mohammed had brought things which were "evil and inhuman" and had spread by the sword the faith he preached. Islamists wanted a complete retraction from the Pope, but the pontiff was in no mood to oblige them. A week after this controversial speech, the Pope said by way of clarification that "the polemical content does not express my personal convictions". However, he asserted that his intention was only to explain that "not religion and violence but religion and reason go together".
Given the ferocity of the attack launched against the Pope and the death threats held out by some organisations, including an Islamic cleric from Somalia who has asked Muslims to "hunt down and kill" Benedict XVI, one would have thought that political and religious leaders would be chary of treading this path and inviting the wrath of Islamists. But that is not the case. Unmindful of the tirade being faced by the Pope, two other religious leaders - Archbishop Christodoulos, Head of the Orthodox Church of Greece and Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury - have spoken up about Islam in much the same vein as the Pope.
Speaking on 'The Cross and the Crescent: The clash of faiths in an age of secularism", a week after the Pope made his controversial remarks, Lord Carey said, "Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power". In other words, Lord Carey is just not willing to separate radical Islam from Islam in general. However, he urged Muslims to address their religion's association with violence "with great urgency".
Undaunted by the attack on Pope Benedict, the head of the Orthodox Church of Greece told the faithful in Athens that Christians in Africa were suffering from fanatic Islamists. He said Roman Catholic monks were being assassinated by Muslim fanatics.
But as I said earlier, none of this is new. Following the assassination of Swami Shraddhanand at the hands of a Muslim fanatic in December, 1926, Mahatma Gandhi had said: "Mussalmans have an ordeal to pass through. There can be no doubt that they are too free with the knife and the pistol. The sword is an emblem of Islam. But Islam was born in an environment where the sword was, and still remains, the supreme law. The message of Jesus has proved ineffective because the environment was unready to receive it. So with the message of the Prophet. The sword is yet too much in evidence among the Mussalmans. It must be sheathed if Islam is to be what it means - peace." This was 80 years ago.
Going by the statements of the Pope and many others, it appears as if time has stood still. Nothing has happened between 1926 and 2006 which would warrant us to say that Gandhi's view on Islam is now irrelevant. On the other hand, the cumulative effect of much of what has happened in the world and in our sub-continent in these intervening years has only reinforced this view.
Long years before Gandhi spoke his mind on Islam, Swami Vivekananda told a gathering in London in November, 1896: "In the Quran there is the doctrine that a man who does not believe these teachings should be killed. It is a mercy to kill him! Think of the bloodshed there has been in consequence of such beliefs!"
Annie Besant said in 1922 that the argument of the Muslim leadership that they are ordained to obey Islamic law as against laws made by the state is "subversive of civic order and stability of the state". BR Ambedkar, the author of our Constitution, too, has emphatically stated that Islam divided the world into Dar-ul Islam ( Abode of Islam) and Dar-ul Harb (Abode of War) and that it is incumbent of Muslims to wage war against any country that is not controlled by Muslims.
In recent years, Samuel Huntington, the Harvard Professor who has propagated the 'Clash of Civilisations' theory, has observed: "The Quran and other statements of Muslim belief contain few prohibitions on violence, and a concept of non-violence is absent from Muslim doctrine and practice."
So what is new in what the Pope said some days ago in Germany? Shall we now put Gandhi, Ambedkar, Annie Besant and Vivekananda in the dustbin of history and mollify the hotheads in the Islamic world, or shall we stand up and tell these radical Islamists that the liberal, democratic world has now run out of patience?
Truly, democrats around the world are tired of explanations. If Islam means peace, we must ask the adherents of Islam to please show it! The angry outburst of Muslims across the world may silence the Pope or force him to backtrack, but nobody should be deceived by it. The problem will not disappear with the Pope's partial retraction. As the reactions of Archbishop Christodoulos and Lord Carey show, non-Muslims are not going to be cowed down by threats of violence either. The apprehensions about Islam in the non-Muslim world are real. Muslims must face this truth and take the initiative to give themselves a new, moderate image. Nobody else can do it.
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<b>Pope invites new look at Catholicism</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In a meeting Monday with Muslim diplomats from 21 nations and the Arab League, Benedict urged both Christians and Muslims to "guard against all forms of intolerance and to oppose all manifestations of violence." He did not, however, offer a direct apology for his earlier remarks as demanded by some Muslim leaders and clerics.
Benedict's speech found a sympathetic ear among many in the West. A German theologian, the Rev. Martin Schuck, said any backtrack by the pope would amount to "intellectual surrender" to radical Islam.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In a meeting Monday with <b>Muslim diplomats from 21 nations </b>and the Arab League, Benedict urged both Christians and Muslims to "guard against all forms of intolerance and to oppose all manifestations of violence." He did not, however, offer a direct apology for his earlier remarks as demanded by some Muslim leaders and clerics.
Benedict's speech found a sympathetic ear among many in the West. A German theologian, the Rev. Martin Schuck, said any backtrack by the pope would amount to "intellectual surrender" to radical Islam.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>A neoconservative at the Vatican </b>
By Niranjan Desai
The outrage caused in the Islamic world by Pope Benedict XVIs citation of an obscure Islam-baiting 14th century Byzantine Emperor who claimed that Prophet Mohammed brought things only evil and inhuman to the world has been sought to be explained away by sophistry by the Popes defenders. At first, Vatican representatives claimed that the Popes remarks were misconstrued and were not intended as an anti-Islamic broadside, but were aimed at the West, especially its tendency to separate faith and reason.
Later the defence was that any criticism of the Popes remarks violated the Popes right of freedom expression. Finally, mindful of the extreme reaction to his remarks, the Pope expressed regret at any offence he might have caused. <b>It is significant, however, to note that he has not retracted his statement</b>. That is the crux of the matter. His choice of that particular quote, so offensive to all Muslims, has to be seen as a deliberate provocation. <b>After all, the Pope is not an ordinary politician or a religious leader; the Catholics world over revere him as Gods vicar on earth. As it is said that a gentleman is never unintentionally rude, his remarks seem to have a definite context and intent</b>.
<b>Pope Benedict is a shrewd and ruthless ultra conservative operator</b> whose election as successor to Pope John Paul II came as a surprise even to many seasoned Vatican observers; he is referred to as the Rottweiler by his detractors precisely for these qualities. His track record amply shows that he is a man who is not remotely afraid of controversy and that <b>he has very little sympathy or imagination for other religious faiths. His description of Buddhism (before he became the Pope) as auto-erotic spirituality even today offends all Buddhists.</b>
His views on Islam also are significantly divergent from those of Pope John Paul II. He is definitely more of a hawk on Islam than was his predecessor. In an interview in 1997 with John L. Allen Jr, the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, he said, One has to have a clear understanding (of Islam) that it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of pluralistic society. And in the same interview, he accused some Muslims of fomenting a radical liberation theology, meaning a belief that God approves of violence to achieve liberation from Israel. He also said that he opposed Turkeys candidacy of the European Union, arguing that it is in permanent contrast to Europe and suggesting that it play a leadership role among Islamic states instead.
In contrast to his predecessors efforts to reconcile the ancient enmity between Muslims and Catholics, Roman Catholic Church under Benedict, according to some Vatican observers, is moving into a more critical posture toward Islamic fundamentalism. Last February, the Pope removed Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, who had been John Pauls expert on Islam, as the president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, sending him to a diplomatic post in Egypt.
Fitzgerald was seen as the Vaticans leading dove in its relationship with Muslims.
That same February, Bishop Rino Fischella, the rector of Romes Lateran University and a close confidant of the Pope, announced that it was time to drop the diplomatic silence about anti-Christian persecution, and called on the United Nations to remind the societies and governments of countries with a Muslim majority of their responsibilities. So when the Pope said in his apology on September 17 that he wants a frank and sincere dialogue, the word frank was not an accident. <b>He wants dialogue with teeth.</b>
The Popes remarks have also to be seen in the larger context of the Wests war on Islamic terrorism. Ever since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, a sense of paranoia has gripped the western societies making them suspicious of Muslims within their societies and outside. Consequently, there has been a growing demonisation of Islam and a gratuitous reawakening of the most entrenched and self-serving of western prejudices that Muslims have a unique proclivity to violence. The quotes below illustrate this graphically:
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Islam is the only cultural system that seems regularly to produce people like Osama bin Laden or the Taliban who reject modernity lock, stock and barrel:
Francis Fukuyama
Islam is quite simply a religion of war:
Paul Weyrich and William Lind
And one hardly needs to labour the similarities between Islamism and the totalitarian cults of the last century. Anti-Semitic, anti-liberal, anti-individualist, anti-democratic, and, most crucially, anti-rational, they too were cults of death, death-driven and death-fuelled:
Martin Amis<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Could it be that the Pope is now indicating that he too is willing to throw the full weight of the Roman Catholic world behind this growing demonisation of Islam to lend a moral justification for the unpopular and floundering Bush-Blair war on Islamic terror?
<i>Niranjan Desai is former Ambassador of India to the Vatican</i> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--emo&:argue--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/argue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='argue.gif' /><!--endemo--> Merkel wades into opera vs Muslims row
Rashmee Roshan Lall
[ 27 Sep, 2006 2040hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
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Culture minister Bernd Neumann said "If fears about possible protests result in self-censorship, then the democratic principles of free speech are in danger."
Germany's interior minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, added while on a visit to Washington that the cancellation was "crazy, unacceptable".
In a bleak comment reflective of the increasingly polarized tone of debate, Kay Kuntze, director of the Berlin Chamber Opera, said: "If we give up the central point of our culture -- the freedom of art -- we end up giving up our entire culture."
Merkel's comments and those of other leading German politicians, set off a simmering row over freedom of speech in a Europe that uneasily tolerates its 15 million-strong Muslim population. German commentators admitted that Merkel's comments also overshadowed her government's unprecedented attempt to build bridges with Germany's 3.2-million strong Muslim minority on the very day it opened a conference to promote dialogue with them.
The new threatened storm clouds over Europe's increasingly fragmented view of its enforced multi-religious and multi-cultural nature comes a fortnight weeks after the Pope enraged Muslims across the world by quoting from a medieval text that linked the spread of the Islamic faith to violence. And it has provoked new questions over increasing religious sensitivity among Muslims living in the advanced economies of the developed world.
Back in Berlin, the Merkel government's integration commissioner, Maria Boehmer assured that the opera controversy would feature at the government-sponsored conference of dialogue with Muslims. The conference, which officially aims to tackle issues such as equal rights for men and women, the building of mosques, religious lessons and the training of imams, is seen as a stuttering attempt by mainly Christian Western Europe to maintain an unquiet peace with its increasingly resented Muslim minority.
Culture vultures in leading European capitals said on Wednesday that it was ironic the Deutsche Opera had become the focus of a new row over freedom of expression vs Muslim sense of grievance. Just over three years ago, the German government saved the Deutsche Opera and two other Berlin opera houses from closure with a cash injection of 25m euros because the then culture minister insisted it was important to keep such institutions "safe from harm".
The cancelled opera, 'Idomeneo', is an ancient story of the king of Crete's pact with sea god Poseidon to sacrifice his son. This production is described as a meditation on enlightenment, which shows the king lifting the severed heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad to suggest that too much reliance on religion can endanger the human spirit. The opera's previous outing, again in Berlin, had infuriated its largely Christian audience in 2003. Appalled by the production's depiction of beheaded divinities, they had smashed doors but the opera continued to run for nearly a whole year.
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<b>LeT issues fatwa to kill Ratzinger</b>
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http://www.saag.org/papers20/paper1974.html
A report on the the MUD Fatwa to kill the Pope has been carried by the Pakistani journal "Ausaf" in its issue dated September 18,2006. It has reported as follows:
"Pakistan's Jamaat-ud-Dawa has issued a Fatwa asking the Muslim community to kill Pope Benedict for his blasphemous statement about Prophet Mohammad. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa has declared death to Pope Benedict and said that in today's world blasphemy of the Holy Koran and the Prophet has become a fashion. The leaders of the Jamaat were speaking at a Martyrs' Islamic Conference in Karachi. Prominent Jamaat leader Hafiz Saifullah Khalid said that in the present circumstances, jehad has become obligatory for each Muslim. Muslims are being declared terrorists and our battle for survival has already started. The Muslim world has rejected the Pope's apology and decided to continue protests and demonstrations in big cities. The Pope's apology is just a drama and no political leader has any power to pardon him. It is part of a crusade initiated by the US in the name of terrorism. Instead of accepting fake apologies, Muslims should realise Europe's enemity towards Islam and Muslim Ummah should prepare itself to defend its faith. Jamaat-ud-Dawa leader Hafiz Abdur Rahman Makki said the West and Europe have started a campaign against the Holy Koran and the Prophet and have abused jehad. We should take appropriate steps to deal with the champions of crusade. It is time for Muslim leaders to open their eyes and understand that the West had never been a friend of the Muslims and will never be so."
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Pope accuses Muslim extremists of inciting anti-Christian feelings</b>
5th October 2006
An official Vatican journal has accused Muslim fundamentalist of using Pope Benedict's controversial remarks on Islam to incite anti-Christian feeling.
The article in Civilta Cattolica, the <b>journal of the Italian Jesuits</b>, was one of a recent series of comments by Catholic Church officials or publications defending the Pope against accusations his speech last month was anti-Muslim.
It said the Sept 12 lecture at Regensburg University in the Pope's native Germany had been used "by fundamentalist groups to incite Islamic people against the Pope and against Christians."
It said Muslim fundamentalists had "linked (the Pope's words) to the presumed western war against Islam" and had gravely harmed Christian-Muslim relations.
The leader of more than one billion Catholics has several times expressed regret for the reaction to the lecture in which he quoted 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who spoke of the Prophet Mohammad's "command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
<b>But he has stopped short of the unequivocal apology wanted by Muslims for the speech. </b>The dispute has further strained Vatican ties with Muslims who already knew he has spoken in the past against Turkey's entry into the European Union because of that country's Islamic roots.
Some accuse him of undoing years of bridge-building by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.
The journal said there was "no doubt" that both Christians and Muslims could suffer from the worsened relations, particularly in places where either group is a minority.
It warned that the "ultimate aim of various fundamental, radical and terrorist groups" was a clash of civilisations.
Articles in Civilta Cattolica are approved in advance by the Vatican's Secretariat of State, the most influential department in the Holy See. Asked about the article, Iraq's ambassador to the Vatican, Albert Edward Ismail Yelda, said that while he personally accepted the Pope's clarification he expected Islamic fundamentalists to continue their objections.
"His explanation has not been digested well and since fundamentalism and fanaticism are spreading like fire, I think fundamentalists will use the issue to support their view that this is just a continuation of the Crusades," said the ambassador, who is a Christian.
Church sources said the Vatican's annual message to the Islamic world to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan due for late October, was being rewritten to address the tensions that arose after the Pope's lecture.
The Vatican has said the Pope's trip to predominantly Muslim Turkey at the end of November, which some Turks want to be called off, would go ahead as planned.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Popeâs formula for interfaith dialogue </b>
By Madhuri Santanam Sondhi
It is impossible to ignore the negative mention of Islam in Pope Benedictâs address to the University of Regensburg. He could have developed his thesis of reason and violence without the jarring quote from Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologusâ diary from the 14th century, <b>a period when the Vatican was sponsoring crusades of a surpassingly bloody nature in the region.</b>
Pope Benedict seizes on the emperorâs views that violence is incompatible with Godâs nature, and that <b>faith should be spread</b> through good speech and proper reasoning. Islam today is not spreading its faith through violence.
<b>Nowadays both Islam and Christianity make converts as much through promises of improved social and economic life as through spiritual appeal.</b>
<b>So it may be asked, to whom is this speech addressed?</b> Modern âjihadistsâ use terror primarily for political ends: their declared aim is not to convert the Israelis or Americans to Islam but to throw them out of or curtail their influence in, West Asia, just as the object of IRA terrorism was not to convert Irish Protestants to Catholicism but to improve the position of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland if not make it part of Eire.
Reactive violence provoked by cartoons caricaturing the Prophet or by Rushdieâs Satanic Verses is also not connected to conversion. So perhaps Benedict XVIâs reference to Islam is directed to those who use religion and violence to further social or political ends.
The bulk of the Popeâs scholarly speech was directed at the faculty of Regensburg to defend theology as a legitimate subject of academic study, given that it represents a marriage of faith with reason.
The modern university is the universitas scientiarum â a world of knowledge governed by rational methodologies, where, thanks to this âmarriageâ theology can claim a rightful place. <b>However the combination of faith and reason is oxymoronic, at worst casuistic: any âunionâ between intrinsically incompatible terms is more likely to result in disequilibrium or the dominance of one term. </b>
<b>The Pope himself selects which partner is to dominate:</b> âNonetheless the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself.â He hopes that âreason and faith (can) come together in a new way ... if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons.â
<b>As to which aspects of reason will go beyond empirical verification to these vast horizons he does not elaborate.</b>
Having thus set the terms of the debate <b>he outlines the next step towards a âgenuine dialogue of cultures and religionsâ to be based on reason as the handmaiden of faith. </b>
<b>Again one may ask, which or whose faith? Most faiths are founded in an initial non-rational revelation,</b> be it a prophet, incarnation or scripture, with reason assisting in erecting their superstructures. In his search for inter-faith dialogue and harmony Gandhi relied on a common moral space shared by all religions and by secularism (also based on an initial leap of faith) which was amenable to rational discussion and agreement.
But inter-religious dialogue is only up to a point a <b>rational exercise in applied ethics</b>. The fundamental clash between different religions arises from unbounded certainty in the <b>utter superiority of oneâs own faith or methodology</b>.
These differences cannot be argued away; they can only be accepted, perhaps not even respected, by the faithful, who would be undone by actual acknowledgement of another valid insight, revelation or perception. <b>To conduct a rational dialogue on the basis of such foundations is like building a house on sand.</b>
At his âreconciliationâ meeting at Castelgondolfo, <b>which took place with Muslim diplomats and not clerics</b>, the Pope reiterated his Regensburg thesis that violence is irrational and anti-religion. <b>He did not focus on the various non-rational beliefs which abound in all religions including his own, and which underlie the discord which often leads to violence.</b>
The Pope also inveighed against religious intolerance. Earlier he had accused India through its diplomatic envoy at the Vatican of practising intolerance: this was a reference to the Rajasthan governmentâs attempts to ban conversion. <b>Obviously, one manâs tolerance is another manâs aggression</b>, and this is one of those knotty problems which no amount of rationality can solve.
The multi-layered Regensburg speech lends itself to various interpretations. George Friedman suggests the Popeâs message is one of solidarity addressed to George Bush in the current not so triumphant western confrontation with Islam. An alternative point for consideration is the following:
<b>The Pope has shown himself to be proactively concerned with a new conversion campaign, especially in Asia and Africa.</b> Islam has similar goals. Just as in the 18th century the Europeans evolved the idea of âinternational relationsâ to regulate their competition for colonies in Asia and Africa, <b>the Pope would like to establish the rules of the game by which Christianity and Islam compete for souls</b>: a pitch for reason over violence to be agreed on under cover of interfaith dialogue. This would make little sense to the non-proselytising religions.
This does not mean that inter-religious dialogue be scuttled. It is a great advance from the periods of religious wars that religious heads and representatives find it possible to courteously converse with one another, albeit without total âgood faith.â Undercurrents of competition remain: one religion understands the right to convert as tolerance; another regards a principled acceptance of pluralism as tolerance. There is no argument about the right of individuals to freely change their beliefs: the issue here is one of large scale conversion.
Inter-faith dialogues should also include ideological and secular representatives, who are equally absolutist in their own versions of truth, and equally prone to violence. To accommodate all, we need at least an operational equality, born of the realisation that truth cannot be embodied in only one system, at best that all systems are subject to failings and error.
The dialogues would also <b>entail mutual respect in encouraging imaginative speaking for the other from inside the otherâs faith, or from outside by an open recognition of the otherâs positive aspects</b>. This will help create a constructive atmosphere, but cannot bring about total harmony.
The limitations are the underlying fundamental disagreements, so the dialogue has to carry the proviso that when we reach the sensitive limits where rational argument can take us no further, we abstain from pressing our point of view.
Abstention is the conclusion that follows from a dispassionate and rational analysis of conflict, the ultimate safeguard against violent disagreements and behaviour.
Hence what can actually be cultivated at interfaith sessions is mutual abstention, retaining faith in oneâs own beliefs but refusing to enter into conflict with others.
This procedure is founded not in any vision of absolute truth, but in the recognition of diversity and universal fallibility.
<i>The writer can be contacted at mssondhi@hotmail.com</i>
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Looks like Christian missionaries have always disliked Mohammed.
Writes Saint Francis Xaviour about Japan in Jan 1549:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->... This nation eats all kinds of food and does not practice circumcision; so that it would appear that the Gospel had been preached in the country, and that on account of sins the light of faith had been obscured, andthen some <span style='color:red'>HERETIC LIKE MAHOMET</span> had taken it away altogether. ...
http://books.google.com/books?as_brr=1&id=...PA215&lpg=PA215
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Very interesting question --> Who is worse ? Osama Bin Laden or Pervez Musharraf ?
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/20...e-or-quran.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Which is more violent, the Bible or the Quran? Is there a way to objectively answer such a question?
Well, it wouldn't be easy. But it is possible to compare the amount of cruelty and violence in the two books.
Here is a summary of the highlighted verses in the SAB and SAQ.
Number of Cruel or Violent Passages
Bible 857
Quran 488
So the Bible has more cruel or violent passages as the Quran. But the Bible is a much bigger book. How do they compare when size is taken into account?
Violence and Cruelty Total verses Percent
Bible 857 31173 2.75
Quran 488 6236 7.83
When expressed as a percentage of cruel or violent verses (at least as marked in the SAB/Q), the Quran has nearly three times that of the Bible. (7.83 vs. 2.75%)* Of course this analysis does not consider the extent of the cruelty in the marked passages. And that is an important consideration. Is Numbers 31:14-18, for example, more cruel than Quran 5:34? That is something that each person must decide.
A good argument could be made that either book is the most violent and cruel book ever written. The award would go to one or the other, for neither has any close competitors. It is frightening to think that more than half of the world's population believes in one or the other.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Pope's original speech. Apparently they know that negative statements in their texts will be used as weapons against them and hence this philosophical white-wash?
We should probably be ready for his proposition of dialogue of religions and cultures.
http://tinyurl.com/j7uuh
Lying in Islam,muslims are alow to lie
By Abdullah Al Araby
http://www.islamreview.com/articles/lying.shtml
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