Was the Pope..

[Heatseeker 0]

Reuters.

Its old news and its strange no one here seemed interested about this event (and the unfortunate outcome).

What do you make out of this, was there a blatant intention to criticise islamic religion? Was it deliberately used to cause unecessary violence and tension (by so called islamic leaders)?

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...full apology or retraction demanded by some Muslims for a speech they say portrayed Islam as tainted by violence.

Yet the overall reaction itself was not necessarily a pacific one and i expected a similar reaction where christianism would be critised in the same fashion (i.e holly inquisition, etc)...

Should the pope be more prudent and considerative given the current not so good relation betwean both cultures (and late events)? If such a small misinterpretation is enough to raise such a storm how likely is it for mutual religious respect and coexistence to take place in the future?

Its a sad set of events to watch from the perspective of a EU citizen since ethnic, cultural and religious variety is very diverse over here.

Tell me what you think .

[Garcia 0]

No matter what, it was a shitty example, seeing that christianity was spread by the sword too

[theavonlady 2]

Dear Pope,

The truth will set you free.

Ahmen.

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

Seeing that the pope merely quoted a middle-aged document, trying to make a point, I don't have a problem with what he said.

But a person like him should be very careful in what he states, and it should be obvious to anyone (especially him), that the muslim belief is very vulnerable at the moment, and that many people that believe in Islam will go the offensive way in these days instead of open dialog. That is why it was pretty naive of the pope to say such statements and not expect an uproar from the least enlightened part of the Muslim community.

[theavonlady 2]

Add Pope tp contact list

[Heatseeker 0]

No matter what, it was a shitty example, seeing that christianity was spread by the sword too

Yeah, but the overall islamic reaction made it look like is still is.

I dont think they got themselves in a situation where they can demand an official apology .

The Popes quote portrayed Islam as tainted by violence (in the medieval ages) and the islamic reaction portrays actual islam being just that wich is also regrettable.

The pope should not be the only one to be criticised, in EU people dont burn down mosques...

[EiZei 0]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5353850.stm

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Italian nun shot dead in Somalia

Gunmen have shot dead an elderly Italian nun and her bodyguard in the Somali capital Mogadishu.

The attackers shot the nun three times in the back at a children's hospital in the south of the city, before fleeing the scene.

It is unclear if the shooting is connected with strong criticism by a radical Somali cleric about the Pope's recent comments on Islam.

At the point people are being killed because somebody called the killers violent irony is pretty much dead.

[Heatseeker 0]

I read about it earlier today, not in english though..

The Somali MILITIA islamic leaders appealed revenge in responce to the pope's statements about islam. They are not the only ones who use religion to justify violent action.

Islamic leaders from Egipt considered the popes later response has "suficient". Iran is pissed off.

Still, a 70 year old nun who gave medicine classes to students and present in the country for several years was shot for nothing... i dont think the Somali Militia leaders will make an apology for killing a person who was trying to help the people of Somalia (poor ignorant bastards..).

[dm 9]

Burning effogies and executing nuns does proove his point tho. Even if it was wrong of him to say it.

Oh, and shouldn't this be in the Mid-East thread, as its not exactly military or OFP related

[Heatseeker 0]

Oh, and shouldn't this be in the Mid-East thread, as its not exactly military or OFP related

Nah, the theme isnt exclusivelly related with the ME and theres already many diferent sub topics there... it would make the ME thread even more... off topic .

[theavonlady 2]

Oh, and shouldn't this be in the Mid-East thread, as its not exactly military or OFP related

IMO, it should be in the mislabeled "War On Terror" thread.

[JdB 151]

Quote[/b] ]Was it deliberately used to cause unecessary violence and tension (by so called islamic leaders)?

If he had criticised Aethists, no one would have cared (after all they don't recognise him as being someone who serves a non-existing God)

If he had criticised Budhism, it would not have caused violence (any kind of violence is prohibited).

If he had criticised Christianity, it would not have caused violence, but probably some peacefull protests.

If he had criticised Hinduism, it might have caused violence.

If a non-believer looks, speaks, acts or breathes in a way that does not please Imams and their followers, and is in some way criticising islam, it will certainly cause violence.

Most beliefs calm down and water down their extremism after having existed for several milleniums. Islam has not quite progressed that far.

[Ares1978 0]

I bet he's trolling. DeadMeatXM2 hit the nail on the head, burning effigies and killing nuns would prove a point.

It's prefectly executed, too. He said something that most christians agree with and therefore wouldn't find offensive, and the reaction among muslims was easy enough to predict. It's a PR victory in the west (who gives a crap about the heathens anyway?) and pure pwnage.

I give his stunt four buttcracks out of five.

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[deanosbeano 0]

if the popes statement only affects his own religion and the one he apparently upset then that would be there problem, but all to often when religion becomes at loggerheads it is the ordinary none practising person who pays in the resulting conflict.

put them in a field and let them sort it out. priests versus imam or better still in front of the tv cameras like a presidential debate.

[Garcia 0]

If a non-believer looks, speaks, acts or breathes in a way that does not please Imams and their followers, and is in some way criticising islam, it will certainly cause violence.

Most beliefs calm down and water down their extremism after having existed for several milleniums. Islam has not quite progressed that far.

Even though many muslims tend to overreact, the pope is to be blamed quite much for coming with such a statement. Recent actions from the west do, in my opinion, show a lack of understanding/knowledge of Islam. People should know that muslims consider a lot of things when it comes to muhammed to be bad, but yet people keep doing things that they should know will piss of muslims. I would think the old fool would have noticed the mess caused by the muhammed-drawings, and looking at that you have to be a damn fool to think such a statement wouldn't piss of muslims.

Quote[/b] ]If he had criticised Christianity, it would not have caused violence, but probably some peacefull protests.

Muhammed is a soar spot for muslims, and if you hit the equal spot for christians, you don't get that peaceful reactions...not violent, but not exactly what I'd call peaceful either. And belive me, if the pope said something similar about christianity (let's guess that saying Jesus was gay and not the son of god and such would be something similar), I don't think the reaction would have been only peaceful. And even though christians don't react as violently, they do react quite fast for the smallest thing too...

[martinovic 0]

The entire muslim worlds reaction can be summed up by one sentence: DON'T CALL ME VIOLENT OR I'LL KILL YOU!!

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

Imagine all the problems that would be solved if people would just read the Official God FAQ.

[shinRaiden 0]

Text of the speech given at the University of Regensburg : Catholic World News

The part that gets me was that the speech wasn't even regarding Jihad or Christian-Islamic relations at all, it was reminiscing about his university days of exploring classical greek-based approaches to reasoning theology, and how that's not always considered in today's theological or inter-cultural discussions.

Pope Benedict is an academic and was speaking largely to such, which is essential to properly understand what he said. What was said though was so clear and in fact complimentary, that the alleged misunderstandings can not be any more than deliberate attempts to incite riot and spread death and destruction.

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The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the whole of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical skepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

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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 against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: "For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

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As far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: In the beginning was the logos. This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts with logos.

Logos means both reason and word-- a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist.

I'm sure dinger could supply us with copious mountains of treatises written on this subject, but I'll leave that to him to decide how distracted he wishes to allow himself to get from his academic duties. The point here is that the pope was not talking about Islam, rather he was using an instance of this discussion of dissimilar backgrounds to argue a point in defense of the role of reason in the Greek philosophical sense of the word in the world of religion.

Furthermore, he also goes on to cite what in his opinion is dangerous decay of spiritually proven traditional tenets of faith by improper reason, which lends some support to the principles of fiath-trusting in the self-existant because it is. So if there was offense assumed in regards to an alleged demeaning of a narrow opinionated definition of spiritual "submission", it was also answered in part by an acknowledgement that that too plays a vital, but balanced role.

Quote[/b] ]

And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvelous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application.

While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

At any rate, if you're not a tentured academic in the western system, this is all going to be greek to you. And if you are, well it's still the same.

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Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world’s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology.

The really simple translation is, "while Greek Reason is good for the Catholics, let's not be ignorant of the direct faith either. That is especially vital to be able to talk to others that do not value Greek Reason." Even more simply, "The muslims don't discuss the Koran via Plato, so if you want to talk to them about the Koran, don't talk about Plato."

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The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the program with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. “Not to act reasonably (with logos) is contrary to the nature of Godâ€, said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

Ironically the Islamic academic community has been great bastions of reason and rational studies into Islamic Doctrine. This however has been done in the eastern apologetic structure similar to the rabbinical process. In the west however, the analytical structure was in many ways provided by pagans, agnostics, and atheists. Those structures were then extended into the theological academic world.

[chipper 0]

Why do muslim leaders insult christianity all the time, but the second the pope says something that offends muslims they go on a damn rampage.

[martinovic 0]

Quote[/b] ]Muhammed is a soar spot for muslims, and if you hit the equal spot for christians, you don't get that peaceful reactions...not violent, but not exactly what I'd call peaceful either.

You can say anything you want about Christianity, without fear of reprecussion by christians. We are told not have a sore spot. The Bible dictates that all christians are to take shit and thank the person for insulting them. Here, let me quote some parts that tell you to be a good boy. A part of Luke chapter 6:

Quote[/b] ]But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.

And unto him that smiteth thee on the [one] cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not [to take thy] coat also.

Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask [them] not again.

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.

And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.

But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and [to] the evil.

Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:

Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

Now you will surely bring up the Crusaders and all their deeds. Here is a quote for them (and all other christians who fight):

Quote[/b] ]And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?

[i hope noone actually thought that a thread about the pope would suvive without bible-thumping.]

[dm 9]

Even though many muslims tend to overreact, the pope is to be blamed quite much for coming with such a statement.

Shin's regular informed post aside, why are we focusing on the Pope being in the wrong?

Why do we not take such offense to their burning of effogies, bibles and whatnot?

Much like with this current political correctness atmosphere, we are creating a HUGE void of double standards where it is ok for other people to critisize "us", but "we" can not say a bad word against anyone different from "us" (by "we" and "us" I refer to the "western world")

Something to think about...

Why do muslim leaders insult christianity all the time, but the second the pope says something that offends muslims they go on a damn rampage.

<span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>EXACTLY</span> my point...

[CsonkaPityu 0]

Quote[/b] ]Why do we not take such offense to their burning of effogies, bibles and whatnot?

Well, martinovic's post sums it up really nicely actually. Christians can not take offence, it goes against the teachings of christianity. You can't stand up for a religion while trampling over it's basic principles.

Quote[/b] ]Much like with this current political correctness atmosphere, we are creating a HUGE void of double standards where it is ok for other people to critisize "us", but "we" can not say a bad word against anyone different from "us" (by "we" and "us" I refer to the "western world")

This isn't a matter between the Western World and the Muslim World. It's a matter between Christianity and the Muslim World. Big difference.

If it was about the western world then it would be ok to tell atheists/new agers/mormons/scientologists or whatnot to stand up for themselves, but asking Christians to do the same borders on heresy.

[Garcia 0]

Even though many muslims tend to overreact, the pope is to be blamed quite much for coming with such a statement.

Shin's regular informed post aside, why are we focusing on the Pope being in the wrong?

Why do we not take such offense to their burning of effogies, bibles and whatnot?

Much like with this current political correctness atmosphere, we are creating a HUGE void of double standards where it is ok for other people to critisize "us", but "we" can not say a bad word against anyone different from "us" (by "we" and "us" I refer to the "western world")

Something to think about...

Why do muslim leaders insult christianity all the time, but the second the pope says something that offends muslims they go on a damn rampage.

<span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>EXACTLY</span> my point...

All I'm saying is that the pope isn't innocent when it comes to the reaction of the muslims. Of course he's allowed to critisize Islam if he feels like, but he shouldn't be suprised that muslims feel hurt...I may not agree with the muslims reason to get angry about all of this, but if western people just have to keep talking bad about Muhammed (and other soar spots), they can bloody well shut their trap and not act so suprised. It's like putting your arse inside the mouth of a lion and then wonder why the fuck it bit you...

Quote[/b] ]You can say anything you want about Christianity, without fear of reprecussion by christians. We are told not have a sore spot. The Bible dictates that all christians are to take shit and thank the person for insulting them. Here, let me quote some parts that tell you to be a good boy. A part of Luke chapter 6:

You can say anything you want about christians, but the fact is that, at least to my experience, a minority of christians do what the bible tell them to. Do you really belive that most christians turn the other cheek when they're punched by someone? Do you really belive that most christians never lie?

Yes, people might bring up the crusades and the inquisitions and such, but IMO there's more and better examples from recent days...say, the abortion thing in USA a while back where christians blew up abortion-clinics because the clinics took life...

Though I guess we're moving quite off topic now...

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

Quote[/b] ]Why do we not take such offense to their burning of effogies, bibles and whatnot?

Well, martinovic's post sums it up really nicely actually. Christians can not take offence, it goes against the teachings of christianity. You can't stand up for a religion while trampling over it's basic principles.

Quote[/b] ]Much like with this current political correctness atmosphere, we are creating a HUGE void of double standards where it is ok for other people to critisize "us", but "we" can not say a bad word against anyone different from "us" (by "we" and "us" I refer to the "western world")

This isn't a matter between the Western World and the Muslim World. It's a matter between Christianity and the Muslim World. Big difference.

If it was about the western world then it would be ok to tell atheists/new agers/mormons/scientologists or whatnot to stand up for themselves, but asking Christians to do the same borders on heresy.

I believe you are wrong - In this case, the Muslims doesn't distinguish christians and the western world. In their eyes it's the same thing, since we are living in the same community having pretty much the same values.

I hate the fact that some of the extremist do violent acts against people like the aged woman. For all I care they can whine all they want to for themself as long as they don't hurt anyone, I just don't want to listen to their ignorant garbage.

[martinovic 0]

Quote[/b] ]You can say anything you want about christians, but the fact is that, at least to my experience, a minority of christians do what the bible tell them to. Do you really belive that most christians turn the other cheek when they're punched by someone? Do you really belive that most christians never lie?

Then they are not christians.

Jesus said the following, i'll quote again:

Quote[/b] ]And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?

Quote[/b] ]Yes, people might bring up the crusades and the inquisitions and such, but IMO there's more and better examples from recent days...say, the abortion thing in USA a while back where christians blew up abortion-clinics because the clinics took life...

I will not condemn those people who do bad things in the name of christianity, or fail to follow it, just like i won't condemn a murderer, or a homosexual, or anyone who goes every weekend to a disco to hunt for drunk girls.

I am not any better.

Another main point of christianity is being humble, because none of us can 100% follow God in purity so we need to apologize and remember that we all have been bad in our lives.

Quote[/b] ]having pretty much the same values.

No that's pretty wrong, unless you listen to false prophets like the Quakers. Catholics for example aren't allowed to use condoms, have abortions (it is officially considered "murder of the absolutely innocent" i think). So our values are pretty different.