Pope’s indiscretion
Sep 19, 2006
I quote from an editor column which really is a balanced view , atleast not going into sort of stuff like conspiracy against muslims etc, but a real analysis and it represents what a sane person would argue. I do agree we have lots of other issues to worry about as kanli wrote, however such things should be answered in a propoer manner as to warn others not to make such incidents( both muslims and christians.)
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MUSLIMS from Indonesia to Morocco have reacted angrily to Pope Benedict XVI’s unfortunate remarks against Islam. While the two houses of parliament in Pakistan have condemned the remarks and demanded that he apologise, government leaders in Malaysia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Egypt and Morocco have expressed anger and regrets over what all agreed were ill-advised remarks. Even the head of the state-run directorate of religious affairs in Turkey has described the pope’s statement as “full of enmity and grudge” and made it clear that the pontiff wasn’t welcome to Turkey. Now the Vatican has issued a clarification, saying that the pope did not wish to “carry out a deep examination of jihad and or Muslim thought on it” or to hurt Muslim sentiments. The pope also said he was sorry that his speech offended Muslims, though he stopped short of offering an outright apology. But if he did not wish to carry out “a deep examination” of the jihad phenomenon in the first place, then he should have kept quiet rather than uttered words devoid of common sense much less intellectual content on a subject on which Christian scholars with a profound knowledge of history and comparative religion have recorded their thoughts. Secondly, one can accept that the pope did not wish to hurt Muslim sentiments, but then the end-result of his remarks has exactly been the same. If he did not wish to offend the sentiments of the world’s one billion plus human beings, the pontiff should have been a little more circumspect in his utterances at a time when the state of Muslim-Christians relations have come under strain.
Agreed that the pope said “I quote” twice in his speech at Regensburg University and quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor’s remarks about the Holy Prophet and jihad. Normally, a person giving a quote cannot be held responsible for the views contained in it, so long as the quotation is part of a long discourse designed to prove or disprove a point. But here the pope quoted Emperor Manual II Paleologos approvingly, and the latter retraction saying that he did not wish to hurt Muslim sentiments sounds unconvincing. In any case, he was quoting an emperor who fought losing battles against the Ottomans, was once a vassal at the court of Sultan Yildrim, owed his throne to the sultan, and paid him an annual tribute after becoming emperor at Constantinople. Later he went to Europe to seek military help against the Ottomans but merely received lip service. That Pope Benedict should have approvingly quoted someone who was at the Turks’ receiving end is indeed regrettable. Besides, does not the world’s Catholic community have enough problems of its own? Should not the pope dwell on his flock’s problems rather than quoting profanities against the Holy Prophet?
His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, was Polish and belonged to a people who have a long history of persecution. As head of the Catholic church, Paul II worked hard to create understanding among the world’s faiths, especially between Islam and Christianity, and was never on record as having said anything hurtful to Muslims. Pope Benedict XVI has regrettably failed to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps. The controversy ignited by the Danish cartoons stemmed from the work of a single individual, but here the hurt and the potential for discord are greater because the profanity came from the head of the world’s Catholic community. Strange as it may sound, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended the Pope, forgetting that her country has millions of Muslim citizens."
Cheers
Danyal