What's with Benedict XVI?

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Not to be outdone by the evangelicals, of course.

Pope's Top Exorcist Says Harry Potter is 'King of Darkness'

Pope Benedict XVI's chief exorcist, Rev. Gabriele Amorth, has called fictional wizard-in-training Harry Potter the "king of darkness, the devil."

Amorth made the statement about the star of the best-selling children's series by British author J. K. Rowling during an interview with Vatican Radio during the week.

"Magic is always a turn to the devil," said the Roman Catholic priest, according to Britain's Daily Mail newspaper.

Amorth, who is also the president of the International Association of Exorcists, said the series contains many positive references to "the satanic art" of magic and makes no distinction between black and white magic.

The Harry Potter series has sold more than 300 million copies worldwide and four of the books have been made into films.

Rowling has revealed that two main characters will die in the seventh and last instalment, due to be published soon. It's expected to include a showdown between the teen wizard and his malevolent nemesis, Lord Voldemort.

"A price has to be paid, we are dealing with pure evil here," Rowling said during a British chat show interview.

Amorth compared the Potter character to dictators Stalin and Hitler, saying they were possessed by the devil.

"You can tell by their behavior and their actions, from the horrors they committed and the atrocities that were committed on their orders. That's why we need to defend society from demons," said Amorth, who has reportedly performed 30,000 exorcisms.

Pope also slammed Potter

Amorth's criticisms of Potter weren't the first to emerge from the Catholic Church, which has never been a fan of the series.

Benedict voiced his disapproval of the character and series before he became Pope in April 2006.

Then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, he wrote a supportive letter in 2005 to the author of a book Harry Potter - Good or Evil? In it, sociologist Gabriele Kuby had argued that Harry Potter series distorts young people's ideas about the battle of good versus evil.

"It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly," Ratzinger told Kuby in his letter.

Leaving aside the staggering volume of evil committed under the auspices of the Church (let's say, being fully open about their compliance with, hey, whaddya know, Hitler!) - which should really be the point - I find it ironic that this guy, whose claim is to have performed 30,000 exorcisms, wouldn't be in demand were it not for another bit of pop culture, The Exorcist; prior to the movie's release, the Church had only had the smallest handful to do in the 20th c. Then people started believing exorcisms actually did something.

Hmm, sounds like magic to me.

His comments also betray his not actually having read the books, if he claims, e.g., they draw no distinction between white and black magic, or good and evil. Somebody should lay a Cruciatus Curse on this sucker (ok, that was a very geeky thing to say ).

What is it with these people and their inability to separate the fictional and the actual, and their need to inflict this handicap on others?

Edited September 19, 2006 by Guest

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Really pulling out the stops, isn't he?

Pope Scolds Canada over Gay Marriage, Abortion

(no surprises there, mind you), and,

Pope Abolishes Vatican Pop Concert

Pope Benedict XVI has abolished the Vatican's Christmas concert because of his distaste for popular music, it was claimed yesterday.

The concert has been held in one of the Vatican's music halls for the past 12 years to raise money to build new churches in Rome.

In the past, Tom Jones, Bryan Adams and Sarah Brightman have sung to crowds of up to 8,000.

However, the La Stampa newspaper reported that the current pope "prefers Mozart and Bach to pop music and so the tradition has been canned. Another piece of [his predecessor] John Paul II's colourful and modern legacy has disappeared."

A commentator for ANSA, the Italian news service, said: "Benedict XVI is a very sober pope and is not inclined toward variety shows."

Pope Benedict also has a distaste for the controversy that the concert has thrown up in recent years.

In 2003, Lauryn Hill, the American hip hop star, dismayed the Vatican when she stood up on stage and asked the Catholic Church to apologise publicly for the behaviour of its paedophile priests in the United States.

Last year, the Brazilian singer Daniela Mercury was hastily removed from the bill after she appeared on television and radio in Brazil in advertisements to encourage young people to use condoms.

She was also photographed in the street wearing a pro-condom T-shirt.

Signs that the Pontiff is not a fan of the Christmas concert emerged last year, when he stopped John Paul II's tradition of granting the performers a private audience before they took to the stage.

Several artists, who all appear for no fee, voiced their disappointment that they were not even given a message of encouragement or thanks.

So far the money raised from the concert has helped build 39 new churches in Rome and fund missions in China.

However, the cost of mounting the increasingly spectacular event has reduced the amount of money that has been raised in recent years.

After a year of relative calm, Benedict is starting to stamp his authority on the church, and is keen to present a more serious front than his predecessor.

He has already called for guitars not to be used during Mass, and yesterday he admonished priests for hamming up their services.

"The liturgy is not a theatrical text, and the altar is not a stage," he said, as he met a group of Italian clergymen at his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo.

"There are many ways of celebrating God, and of knowing how to adorn the altar, but it is important not to lose sight of what the liturgy is and to merely become actors in a spectacle."

A spokesman for the Vatican was not available to comment on the demise of the Christmas concert.

Reports suggested that the event would take place in Monte Carlo this year, although no line-up has been confirmed.

Coming next week: Vatican II annulled.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I figured the title needed changing; this guy just keeps grabbing headlines.

Whatever might have been said about JPII, at least he was curious about pluralism and interfaith dialogue; BXVI used to refuse out of principle to even show up at interfaith events his erstwhile pope would set up. I'd also not known that JPII was the first pope ever to set foot in a mosque; I don't think we can expect that from this Inquisitor.

Regret But No Apology From Pope

(CBS/AP) Pope Benedict XVI "sincerely regrets" that Muslims have been offended by his words about Islam and violence in a speech, the Vatican said Saturday in a statement which stopped short of the apology demanded by many Muslim leaders in the Middle East and Asia.

Anger and some violence — Palestinians attacked five churches in the West Bank and Gaza — erupted through much of the Muslim world over a speech Benedict delivered to Regensburg university professors during a pilgrimage earlier in the week to his native Germany.

On Tuesday, Benedict, quoting from an obscure Medieval text, cited the words of a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam's founder, as "evil and inhuman."

Turkey cast some doubt on whether Benedict will travel there in November in what would be his first trip to a Muslim nation. Morocco recalled its ambassador to the Holy See to protest "offensive" remarks by the pope.

The Vatican said the pope's trip has not been cancelled, CBS News correspondent Sabina Castelfranco reports.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted that the pontiff apologize to the Muslim world. When asked if the flap would affect the planned trip to Istanbul, where the pope hopes to meet with Orthodox leaders who are headquartered there, Erdogan left open the possibility of cancellation.

"I wouldn't know," the Turkish premier replied when asked if the trip would go forward. Erdogan said Benedict was speaking "not like a man of religion but like a usual politician."

The Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul, the spiritual center for the world's Orthodox Christians, said that the "course which relations between the Christian and Muslim faiths is taking .... is deeply hurting" Patriarch Bartholomew I.

The new Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said the pope's position on Islam is unmistakably in line with Vatican teaching that says the Church "esteems" Muslims.

The pope "thus sincerely regrets that certain passages of his address could have sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim faithful and should have been interpreted in a manner that in no way corresponds to his intentions," Bertone said in a statement.

"Indeed it was he who, before the religious fervor of Muslim believers, warned secularized Western culture to guard against 'the contempt for God and the cynicism that considers mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom,"' Bertone said, citing words from another speech by Benedict during the German trip.

Bertone is the Vatican's No. 2 official, and was a longtime aide to Benedict when the pontiff was a German cardinal in charge of doctrinal issues at the Vatican under Pope John Paul II.

Bertone's words, released by the Vatican press office, failed to satisfy the pope's angry critics.

Mohammed Bishr, a senior Muslim Brotherhood member in Egypt, contended that the Vatican's statement "was not an apology" but a "pretext that the pope was quoting somebody else as saying so and so."

"We need the pope to admit the big mistake he has committed and then agree on apologizing, because we will not accept others to apologize on his behalf."

The pope's first appearance to the general public since his return from Germany on Thursday is set for Sunday, when Benedict is to greet the faithful at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence in the Alban Hills near Rome.

Bertone said that the pontiff at Regensburg condemned all religious motivation for violence, "from whatever side it may come."

But the pope's words only seemed to fan rage.

In West Bank attacks on four churches, Palestinians used guns, firebombs and lighter fluid, leaving church doors charred and walls scorched by flames and pocked with bullet holes. No one was reported injured. Two Catholic churches, an Anglican one and a Greek Orthodox one were hit. A Greek Orthodox church was also attacked in Gaza City.

In a phone call to The Associated Press, a group calling itself "Lions of Monotheism" said the attacks were in protest of the pope's remarks on Islam.

When giving the speech, the pope stressed that he was quoting words of a Byzantine emperor and did not comment directly on the "evil and inhuman" assessment.

Bertone, referring Saturday to the emperor's "opinion," said "the Holy Father did not mean, nor does he mean, to make that opinion his own in any way."

The prelate pointed out that the pope was speaking in an academic setting, at the university where the pope had taught theology when he was professor Joseph Ratzinger, before working at the Vatican.

Bertone contended that Benedict was reflecting in general on the relationship between religion and violence and that the pope ended the speech with a "clear and radical rejection of the religious motivation for violence, from whatever side it may come."

Benedict had quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and an educated Persian on the truths of Christianity and Islam.

"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," the pope said.

"He said, I quote, '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,"' he quoted the emperor as saying.

The grand sheik of Cairo's Al-Azhar Mosque, the Sunni Arab world's most powerful institution, condemned the pope's remarks as "reflecting ignorance."

The prime minister of Malaysia, with a large Muslim population, demanded that Benedict retract his remarks and not "take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created."

In a first reaction from a top Christian leader, the head of Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church said in remarks published Saturday in the pro-government newspaper Al-Ahram that Benedict's comments on Islam went "against the teachings of Christ."

In Lebanon, Hezbollah and Lebanon's top Sunni Muslim religious authority denounced the pope's remarks, with the militant Shiite Muslim group warning of a global religious schism.

Afghanistan's parliament and Foreign Ministry also demanded that the pope apologize.

In predominantly Muslim and officially secular Turkey, Catholics are a tiny minority, and Benedict's main goal in going there is to meet with Orthodox leaders, who have their headquarters in Istanbul for historical reasons. But the trip, following an official invitation by the Turkish president earlier this year, was also likely viewed at the Vatican as a vehicle to continue Benedict's professed goal of working for better relations between cultures and religions.

The pope's vicar in Anatolia, Monsignor Luigi Padovese, told The Associated Press by telephone that the Turkish media had misunderstood the pope and that trip plans are "something which the Holy See and the Turkish authorities will have to work out together."

Padovese said that a bishops' conference meeting long scheduled for Monday in Istanbul would go ahead. The meeting was supposed to discuss the pope's trip "even though we don't know if the pope is coming or not" now, the vicar said. He added that Catholic-Muslim tensions in Turkey "aren't a new thing."

A Catholic priest was slain earlier this year in his church in a Black Sea town amid tensions over the newspaper caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that first appeared in a Danish newspaper.

British Muslims welcomed Bertone's statement but one leader, Muhammad Abdul Bari, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the pope needed to repudiate the views he quoted to restore relations between Muslims and the Catholic Church.

In India, Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, who is president of the Indian Catholic Bishops conference, said that the Christian community in that country must face Muslim protests over the pope's speech "with Christian courage and prayer because truth needs no other defense," according to AsiaNews, a Vatican-affiliated news agency.

Italian Premier Romano Prodi expressed satisfaction over the Vatican statement.

[Jaimoe]

Rosie DiManno wrote a fitting piece on that fuckhead murderer in Montreal last week and now she nails the Pope situation to a T:

Response to Pope shows hypocrisy

Sep. 20, 2006. 01:00 AM

ROSIE DIMANNO

The Pope better eat his words or there'll be hell to pay.

To refute the allegation and revenge the purported offence — linking the Prophet Muhammad to violence by quoting an obscure 14th-century Byzantine emperor — some righteous Muslims will ... get violent.

More than a few already have, in attacks against at least seven churches in the West Bank and — though a direct link has not been confirmed — the shooting of a missionary nun in Somalia, slain outside the hospital where she worked only hours after a Somali cleric condemned the Pope's speech.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is vowing war on "worshippers of the cross," and Italian media yesterday reported alleged Al Qaeda elements there have called for the pontiff to be punished according to Qur'anic law as they inflict it, which of course means death. Which means assassination. Which could very well mean targeting the Vatican. And if fanatics will blow up mosques, slaughtering fellow Muslims, they can hardly be expected to exercise restraint against the cradle of Catholicism.

This does raise the question, even though Pope Benedict wasn't actually posing it. And only those in most vigorous denial would argue against this: that Islam, in the 21st century, is plagued by violence, at least to the extent that the faith is manipulated, co-opted and exploited by a Salafist strain that doesn't recognize any Islamic traditions after the time of the Prophet Muhammad and justifies terrorism against innocents.

The Pope, in this Sept. 12 speech at the University of Regensburg — insofar as I can make sense of what was a dryly scholastic address — was musing on the "reasonableness of faith," largely chiding the West for its tendency to separate reason and faith. The reference to the Prophet was only peripheral, restricted to a quote from a historical text — an emperor in conversation with a Persian theologian, the conversation taking place during the siege of Constantinople, and in itself focusing on forced conversion.

After the offending passage, Benedict added: "The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul ...

"The decisive statement in this argument about violent conversion is this: Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature."

At no point did Benedict concur with the emperor's inflammatory statement about the Prophet Muhammad. His error was not to make that crystal clear, but he was speaking to a room of academics, not thinking sound bites. He's tried to rectify that since, stating the emperor's views "do not in any way express my personal thoughts."

A scholar, previously the big stick in the Vatican when it came to toeing the doctrinal line, Benedict cannot easily take cover under an I-was-misinterpreted/misunderstood defence. He was misinterpreted and he was misunderstood. But Benedict, though still a rookie pope, knows that words resonate and, further, he surely grasps that the malevolent, the wilfully incendiary, would be thrillingly provoked.

Al Qaeda doesn't speak for Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt doesn't speak for Islam. Hamas doesn't speak for Islam. These are constituencies that have largely mutilated the faith, although they do have vast and spirited adherents, at whatever sorry place it is where religion and politics and lust for power transect.

I do understand the hurt that was caused by the Pope's words, especially when taken out of context. Good Muslims believe themselves under siege. There is war aplenty in Muslim lands, although these are hardly nations that were sitting there innocently minding their own business, doing no harm.

But there's an intellectual absurdity in pretending that what is isn't, that situating Islam somewhere on the landscape of Islamic jihad is dishonest, evil and part of some modern-day crusade against the faith when the "crusade," insofar as one exists, is arguably the other way 'round and repeatedly invoked by — stated bluntly — those orchestrating violent jihad via global terrorism.

There's a moral vacuity in flagellating a pope for his selection of a pretty weird bit of ancient dialogue while ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room that is militant Islam. It is entirely true that most major religions are steeped in blood and, historically, the Catholic Church can match contemporary jihad brutality for brutality. But the Catholic Church has matured; it has acknowledged its wickedness and failures. It does not demand that the rest of the world cower before its might or threaten to blow up your stuff because of words or pictures, with a propensity toward hysteria over offence and grievance.

This is madness, but it's emboldened and legitimized by those who aren't so very maddened, who are afforded respect and public platforms and scholarly regard.

Sling all the mud you want at the Church, slander the pontiff, excoriate Christians and Jews and Hindus, but speak delicately, with cotton in your mouth, when the subject is Islam, however qualified those remarks, because the blow-back will crush you. The imbalance is staggering.

So unlike, say, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who spews vitriol about Jews almost every time he opens his mouth, and got a real kick out of a state-approved cartoon exhibit in Tehran that ridiculed the Holocaust (some polemical dissemblers actually drew an equivalent between these images and the juvenile Danish cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad that unleashed rampaging fury months earlier) — there will likely be no invitation to speak at the United Nations for Pope Benedict any time soon.

He has apologized, but apparently not with sufficient scraping.

Might even get his invitation to visit Turkey in November revoked. And that threat comes not from radicals on the edges of militant Islamism but mainstream authorities urging a more muscular rebuke from their government. The government, while deploring the pontiff's remarks as "ugly," has thus far said there are no plans to call the trip off.

Islam is a religion of peace. We're told this all the time. I mostly believe it to be true — insofar as any of the great monolithic religions can make a claim of universal peace — not just in theory but in practice for the overwhelming majority of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. I know it to be true from the humbled and dignified observance of their faith by Muslims both in their mosques and in the entirety of their lives, in the muezzin's call to prayer, in how the pillars of Islam infuse everyday existence.

But I have difficulty reconciling this Islam to the other, the one that rampages and bludgeons. And I am dismayed by piety that hardly blinks sideways at barbarism.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.[color:green]

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Interesting read, Jaimoe. I think DiManno (whose name alone has a tendency of making me shudder) is on to something when she points out the hypocrisy of kow-towing to Islam while leveling the guns at other traditions (Christianity, anyway; I don't recall anybody taking big potshots at Hindus any time recently, and if they did, they'd have the fanatical Hindu nationalists to answer to). Sure, it is hypocritical. But I am troubled by the rallying behind the pope as if he didn't have it out for other traditions. He does, and he's clearly on the record with it. He argued vigorously, e.g., against Turkey being allowed into the EU precisely because it was a predominantly Muslim country, and could never understand the Christian cultural background of Europe. I mean, Europeans themselves don't understand the Christian cultural background of Europe; he'd have made a better argument by saying that Europeans don't understand enough about Islam, which would at least be true.

My sense of BXVI is that he's an intellectual thug. He's very sophisticated at what he does (while his reference to the Byzantine emperor was a matter of hyperbole, it was used to underscore the sole legitimacy of Christianity as the tradition capable of reconciling reason and faith), but he's still a hardliner whose universe consists of insiders and outsiders, and he doesn't hesitate to keep those he conceives being on the outside out there where he thinks they belong. That's no way to deal with the problems everybody else is stuck with.

[M.O.B.E]

according to prophecy he is the Black Pope and from the looks of things he is heading down the road to destruction.

[d_rawk]

I swear I called Ratzinger as pope almost a decade ago. I don't know about Black Pope, but there is something very icky about him politcally ... I read (present tense 'reed', rather than past tense 'red') all this stuff about how "he didn't even want to be pope ... he just wanted to quietly retire with his books" and it drives me nuts. Like all these years of political machinations within the Church never happened.

My sense of BXVI is that he's an intellectual thug. He's very sophisticated at what he does (while his reference to the Byzantine emperor was a matter of hyperbole, it was used to underscore the sole legitimacy of Christianity as the tradition capable of reconciling reason and faith), but he's still a hardliner whose universe consists of insiders and outsiders, and he doesn't hesitate to keep those he conceives being on the outside out there where he thinks they belong. That's no way to deal with the problems everybody else is stuck with.

Your brilliance makes me blush. As always, spot on.

Join the Ratzinger Fan Club!.

"I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters"

Whoozah.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

A friend of mine at U of T just forwarded this to me - puts the whole clash of civilisations thing in a nice perspective.

The Pope, Islam and the Sword

By: Uri Avnery

Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the

relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have

undergone many changes.

Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306 - exactly 1700

years ago - encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which

included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern

(Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome,

who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his

superiority.

The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a

central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and

downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or

excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, "walked to

Canossa", standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the

Pope's castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.

But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each

other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present

Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there

exists a wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a

world-wide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against

"Islamofascism", in the context of the "Clash of Civilizations".

In his lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he

sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while

Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see

the logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in

the actions of Allah.

As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It

is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope.

But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli

living near the fault-line of this "war of civilizations".

In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the

prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the

sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born

of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the

soul?

To support his case, the Pope quoted - of all people - a

Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern

Church. At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus

told of a debate he had - or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt) -

with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the

Emperor

(according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:

"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".

These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say

them? ( Are they true? © Why did the present Pope quote them?

When Manuel II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He

assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious

empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish

threat.

At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the

Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and

had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern

Empire. On May 29, 1453, only a few years after Manuel's death, his capital,

Constantinople (the present Istanbul) fell to the Turks, putting an end

to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.

During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an

attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no

doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the

Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new

crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics.

In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present

Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian

world against the mainly Muslim "Axis of Evil". Moreover, the Turks are

again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well

known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of

Turkey into the European Union.

Is There any truth in Manuel's argument?

The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and

renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts.

Therefore, he admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the

spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256

(strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant verse 257) which says: "There

must be no coercion in matters of faith".

How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues

that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the

beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later

on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an

order does not exist in the Qur'an.

Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The

treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test:

How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they

had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?

Well, they just did not.

For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks

become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary,

Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman

administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other

European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung

to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all

of them remained devoutly Christian.

True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the

Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted

Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits.

In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its

Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the

gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by

the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout

this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the

expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the

inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith -

and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.

There is no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam

on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed

a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until

almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great

Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In

Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together

and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That

was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the

Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?

What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics

re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious

terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to

become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the

hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape?

Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries.

The

Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco

in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman

Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted.

They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the

auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in

almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.

Why? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the

"peoples of the book". In Islamic society, a special place was reserved

for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but

almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from

military service - a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has

been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to

Islam even by gentle persuasion - because it entailed the loss of taxes.

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot

but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews

for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and

tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.

The story about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil

legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars

against the Muslims - the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the

Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I

suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables.

That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian

theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history

of other

religions.

Why did he utter these words in public? And why now? There is no escape

from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and

his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of "Islamofascism" and the

"Global War on Terrorism" - when "terrorism" has become a synonym for

Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the

domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the first time in

history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic

interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a

Crusade.The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell

the dire consequences?

Uri Avnery is a journalist, peace activist, former member of

the Knesset, and leader of Gush Shalom

[M.O.B.E]

Knight of Malta also have alot to do with what is going on.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

- looks like buddies of Ian Paisley wrote that one.

[M.O.B.E]

I wanted to name my new daughter Paisley but my parents had issues with that name because of Ian Paisley. I just liked the name and Paisley wasnt all that far away from where I grew up in Scotland.