Actually, the problem is that it does not shame the Muslim world. Bruce http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/013134.php
September 16, 2006 Rioters' madness shames Muslim world Father Raymond J. de Souza speaks truth to power in the National <http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=bc48fb82-d9f0-43d5-b2 8d-68a1a7e1c804> Post (thanks to Twostellas): The eruption of rage in some quarters of the Islamic world against Pope Benedict XVI requires that several tough things be said. Painful though it may be, speaking frankly is necessary if there is to be honest and open dialogue between the Abrahamic faiths. Given the reaction to Benedict's address, though, one wonders if that dialogue is even possible. [...] Benedict was quoting a 14th-century Christian emperor, under siege from the Ottomans, defending the position that spreading religion by violence is contrary to the nature of God. The Emperor, quite reasonably given his circumstances, suggested to his Persian interlocutor such a view did not prevail in Islamic thought. In response to this historical excursus in an academic lecture by one of the world's most erudite theologians, we are witnessing a wave of madness and malice, no doubt an embarrassment to millions of Muslims. Roman Catholics are likely angry. Relations between adherents of the two religions simply cannot develop without all conducting themselves as mature adults. It does a disservice to children to call the wild-eyed statements and deranged behaviour of the past days childish. It is not only the obscenity of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist terrorist band suppressed in several Muslim states, demanding an apology from anyone, let alone the Holy Father. It is not only the grandstanding Pakistani politicians passing resolutions condemning a papal speech few read, and even fewer understood. It is not only the extraneous charges about the Holocaust and Hitler by the agitated and excited. It is that we have seen this before. When Pope John Paul II made his epic pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Palestinian Muslim representatives jostled him on the Temple Mount, shouted at him, and, in one episode of maximum rudeness, abandoned him on stage during an interfaith meeting. Bashir Assad, the Syrian President, treated him to an anti-Semitic rant when the late pope visited Syria. Catholic goodwill toward global Islam is severely attenuated by such continued maltreatment of our universal pastors. And it is well past time that the maltreatment of history ceased too. The irony of the accusations that Pope Benedict has a "Crusader mentality" is that he was speaking about the period in which the Crusades themselves took place. Catholics have for quite some time now confessed the sinful and wicked shadows that marked the Crusades, but any suggestion the whole affair was about rapacious Christians setting upon irenic Muslims must be rejected. After all, the formerly Christian lands of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia Minor were not converted to Islam by Muslim missionary martyrs. Those lands were conquered by the sword. The Crusader idea was that they could be recovered. Who wronged who first is a fruitless historical inquiry, but historical honesty requires an admission that Muslims wronged as much as they were wronged against. Actually, the recapture of all the lands conquered and Islamized by the warriors of jihad was never part of the Crusader program. But in any case, this is an excellent and, under the circumstances, courageous piece. Read it all. Posted by Robert at September 16, 2006 02:12 PM | Print this <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2006/09/013134print.html> entry | Email <http://www.jihadwatch.org/cgi-bin/mt-popupemail.cgi?entry_id=13134> this entry Comments (Note: Comments on articles are [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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