Muslims Assail Pope's Remarks on Islam

AP reported Turkey's ruling Islamic-rooted party joined a wave of criticism of Pope Benedict XVI on Friday, accusing him of trying to revive the spirit of the Crusades with remarks he made about Islam. Muslim leaders in the Middle East expressed dismay, and Pakistan's parliament unanimously condemned him.

Actually it is the wave of bitching from Turkey's Islamic rooted party and the IslamoFascists that is trying to revive the spirit of the Crusades, because it points out when Christianity had to whip their butts a number of centuries ago.

The Vatican said the pope did not intend the remarks _ made in Germany on Tuesday during an address at a university _ to be offensive. The pope quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and a Persian scholar on the truths of Christianity and Islam.

What truths are there in Islam. It seems to mean whatever the cleric translating it wants it to mean.

"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," the pope said. "He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,'" he quoted the emperor as saying. He did not explicitly agree with them nor repudiate them.

That was wrong. He should have agreed with them.

Turkey's top Islamic cleric, Religious Affairs Directorate head Ali Bardakoglu, asked Benedict on Thursday to apologize about the remarks and unleashed a string of accusations against Christianity, raising tensions before the pontiff's planned visit to Turkey in November on what would be his first papal pilgrimage in a Muslim country. Bardakoglu said he was deeply offended and called the remarks "extraordinarily worrying, saddening and unfortunate."

And just think what we think about your reaction. Cartoonists, ink your pens!!!

On Thursday, when the pope returned to Italy, Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said, "It certainly wasn't the intention of the pope to carry out a deep examination of jihad (holy war) and on Muslim thought on it, much less to offend the sensibility of Muslim believers."

But such an examination is long overdue. The pope is certainly familiar with Fascism, and he knows what Islam says and what the Islamofascists have twisted it to say. Who better to explain to the world the real threat of Islamofascism

Lombardi insisted the pontiff respects Islam. Benedict wants to "cultivate an attitude of respect and dialogue toward the other religions and cultures, obviously also toward Islam," Lombardi said. On Friday, Salih Kapusuz, a deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party, said Benedict's remarks were either "the result of pitiful ignorance" about Islam and its prophet, or worse, a deliberate distortion of the truths.

If there is A TRUTH in the Koran, why do Yusufali, Pickthal, and Shakir come up with different translations in http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/ when translating what the Almighty Himself (swt) gave to the angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad (saas)? Which were listening to which side of the conversation?

"He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world," Kapusuz blurted out in comments made to the state-owned Anatolia news agency. "It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades."

Blue Crab blogged An official of the ruling Turkish Islamic-rooted party has compared Pope Benedict XVI with Hitler and Mussolini. We have a real-time violation of Godwin's law in record time. The rioting will commence as soon as enough of the proper flags, effigies, fuel and ignition sources can be obtained, one suspects. It takes time to organize a "spontaneous outpouring of rage", after all.