The Pope and Islam
Several of the “blogs we frequent” have offered commentary on the reaction of Islam to the Pope’s recent speech. Keith Plummer and John Mark Reynolds have two excellent posts. I borrow from John Mark Reynolds intro here:
The obvious question is to wonder about how easily our foes are baited by a very clever pontiff. Is there a radical Moslem with a sense of irony? When they threaten to kill the Pope for “saying†that they are violent, don’t they get a bit concerned about how that appears?
My new idea for capturing Bin Laden is for President Bush to announce that if he does not come out of hiding soon that he is a big, fat scared-y pants. Bin Laden is short to do it on the same swift reasoning being shown by radicals in the Middle East today.
I have also read the entire text of the Pope’s speech. I must say I have newfound respect (not that I disrepected him before) for Pope Benedict XVI. The speech concerns the relationship of faith and reason and was quite instructional. The comments which have enraged the Muslim world are not the focus of the speech. The Pope is telling a story in which he highlights the importance of reason and acting rationally. The fact that much of the Islamic world has reacted as it has does nothing but reinforce the proposition which they wish to deny is true. I just read a CNN article which covers some of the reaction.
Italian media said an al Qaeda group in Egypt called for the German-born pope, who is 79, to be punished by strict Islamic Shariah law for insulting their religion.
An al Qaeda umbrella group in Iraq has also vowed war on “worshippers of the cross.”
Workers at Turkey’s Directorate General for Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, petitioned for the arrest of the pontiff when he makes a scheduled visit to Turkey in November.
n Iraq, where an effigy of the pope was burned Monday, parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani called his apology “inadequate and not commensurate with the moral damage caused to Muslims’ feelings.”
(By the way, What does it mean to cause “moral damage” to someone’s feelings?)
Cardinal Pell attempted to point out the idiocy of the violence stating that it shows:
…the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats and actual violence.
According to CNN, Muslims called Pell’s remarks “unhelpful”.