Muslims anger at Popes remarks

[speedymama]

Story here .

I wonder if a Fatwa will be taken out against the Pope who had the temerity to say something about Islam? His comments have been misconstrued and to be honest, I don't understand what all the fuss is about.

Both Christianity and Islam have a bloodthirsty history but I think that Muslims are becoming too hypersensitive towards their religion. Why is it that clerics like Abu Hanza can stand on the streets of London, spewing hateful rhetoric about the West but the minute anybody in the West says something about Islam, Muslims around the world get their headscarves and beards in a twist? Chill out for goodness sake. I don't recall the Muslim collective condenming the Iranian President when he called for Israel to be wiped of the planet. I'm certain that there are many Muslims who make disparaging remarks about Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, Sikhism etc. Religion is not just about words, it is about living up to what you preach and how you treat others. No wonder so many people in this country are turned off religion.

I personally agreed with everything the Pope said and interestingly, so did my male Muslim friend.

that is interesting MadamePlatypus. Cor DC, those Roman Catholic brothers really got to you, didn't they.

I'm a muslim (embraced Islam when I married my dh) and I amaze myself at how little it takes for the 'mozzies' around the world to flare up. Why are we such a hyper-sensitive people? It's almost as if they were all just holding their breath and waiting for someone else to offend them. I say they should get off their high horses and stop looking for reasons to protest.

Um yes DC, but the nature of a dictatorship, is its arbitrariness. Under any dictatorship in the world, you are vastly more likely to die in your bed than be rounded up and shot, but the arbitrary threat of it happening, is what keeps the population under control. And so what if younger people than Ratzinger fought the nazis, you can't demand that someone be someone else. Some people give up all their money and life and go and do good for people worse off than themselves, I don't, I'm not apologising for being me not them. Heinrich Boll, one of the greatest post war chroniclers of what it was like to live in the Nazi regime, also fought in the Wehrmacht, Christa Wolf, most famous East German female author, was a member of the Nazi Youth. To single out Ratzinger as being uniquely bad, is just enjoyable anti-catholic bollocks. And I hardly think you can blame him for what the leaders of the catholic church did in the war. It's also not true that spiritual leaders in Italy and Germany did nothing, quite a few catholic priests (as well as other christian pastors) spoke out against them (and suffered the consequences).

I don't demand anything of everyone, just judge people by their track record.
Where Ratzinger has made choices such as joining the hitler youth, joining a group allied with the Nazis, joining the inquisition and disciplining priests who fought against opporession in Latin America,helping catholic priests rape children, there has always been an excuse.
I'm not sure what it was for the rapes, but I'm sure it's good enough for Catholics to swallow.

There is a thunderous silience on where he has joined the good guys.
Has Ratzinger even taken political risks within his own outfit ? No evidence. He sucked up to the old Pope big time.

Yes, other Germans behaved as badly or worse, but we don't have hundreds of millions of people looking to midscale German authors for moral guidance.
I'd never heard of Christa Wolf, famous E. German authors to me sounds like "great Belgian military leaders". Who is #2 ? Being the best of a small country that didn't exist long isn't exactly a towering reputation, and you had to put best female so she got to the top of something.

I'm easily the most famous C++ programmer in Essex, do I get a prize ?

I don't blame Ratzniger for the hideous atrocites the Catholic church aided and abetted in WWII, any more than I blame Queen Elizabeth II for the way QE I killed many of my ancestors.
But the queen and her followers do not claim that God made them infallible, a claim vociferously asserted by Ratzinger and the fools his gang have duped.

The problem with Ratzinger is not that he's a neo Nazi pervert, but that millions of witless fools who follow him.
I'm not really attacking him for his failures, since I myself a coward who has made questionable ethical decisions as well.
I once accidentally ordered someone shot.
Was very embarassing...

The people at fault are Catholics who support a leader who has a proven track record of siding with the nearest available bad guy.

Yes, some ordinary Catholics were amazingly brave in terrible circumstances.
But the church itself and it's senior staff did nothing at all.
There is simnply no way you could exercise power in Germany, Austria and Italy if the huge number of Catholics there did not go along with you.

Hence the pandering of modern politicians to the church and it explains why no senior churchman in is jail even tghrough they happily admit on TV that they conspired to rape children in vast numbers.
Oh yes, they said "sorry", so that's all right then.

DC - "The problem with Ratzinger is not that he's a neo Nazi pervert, but that millions of witless fools who follow him"

That is a sweeping and inflammatory statement - you have referred to Pope Benedict as a pervert in many of your threads - as a noun - defined as: a person whose sexual behaviour is considered strange and unpleasant by most people.

What exactly do you know of his sexual behaviour??

And I can assure you I am not a "witless fool" I am a Roman Catholic and Pope Benedict is the leader of my faith.

His words were taken out of context in an academic address.

Obviously DC you have a problem with Catholicism and Catholics - but please don't judge me a fool for my faith. There are good and bad in all societies and faiths, secular and non - secular.

There always should be open and fair debate and I'm bloody glad I live in a society that allows me free speech - As many have said " I may not agree with you but I will defend your right to say it" Alas not something that is available to many in this world.

ROFL at ordering someone to be shot by accident.

You are a card, DC.

oh by the way thanks for the compliment Madame Platypus!

I don't think anyone 'chose' to join the Hitler Youth. It is my understanding that every youth in Germany at that time, had to join.

Ratzinger aided and abetted in the rape of thousands of children.
That alone qualifies him as a pervert by any plausible standard.

As head of the inquistion, his job was to stop this sort of thing. Under his leadership, the Catholic church paid off and intimidated parents into not calling the cops.
Even now when the financial cost of the law suits has finally made them sit up and listen, Bishops who flatly refuse to take part in the measure the church has set in place to keep the number of rapse down to an "acceptable" level, he does nothing to bring them in line even though he can sack them at whim.

I'm not a Catholic, but I call helping men rape children a sexual perversion.
What do Catholics call it ?

Actually that's a bad question , I know the answer.
It's an "error of judgement".
If only his mates had thought of that a Nuremburg.

Message withdrawn

DC, where are you getting this information from?

I still find it really shitty that the Pope, after (innocently or not) pissing off a large number of the world's fastest growing religion - decides the next day to, once again, blame (via the words of St Paul,) the Jews for Christ's crucifixion.

Bullying, IMO and trying to transfer hostility to others.

And I have to agree with DC that the Catholic church has tried to cover up abuses of children by a significant number of paedophile priests.

I can definitely see there is a Catholic problem going on here.
Still, the man should be able to say what he thinks no matter what he has or hasn't done. Freedom of speech can't be limited to the chosen few.

I totally agree, kittywits. And St Paul (or Saul as he was known when he was a 'nice jowish boy') was entiltled to his views......And the Pope is perfectly entitled to quote them.

But why did the Pope feel the need to bring the Jews into the hostilities in a week when he had (again, innocently or not) P'd off Muslims?

Jews in general are having a hard time anyway after the Israel/Hezbollah thing. They don't deserve to be used as scapegoats to get the Pope out of hot water.

Yes this thread does seem to have turned into a Pope bashing thread. I'm not a catholic and although I abhor and cannot condone the abuse of children by priests ever, are we sure that it's just a "catholic" problem? The main point is that Pope Benedict's comments provoked such a violent reaction. There are far more important issues which should be provoking violent reactions from citizens of the world and Darfur is rightly one of them. But hey if it's not controversial it doesn't sell news space does it.

But Bubble99. it is a historical fact that Jesus (whether you think he was Christ or just a man) did live and was crucified. It is not being anti-sematic to acknowedge a historical fact that Jews were involved in his death. We are talking over 2000 years ago. All religions have evolved over time.

The Catholic church has abetted the rape and destruction of childhoods of so many children. The Islamic religion is sexually repressive and murderous. Religion isn't a nice thing. Simple.

I'm depressed by the (sadly) inevitable backlash from a small group of Muslims - to a passage that the Pope quoted. These were not his views or opinions, FGS.

Also the 'I'll kill anyone who calls my religion violent' thing speaks for itself.

All religions should be held up to scrutiny, IMHO.

I'm not 'Pope bashing' but I have to say that, given the uneasy history between Jews and the Catholic church, I found the timing of his reading from St Paul cynical to say the least.

If he'd read this prior to his quotes on Islam I would not have a word to say. He is a theologian, after all. He knew that his St Paul reading would be publicised and I just wonder what he hoped to gain from it.

But, Jalexandra. Why choose the day after reading quotes which offended a number of Muslims to 'acknowledge a historical fact?'

And it was the Romans who crucified him. Jesus was a Jew and was tried in a Jewish court, overseen by the Romans. Christianity did not exist until well after his lifetime.

er so sorrell if religion didn't exist people wouldn't do bad things? Religion can't be any better than the people in it, and people often do bad things, in the name of all sorts of things, unfortunately.

Was it Karl Marx who said Religion is the Opiate of the People or something along those lines. Religion gives people in times of crisis and confusion something to cling too and gives them comfort. Sadly it is the actions of a few within all different religious groups that cause violence. Could that be the reason why so many people turn away from religion. I personally walked out of a sermon when we were asked to pray for the IRA - who'd just blown up the Horsequards parade. I couldn't do that. I do believe in forgiveness and am more of a spiritual person than i was before. Religion has sadly played a very violent part - directly and in-directly in history and some groups find that hard to accept. Another reason why the Pope should probably have better advisors on his team.

sorrell I think you should distinguish between the actual teachings of a religion and those who practice it and those who distort the teachings for their own ends. Most Muslims I know and indeed the vast majority of Muslims on the planet are not "murderous" and are no more "sexually repressed" than those of any other faith or those of no faith.

The Afghanistan under the Taliban IMO was not in accordance with the true teachings of Islam.

I wish people would actually find out the facts before they make these blanket ignorant statements.

Or maybe the Pope likes to stir??? Maybe he's not a PC man. Whatever he's been up to or not I find that very refreshing. There is far too much tiptoing round people nowadays for fear of offending them in these ' difficult times'

agree saadia. we get a very disorted view of Muslims, especially at the moment.

The dippy notion that we should respect each other's beliefs is simply doomed to failure.

The Pope is simply doing his job pointing out that his product is better than others. In this he's no different from a spokesman for Nestle.
Although he knows he's lying abou the details of what he says, he serves what he would call a "higher truth".

Same applies for racism.
The racists I know, genuinely believe a whole pile of things about racial characteristics, and that's not just white superiority. Often it is a complex mix of Jews being clever, brave Gurkhas, and the most entertainigly to me was an claim by a relative that we Irish have natural musical talent. I have none. At all. Even slightly.

The details of the delusional frameworks of racists, superstitious people, and those who think nuclear energy is a work of the devil are unimportant.
No sane person could "respect" them all. We don't achieve anything by trying.

What we can do with a great deal more reliability is not give a toss. I don't really care about the difference between Sunni and Shia Moslems, and the important term is that I don't see why I should have the power to force them to toe the line of the majority view.

That's why I get worried when I see politicians pandering to leaders of sectarian gangs.
Theyt sidle up with solemn faces talking of how they want this, or that, and typica.ly more money or they "won't be able to hold back" radical elements of their grouos.
Never ends well.
This time it's Moslems, last time it was various faction of Christian in Northern Ireland. Concessions were made to the larger gang who used them to attack the smaller one. We then sent in troops to protect the smaller gang, and the smaller gang promptly turned upon us.
Privately politicans accept that giving religious/nationalist loonies schools was a terminally bad idea, but not one had the balls to force them to integrate.

We have dumb laws that make racist attacks "worse" than others. The notion being that putting someone in hospital because he supports the wrong football team is somehow better than because he supports the wrong god.