[div style="font-weight: bold;" class="mxb"] [div class="sh"] Pope's speech stirs Muslim anger [/div] [/div] [!-- S BO --] [!-- S IIMA --] [table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="203"] [tbody][tr][td] [img alt="Pope Benedict XVI in Freising, southern Germany " src="vny!://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42087000/jpg/_42087744_pope_ap_203b.jpg" border="0" height="152" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="203"] [div class="cap"]The Pope's comments came on a visit to Germany[/div] [/td][/tr] [/tbody][/table] [!-- E IIMA --] [!-- S SF --] [b style="font-family: Verdana;"]
Muslim religious leaders have accused Pope Benedict XVI of quoting anti-Islamic remarks during a speech at a German university this week. [/b] [p style="font-family: Verdana;"] Questioning the concept of holy war, he quoted a 14th-Century Christian emperor who said Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things. [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] A senior Pakistani Islamic scholar, Javed Ahmed Gamdi, said jihad was not about spreading Islam with the sword. [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] Turkey's top religious official asked for an apology for the "hostile" words. [!-- E SF --] [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] In Indian-administered Kashmir, police seized copies of newspapers which reported the Pope's comments to prevent any tension. [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] A Vatican spokesman, Father Frederico Lombardi, said he did not believe the Pope's comments were meant as a harsh criticism of Islam. [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] 'Abhorrent' [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] In his speech at Regensburg University, the German-born pontiff explored the historical and philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity and the relationship between violence and faith. [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] Stressing that they were not his own words, he quoted Emperor Manual II Paleologos of Byzantine, the Orthodox Christian empire which had its capital in what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul. [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] The emperors words were, he said: "Show me just what Muhammad 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." [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] Benedict said "I quote" twice to stress the words were not his and added that violence was "incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul". [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] The Pope is due to visit Turkey in November and the Turkish response was swift and strong, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford reports from Istanbul. [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] Religious leader Ali Badda Kolu said the Pope's comments represented what he called an "abhorrent, hostile and prejudiced point of view". [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] Whilst Muslims might express their criticism of Islam and of Christianity, he argued, they would never defame the Holy Bible or Jesus Christ. [/p][p style="font-family: Verdana;"] He said he hoped the Pope's speech did not reflect "hatred in his heart" against Islam. [/p] [font style="font-family: Verdana;" size="2"]Many Turks see Benedict as a Turkophobe and commentators call his words just before the holy month of Ramadan "ill-timed and ill-conceived", our correspondent adds.[!-- E BO --][/font]
First the Poop slams Canada for its evil ways, now Muslims..
Who does he like? Oh, yeah..little boys.
Obviously the teachings of his hitler youth days are still prevelent in his views.
I guess running a multi trillion dollar corporation like the Catholic Church, you have to speak out from time to time.
sports, do you know where Capital Hill is in Seattle? It used to be called Catholic Hill (1950s) due to the large Catholic population. The ironic thing is, now 1 in 7 inhabitants are gay. It is a very eclectic neighborhood. I am not sure, tehborken might know, but from what I remember, a large amount of indi coffee shops, bars, pubs, etc. Seattle is so cool.
Yeah I was in the Seattle Area when the Capitol Hill was in the news for all the wrong reasons.
Times change. The Seattle I remember still had the Kingdome around, Screaming Trees were still rocking, and people were still mourning Kurt.
Screaming Trees?
[A href="vny!://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screaming_Trees"]vny!://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screaming_Trees[/A]
damn! I'm old!
guess this thread went a little off topic..oh well, the Pope is way off too.
The pope should talk. The Catholic Churh is responsible for some of the worst atrocities ever known to man.
Why is it that I see no one respond in kind to those 14th-century statements about violence ?
Certainly Benedict XVI seems to have stirred up something, but I think he has more guts than most of you combined, however big your mouths may be...
I even see someone post something inane about the Pope having been in the Hitler Youth ... let me ask you, if you think the Hitler Youth taught people that violence is wrong and not compatible with true spirituality, then WHAT exactly is wrong with that ? Or you might admit that your referring to the Hitler Youth is just plain moronic.
Big guts! The Pope?
He hides in a bulletproof chamber. He will burn! and so will you Muti!
confused!? wrote:
<DIV>Big guts! The Pope?</DIV> <DIV>He hides in a bulletproof chamber. He will burn! and so will you Muti!</DIV>
confused!? wrote:
Big guts! The Pope? He hides in a bulletproof chamber. He will burn! and so will you Muti!
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So much for free speech and free throught... ever heard of hate speech, confused !? ?
When the Pope is speaking publicly to tens of thousands of people, does he hide ? Anyway, FYI - you apparently choose to forget that his predecessor Jean-Paul II was the victim of a failed attempt at murdering him, so I should think it is normal to deal with it in a rational way.
Anyway - angered Palestinians, encouraged by religious leaders, have today attacked a church in the Gaza region.
Wasn't this all about violence ? What do you people have to say ?
All I have to say is read Ibn Warraq. The problem is not "extremists", it is not the Pope, it is not our insensitivity. The problem is Islam. We don't like to say such things, because it really makes our sense of tolerance itch. We have been taught, for good reason and with great pains, to show respect towards the ideas of others who are different than us. That's a good and proper thing, but for one simple problem.
Some of those ideas, just like some of our own, might be really bad.
Islam not only has a history, but that history is more or less kept away from its adherents in the same way that the history of the Catholic church was kept from its adherents 400 years ago. I'm not going to re-write books here, but an objective study of the life of Mohammed and the history of those who followed him reveals Islam not as a good idea that was corrupted by bad people (the Western model of disillusionment we know so well and try to use for every other idea in the world), but a bad idea that was forced onto societies of good people who made it appear good by virtue of the basic level of human compassion that resides in most of us.
We have problems with it because we are looking at it from the wrong end of the binoculars. It is possible for an entire "great world religion" to be wrong, especially when it has spent its entire existence at literal war with every other religion around it.
I see little difference between the original teachings of Islam and the teachings of Christianity at that time. If you look at the fundamentalists of either religion today, they still want to eliminate everyone that doesn't share their beliefs. It is the sort of thing that appeals to the narrow-minded, parochial individual. It seems that all religions have been distorted from the original premise, which was that of getting along with others with the least amount of friction.
The pope pissed off the entire protestant faith when he said only catholics go to heaven.
I always believed that catholic meant general or universal, if I am correct in this, then how on earth has it come to have such a narrow meaning nowadays?
Because narrow minds have adapted it to their purpose, which is to gain power.
Ah yes, over the years the meanings of so many words have been redifined to suit transient purpose.
Religion works on the carrot and stick philosophy. Be good and get rewarded, behave badly and get punished. Then they started raising the ante with more laws and greater punishments. The more sins they could invent, the more money flowed into their pockets as bribes for redemption. It turned into a pretty good racket as time went on.
Thats what I was taught in my lutheran teachings as well Gopher. But when I went to a catholic high school they always said I was a different religion. LOL. Somebody is preaching them something totally evil in catechism in the catholic churches when they call a christian donomination a 'religion'. I'm like hey catholics we are in the same religion, goof balls.
kitten wrote:
[span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);"]I see little difference between the original teachings of Islam and the teachings of Christianity at that time. [/span]
I think I know what you mean, but there is a significant difference, mainly related to the point of origin and the point of departure. What I mean is that where Christians ended up 600 years after Jesus (beating the hell out of anyone who disagreed with them) is not where Jesus was himself. Where Muslims are today is very much where Mohammed was then. You can easily point a finger at the misdeeds of Christians, but it's a little harder to point a finger at Jesus. On the other hand, when you take a full and open look at Mohammed, the immediate response is "So that's where that comes from!" The problem is not with people who are Muslims; it's with Islam itself.
[span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(128, 0, 0);"]If you look at the fundamentalists of either religion today, they still want to eliminate everyone that doesn't share their beliefs. [/span][span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);"] [/span]
You're right, but fundamentalism is inherent in Islam to an extent that is hard to refute. Mohammed's direct behaviour in Hudaybiya and Mecca does not match up to Jesus' relatively passive if brusque recruitment drive, or the total nonchalance of Jews as to whether you join them or not. In otherwords, Jesus said follow me or die, in a philosophical sense, and then he died. Mohammed said follow me or die, and then went and killed anyone who refused him.
[span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(128, 0, 0);"]It seems that all religions have been distorted from the original premise, which was that of getting along with others with the least amount of friction.[/span]
Except that in the case of Mohammed, it wasn't. His entire life was waging war on people who disagreed with him. He personally killed people, as well as commanded the execution of others. He most likely suffered from the same hereditary mental illness that plagued his mother, and caused her to abandon him to his uncle. Not his fault, but a lot of people suffered for it during and after his life.
You're right to stress the universality of most world religions. I have no problem in welcoming almost any of the belief systems found throughout the world. But Islam is like a fox that got into the henhouse of those religions. It doesn't belong there, and it intends to eat your chickens, be they Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Christian or Jew. The people who call themselves Muslims are not "evil" people; the system they are hooked up to however, asks -- and has asked since its inception -- things of them that are not healthy to them or us.
Gopher wrote:
[div style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0); font-style: italic;"]I always believed that catholic meant general or universal, if I am correct in this, then how on earth has it come to have such a narrow meaning nowadays?[/div]
Because when someone feels the need to use the word "catholic" to describe themselves, it's a sure sign that there is anything but a universal consensus on the matter. (//forums/richedit/smileys/Teasing/20.gif) (//forums/richedit/smileys/Other/26.gif)
Usually it's a narrow minded group, like Kitten said, who wishes to become catholic.