Pope’s no dope: I’m sure your reaction to the news that Pope Benedict said that Islam is a religion of violence was similar to mine — What kind of incense are they burning at the Vatican these days? I mean, look at what’s going on in the world, Bennie. Read a paper, listen to NPR, watch the “O’Reilly Factor.”
Maybe he figured that, since he was speaking German, the Muslims wouldn’t suss out what he said. Sorry, Leader of All Christendom, but there are German Muslims nowadays who understand the language and can translate for the other guys.
Since the Pope’s speech the felafel has really hit the fan. It’s gotten so bad that Benedict said he regretted that some people didn’t like what he said. He didn’t apologize, and from where I’m sitting, that’s a good thing because it appears he was right about Islam.
In a Reuters story today, Islamic leaders and groups really don’t sound like they’re ready to forgive and forget the Pope’s remarks:
“We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya,” said a Web statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group led by Iraq’s branch of al Qaeda.
“We shall break the cross and spill the wine,” said the statement, posted on Sunday on an Internet site often used by al Qaeda and other militant groups.
I don’t believe that those guys mean breaking the cross and spilling wine in a good way. And they burned the Pope in effigy, which is the next best thing to perpetrating real violence.
But there is real violence aplenty out there, too. On Sunday in Somalia an Italian nun and her bodyguard were shot an killed in what is presumed to be retaliation for the Pope’s slander of Islam. In Gaza, Palestinians are vandalizing Christian churches.
So it would appear that Pope Benedict really was right — Islam is basically a cult that uses violence as a means of suppressing dissension and denying alternate viewpoints. The Pope merely said what many people already believed — and he backed it up with some insightful medieval philosophy too; he didn’t resort to burning an effigy of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Still, I wish he hadn’t said it.
Islam has lots of shit “with the Vatican” remembering of Roman Catholic led and “inspired” CRUSADES….which were the same sort of barbaric, uncontrolled idiocy which BUSHCO AND FELLOW TRAVELERS, Christian and Jew alike have embraced as today’s “HOLY WAR”!Nazi arrogance speaks many languages, including German , “CHURCH LATIN”, and what ever it is that the BUSHITS speak.
Rest assured that if “THESE IDIOTS NOW IN POWER” MANAGE TO ATTEMPT a blockade of IRAN, the nukes will fly!
Then let’s see how well the FUNDIES GOD WILL PROTECT US! THESE FOLS FOR DAMNED SURE CAN NOT: NEVER HAVE;NEVER WILL!
Buck, I’m with you. Wish he hadn’t said it…and I like this essay. The world is on fire and life is a conumdrum. Is that spelled right?
A little perspective – The Pope no more speaks for all Christians than Ayatollah Khomeini used to speak for all Muslims. These are fringe elements. Cooler heads need to prevail, not fanatics like Bush or Ahmadinejad.
People of all faiths need to come together, not set upon one another, or we will have betrayed all faiths.
Oh, Buck, it is so sad to see that you have finally drank the kool-aid, abandoned common sense, and bought into the old propagandist trick of turning you against the many for the inappropriate, misguided actions of the few. Oh, my goodness.
All blacks are lazy, all Mexicans are here illegally, the Irish are a bunch of drunks, etc, etc, etc, Jesus Christ, please tell me you haven’t crossed over to the dark side and bought into all the stereotypical bullshit!
How very disappointing. I had enjoyed this site for many, many months now, reading it daily, but, sadly, if this is now the standard for this site, well, adios, amigo. If I want to read biased, prejudicial nonsense, I’ll log onto a “red” site like powerline or something.
I’ll check back in a few months or so and see if sanity and reason have been reestablished. It was fun while it lasted.
I think what the world needs now is the bridging of cultures and faiths, not the pitting of one against the other, which is what Benedict’s attitude appears to be. It is easy to levy the harsh criticisms against the Islamic faith, which Buck points out is prone to violence. But what is the more difficult to do is to put yourself in the shoes of the Muslims, who have recently experienced the invasion of Iraq on the basis of Western lies, deceit and hypocrisy, and the systematic destruction of Lebanese infrastructure by Israel with the weaponry support of the USA. Compare the thousands of Muslim deaths and destruction with the burning in effigy of Benedict or the killing of a nun in Somalia, and let me know which is the greater violence or the greater horror.
I re-read this post again after receiving a query from a co-editor, and I guess I can see how people might not grok what I was trying to do in the post. I thought I was having a little ironic fun with absolute statements, like “The Pope was right.” “the Muslims are violent.” But I guess that while I knew what I meant, perhaps I didn’t communicate it very well, and now some people think I’m a conservative Catholic and some think I’m a racist.
I spose I need a snarky-face emoticon that I can append to borderline posts.
Part of the problem I think is endemic to our current modes of communication. The Pope didn’t think he was saying anything bad, he was just trying to make a very fine philosophical point based on a writing from the 14th century — during the crusades — and the Muslims don’t consider saying that they are going to break the crosses and spill the wine of Catholics to be outside the teachings of Islam. Frankly, I think they were both wrong, and I was trying to say that by using language that was similar to those kinds of absolute statements.
It didn’t work because I forgot that we don’t communicate in nuances these days. All public utterances have become absolute and all are backed up by a steely conviction of the incontrovertible rightness of the utterer. Look at George Bush and his crew who believe (and they apparently are correct) that if you say outrageously untruthful things loudly enough and often enough with conviction and a straight face, people will eventually come around to your way of thinking.
Anyway, I’m posting this as a comment as a kind of half-assed explanation. But, like the Pope, I ain’t apologizing about nothing.