"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."It is outrageous to me how the Islamic world, especially the islamists, tend to always speak in passionate deffensiveness instead of participating in a civilized forum of intelligent debate for the sake of world reconciliation of faiths. Yes, it may be a huge lack of enlightened judgment that the Pope chose to quote a questionable personality as Emperor Paleologos, but this should be taken in the context of the purpose of the speech where the said quotation was extracted from. The Muslims' tendency to always feel (and think) the 'victim' isn't helping reach a better perception of their religion. Instead, it exposes their collective insecurity and their tendency to act passionately, emotionally and thus violently, against any word or action they perceive as antagonistic to Islam. Their being too reactionary instead of being progressive is the biggest obstacle why the gap between Islam and Christianity remains significantly underexplored.
- Emperor Manuel II Paleologos of the Byzantine Empire (an Orthodox Christian empire) as quoted by Pope Benedict XVI.
I know there are many decent Muslim intellectuals out there. I wonder why their voice is so often drowned by the rhetorics of the extremists and the bang of the bomb.
1 comment:
I find it amusing that the Pope, of all people, would go after the Muslims. If it weren't for the Catholic Church starting the Crusades aginst the Muslims over some parcels of land, there probably wouldn't be any "jihad" today. Maybe he should read a history book!
Look, I know there are some Fundamentalist Extremists doing some terrible things out there. But the Pope shouldn't be throwing stones!
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