Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
I think that person is mature enough to respond so I'll wait for his response rather than hear someone else.
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
I am just responding based on your words "...protesting however wrong their methods are".
If you are condoning the method of protest, I am sure most people would conclude that you are supporting the method (violence in this case). Probably the choice of words was wrong ?
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
If you are condoning the method of protest, I am sure most people would conclude that you are supporting the method (violence in this case). Probably the choice of words was wrong ?
Does the word "wrong" mean anything to you?
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
It does. But it means something completely different when 'however' is added in front of it :)
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
I disagree with your understanding. Anyway now you must be clear on where I stand on the issue.
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
How about this for an apology -
The pope said he was "deeply sorry" about the reactions his speech had caused.
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
Thats why these comments are not taken as real apology by many.
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
Came across the following.
Pope Benedict XVI and my
failing memory
Almost sixty years ago I came across an anecdote related to Hazrat Omar. He
was a mighty ruler extending his empire up to Spain. One day his colleagues
(cabinet ministers) accused him of employing a Jew as his camel-driver. Omar
was taken aback. The Jew had been in his service for more than a decade and
yet he remained a Jew. Omar apologised his failure to convert him and said
it was not difficult to run an empire but so difficult to be a good Muslim.
Yet more, Omar declined to sack the Jew because the driver was efficient and
loyal to Omar.
I narrate the above to exemplify tolerance as taught by great men.
It is unfortunate that the present Pope has started a diatribe of
discord. We hope that it isn't the beginning of a harder, intolerant stance
by the Vatican.
QN Zaman
Old DOHS, Banani, Dhaka
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
Listen, the dude has said has "deep respect for great religions, in particular for Muslims". What else do you want? How many Islamic leaders are willing to say the same for Christians?
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
If the pope has any deep respect for Islam, he has a funny way of showing it.
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
This story is over and lasted longer than it should have. Meanwhile the pink elephant in the room, the radicalized Muslims who called for violence and committed acts of violence, should be delt with, I won't hold my breath though.
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
By this one comment? If he is to be taken so literally by his words you don't like then you must take him literally on the praise as well. I have never seen a more incredulous, whiney group in my whole life. Get over it already. The man owes you nothing more than you have already gotten and then some. You have enough Muslims disrespecting Islam to be worried about this.
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
More upset at the popes quote than at those who use Islam to justify killings, go figure.
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
seminole: you think some half ass sorry (and that too after an uproar) suddenly makes everything ok? you think its that easy to pacify people? most folks might accept his apology but i think they know better now where he really stands. you dont make comments like that if you didnt believe in them.
secondly; i agree with your post utd, these violent folks should be arrested made an example out of, however most likely they live in a place where law an order is not effective hence they get away with it in the first place.
One thing muslims leaders could do is condemn the violent reaction with as much vigour and angst as they did on the pope, the cartoons etc. im not sure how effective it would be but it would definately send out a clear message of where they stand and isolate the violent folks.
Thirdly these violent reactions are not limited to muslims. if you remember post 9/11, 7/7 muslim mosques were attacked aswell as many muslims citizens themselves. Some are feeling the hostility even now. So to portray it as a muslim only thing is blatantly false and misguided to say the least.
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
yes, yes...there's a pink elephant in the room....just don't point at it's crap and tell us it's a mound of chocolate...
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
Pope Benedict XVI and my failing memory
Almost sixty years ago I came across an anecdote related to Hazrat Omar. He was a mighty ruler extending his empire up to Spain. One day his colleagues (cabinet ministers) accused him of employing a Jew as his camel-driver. Omar was taken aback. The Jew had been in his service for more than a decade and yet he remained a Jew. Omar apologised his failure to convert him and said it was not difficult to run an empire but so difficult to be a good Muslim. Yet more, Omar declined to sack the Jew because the driver was efficient and loyal to Omar. I narrate the above to exemplify tolerance as taught by great men. It is unfortunate that the present Pope has started a diatribe of discord. We hope that it isn't the beginning of a harder, intolerant stance by the Vatican.
QN Zaman Old DOHS, Banani, Dhaka
Not just that anti-semitism has been a monopoly of Europeans to date and nobody can out do their atrocities commited against the Jews through out history...
The warring crusaders in their first act of noble deed massacred Jewish communities situated along the Rhine river...
And where did the Jews run off to when prepetually and ruthlessly persecuted in the European lands -- to muslim spain and Ottoman Turkey...
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
What killings are you referring to...those done in self defence and to resist years of occupation, subjugation, oppression and humiliation????
They are rightly not condemned....
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
Hmm - 9/11, London bombing, Mumbai train blast, spain train blast - some examples of self defence:confused: .
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
Again, with this one comment? After all the positive comments he has made about Islam? I'm sorry but if you are so darn hot-to-trot to condemn the man for one quote but not accept him at his word when he says he has deep respect for Islam, you are whiney and petty. What do you want him to do, reject Christian doctrine, face Mecca and praise Muhammed? Convert to Islam beause Musilms believe Christianity to be false and man made?
Re: POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD
I am pretty much over this manufactured crisis. Muslims have pushed this pouting and whining a little too far.
This editorial sums things up pretty well:
** Enough Apologies**
By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, September 19, 2006; A21
Already, angry Palestinian militants have assaulted seven West Bank and Gaza churches, destroying two of them. In Somalia, gunmen shot dead an elderly Italian nun. Radical clerics from Qatar to Qom have called, variously, for a “day of anger” or for worshipers to “hunt down” the pope and his followers. From Turkey to Malaysia, Muslim politicians have condemned the pope and called his apology “insufficient.” And all of this because Benedict XVI, speaking at the University of Regensburg, quoted a Byzantine emperor who, more than 600 years ago, called Islam a faith “spread by the sword.” We’ve been here before, of course. Similar protests were sparked last winter by cartoon portrayals of Muhammad in the Danish press. Similar apologies resulted, though Benedict’s is more surprising than those of the Danish government. No one, apparently, can remember any pope, not even the media-friendly John Paul II, apologizing for anything in such specific terms: not for the Inquisition, not for the persecution of Galileo and certainly not for a single comment made to an academic audience in an unimportant German city.
But Western reactions to Muslim “days of anger” have followed a familiar pattern, too. Last winter, some Western newspapers defended their Danish colleagues, even going so far as to reprint the cartoons – but others, including the Vatican, attacked the Danes for giving offense. Some leading Catholics have now defended the pope – but others, no doubt including some Danes, have complained that his statement should have been better vetted, or never given at all. This isn’t surprising: By definition, the West is not monolithic. Left-leaning journalists don’t identify with right-leaning colleagues (or right-leaning Catholic colleagues), and vice versa. Not all Christians, let alone all Catholics – even all German Catholics – identify with the pope either, and certainly they don’t want to defend his every scholarly quotation.
Unfortunately, these subtle distinctions are lost on the fanatics who torch embassies and churches. And they may also be preventing all of us from finding a useful response to the waves of anti-Western anger and violence that periodically engulf parts of the Muslim world. Clearly, a handful of apologies and some random public debate – should the pope have said X, should the Danish prime minister have done Y – are ineffective and irrelevant: None of the radical clerics accepts Western apologies, and none of their radical followers reads the Western press. Instead, Western politicians, writers, thinkers and speakers should stop apologizing – and start uniting.
By this, I don’t mean that we all need to rush to defend or to analyze this particular sermon; I leave that to experts on Byzantine theology. But we can all unite in our support for freedom of speech – surely the pope is allowed to quote from medieval texts – and of the press. And we can also unite, loudly, in our condemnation of violent, unprovoked attacks on churches, embassies and elderly nuns. By “we” I mean here the White House, the Vatican, the German Greens, the French Foreign Ministry, NATO, Greenpeace, Le Monde and Fox News – Western institutions of the left, the right and everything in between. True, these principles sound pretty elementary – “we’re pro-free speech and anti-gratuitous violence” – but in the days since the pope’s sermon, I don’t feel that I’ve heard them defended in anything like a unanimous chorus. A lot more time has been spent analyzing what the pontiff meant to say, or should have said, or might have said if he had been given better advice.
All of which is simply beside the point, since nothing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day, all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all. And maybe it’s time that it should: When Saudi Arabia publishes textbooks commanding good Wahhabi Muslims to “hate” Christians, Jews and non-Wahhabi Muslims, for example, why shouldn’t the Vatican, the Southern Baptists, Britain’s chief rabbi and the Council on American-Islamic Relations all condemn them – simultaneously?
Maybe it’s a pipe dream: The day when the White House and Greenpeace can issue a joint statement is surely distant indeed. But if stray comments by Western leaders – not to mention Western films, books, cartoons, traditions and values – are going to inspire regular violence, I don’t feel that it’s asking too much for the West to quit saying sorry and unite, occasionally, in its own defense. The fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among their own followers. I don’t see why we should allow them to limit our right to free speech, too.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091800992.html