Islam and the Pope
Essay Preview: Islam and the Pope
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All the hubub over the Popes comments regarding Mohammed and Islam is just the usual mainstream leftist media tempest in a teapot. And, as usual, they have missed the real story. Instead, they have chosen to accuse the usual suspects. This time, its Catholics (and all Christians by proxy).
CNN obtained the transcripts of the Holy Fathers lecture, given at the University of Regensburg, in Germany. If they had bothered to read beyond the so-called offensive passage, they would have found an intriguing discussion of the meaning of faith and the truth of God, using reason and intellect to actually question the existence of God. Maybe it was too much like Sunday school. More likely, it required more intelligence to read and understand than the story writer possessed.
Another point: the person making the statement which the pope quotes is the Byzantine Emperor (Byzantium was an Islamic state) Manuel II Paleologus, in the 14th century. This quote, by the Byzantine Emperor, shows the fallacy of the Islamo-Fascists argument:
“God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to Gods nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats. To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death….”
If I were the Pope, I would not have made an apology. But I am not as wise as the Holy Father.
The Popes apology for his controversial quotation is not what I would call waffling. It is a carefully crafted apology, using a technique which should be familiar to those who observe politics in this country: Apologizing for the reaction, not the original action.
In this case, it is clever strategery. Even though the Pope says that the quotation does “not in any way express my personal thought,” he does not remove himself from condemning those who would force the world to live under sharia law through intimidation and murder.
I respectfully disagree with the Pope The quotation does represent my personal thought. I tire of hearing of the peaceful faith of Islam. Of course you can have peace when you have no enemies! Muslims are instructed to kill the infidels! And just