As expected, Satan's Muslims threaten to kill Catholic Pope


Posted by Bible Probe on September 16, 2006 at 21:44:05:

Sep. 16, 2006 20:59 | Updated Sep. 17, 2006 3:00
Mujahideen's Army threatens Pope with suicide attack
By GEORGE CONGER AND JPOST STAFF

As security was beefed up around Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday night, the Mujahideen's Army movement in Iraq threatened to carry out a suicide attack against the Pope in revenge for his comments about Islam and jihad.

On a website used by rebel movements in Iraq, a message posted by the Mujahideen's Army said members of the organization would "smash the crosses in the house of the dog from Rome."

European religious and political leaders have backed the Pope in the wake of the Muslim protests over his academic lecture at Regensburg University Tuesday, saying the pope's words had been misinterpreted.

"Rather than criticizing Islam, the pope is actually offering it a helping hand by suggesting that it do away with the cycle of violence," Fr. Samir K. Samir, SJ one of the Vatican's leading experts on Islam wrote in the Catholic newspaper Asia News.

The pope's academic lecture "was trying to show how Western society-including the Church-has become secularized by removing from the concept of Reason its spiritual dimension and origins which are in God," Fr. Samir stated.

While European Muslims were quick to attack the pope's words, the continent's political leaders declined to follow. "Whoever criticizes the pope misunderstood the aim of his speech," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with the German newspaper, Bild.

"It was an invitation to dialogue between religions," she said on Friday. Benedict "expressly spoke in favor of this dialogue, which is something I also support and consider urgent and necessary." "What Benedict XVI emphasized was a decisive and uncompromising renunciation of all forms of violence in the name of religion," Merkel noted.

This is a "storm in a tea cup" the former archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey told The Jerusalem Post. "Anything Pope Benedict says should be weighed carefully. He is not given to slight or idle remarks," he added, dismissing Muslim charges the Pope had "rubbished" Islam.

"If he quoted something said 600 years ago, we should not assume that this represents the Pope's beliefs about Islam today," he said.

Lord Carey, who chairs the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East has long been active in Christian-Muslim dialogue, and in 2002 signed an accord in Alexandria with the Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo and the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel calling for an end to violence, suicide bombings and a resumption of the peace process in the Middle East.

"Muslims, as well as Christians, must learn to enter into dialogue without crying 'foul'," Lord Carey said. "We live in perilous times, and we must not only separate religion from violence but also not give religious legitimacy to violence in any shape or form." Italian European parliament vice president Mario Mauro condemned as "monstrous" the manipulation of the pope's remarks by Islamic leaders which he claimed were used to "hit out at Christians and the West."

The controversy was evidence of the "gravity of the danger we are facing" he told the ANSA press agency on September 15, and urged Europeans to "defend reason" against the onslaught of "Islamist-Nazi ideology that permeates fundamentalist thought."

The Western press was divided over the pope's remarks. The New York Times editorialized on Saturday that the pope must give a "deep and persuasive" apology for his remarks as "the world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly," it said.

However, the Guardian commented that the pope was "innocent of the charges of stirring up hatred against Islam being made against him."

"It is difficult to believe that those making the claims," the Guardian's religious affairs correspondent, Stephen Bates, noted, "can possibly have read the remarks in full or in their proper context." Muslim concerns were "exaggerated and misplaced," Fr. Samir, a professor at the Universit Saint Joseph in Beirut, the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, and the Centre de Th ologie S vres in Paris, wrote.

"Initial reactions in the Muslim world show that the Pope was misunderstood," he said, and some "comments made by Western Muslims were superficial and fed the circus-like criticism" of "emotional outbursts in response to hearsay."

Benedict's quote from the Koran, "There is no compulsion in religion," (Sura 2,256), was offered in the context of a medieval dialogue between a Byzantine emperor and a Persian Muslim.

"The Holy Father chose this text because it contained a 'key sentence' in which the Emperor criticizes the Muslim for Islam's violence as exemplified by the command to spread the faith by the sword," Fr. Samir said.

However, the argument being proffered by the pope was that "anyone who engages in violence ceases being a believer; anyone, Christian or Muslim, who goes along with violence goes against Reason and God, who is the source of Reason," he stated.

"Sadly, some people cannot avoid seeing the conflict between the West and Islam except in political terms. Since the Pope is a Westerner, it must logically follow that he is 'against' us. And having failed to understand what the pope says, all that they can say is that he criticized jihad and for this reason he certainly 'must' be an enemy," Fr. Samir said.

The tragedy in this controversy, Fr. Samir suggested was that "only by listening to the Pope's suggestions, and those of a few Muslim intellectuals, can Islam's chances for renewal become real."

"It is high time that Islam deal with modernity; not to be swallowed up by it, but rather to take what good it has to offer and improve on it," he said.

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Italian nun shot dead by Somali gunmen

Killing comes hours after top Muslim cleric condemns pope’s Islam remarks

 
Updated: 9:49 a.m. ET Sept 17, 2006

MOGADISHU, Somalia - An Italian nun was shot dead at a hospital by Somali gunmen Sunday, hours after a leading Muslim cleric condemned Pope Benedict XVI for his remarks on Islam and violence.

The nun, who was not immediately identified, was shot in the back at S.O.S. Hospital in northern Mogadishu by two gunmen, said Mohamed Yusuf, a doctor at the facility, which serves mothers and children. The nun’s bodyguard and a hospital worker were also killed, doctors said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, and it was not clear if it was directly linked to the pope’s comments. Two people had been arrested, said Yusuf Mohamed Siad, head of security for the Islamic militia that controls Mogadishu.


‘Irresponsible’
Earlier Sunday, a Somali cleric criticized the comments the pope made in a speech last week for offending Muslims. The pope had cited the words of a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s founder, as “evil and inhuman.”

“The pope’s statement at this time was not only wrong but irresponsible as well,” said Sheik Nor Barud, deputy leader of the Somali Muslim Scholars Association.

“Both the Pope and the Byzantine Emperor he quoted are ignorant of Islam and it is noble Prophet,” he told journalists at a news conference in the capital Mogadishu.

In Rome, Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi called the nun’s slaying “a horrible episode,” the Italian news agency ANSA said. “Let’s hope that it will be an isolated fact.”

Lombardi indicated the shooting could be related to the uproar over the pope’s remarks.

“We are following with concern the consequences of this wave of hate, hoping that it does not lead to grave consequences for the church in the world,” he was quoted as saying.

Benedict apologized earlier Sunday for the angry reaction to his remarks, which he said came from a text that didn’t reflect his personal opinion.

‘Reason to do their worst’
Witnesses also said the shooting and the pope’s comments appeared to be linked.

“These gunmen always look for white people to kill, and now the pope gave them the reason to do their worst,” said Mohamud Durguf Derow, who was at the scene when the nun was killed.

The nun, who spoke fluent Somali, was believed to be around 60 and had been working at the hospital since 2002, said witnesses at the hospital on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Somalia has been without an effective central government since warlords overthrew it’s longtime dictator in 1991 and divided the nation into fiefdoms. The Islamic fundamentalists have stepped into the vacuum as an alternative military and political power.

The current interim government was established two years ago with the support of the United Nations, but has failed to assert any power outside its base in Baidoa, 150 miles from Mogadishu.

The Islamic group, which seized the capital and much of southern Somalia this summer, is credited with bringing a semblance of order to the country after years of anarchy, but some of its leaders have been linked to al-Qaida and there are fears of an emerging Taliban-style regime.


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