Ancient words beget violence
Calgary Sun ^ | 2006-09-24 | Licia Corbella
calsun.canoe.ca
The headlines screamed "Muslims outraged." Isn't that kind of like saying, "Dog bites man" or "Antarctica is cold?"
Radical Muslims, it seems, are always outraged about some thing. Where's the news in that?
Well, unfortunately, the answer to that question is obvious.
With the knee-jerk outrage, comes bloodshed, riots, burnings and fatwahs.
Osama bin Laden is still outraged over a battle between Muslims and Christians in Andalucia, Spain way back in the year 711.
You'd think after 1,295 years, he'd have gotten over it by now.
Apparently not.
That humiliating insult to the "Religion of Peace" helped inspire bin Laden to orchestrate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. in 2001 which killed some 3,000 people in a single day.
Since then, he's helped fund and orchestrate the terrorist bombings in Madrid, London and Bali.
He's ranted on about the 711 insult in several of his taped speeches aired eagerly by Snuff Film Central, er ... Al-Jazeera.
It would appear, however, only Osama bin Laden and his ilk are allowed to quote from ancient texts without causing outrage.
Pope Benedict XVI is not.
On Sept. 12, the Pope delivered a highly nuanced lecture at a German university on the importance of faith being married to reason.
"Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul," stated the Pope.
He used an unfortunate and, I believe, unnecessary quote originally uttered in 1391 during a debate between the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam.
"Without descending to details ..." said the Pope, "the emperor turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: 'Show me just what Mohammed 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.'"
Outraged their religion would be described as violent, Muslims then promptly proved the emperor prescient by murdering an Italian nun in Somalia, burning seven churches in the West Bank and Gaza and burning the Pope in effigy.
It's important to be clear most Muslims are peaceful and decry violence, however, it's also true greater numbers are becoming more radicalized by the day by radical clerics.
Just days prior to the nun's murder, Somali cleric Sheikh Abubukar Hassan Malin urged Muslims to kill the Pope.
"We urge you Muslims, wherever you are, to hunt down the Pope for his barbaric statements as you have pursued Salman Rushdie, the enemy of Allah who offended our religion," he said.
Since the Pope wasn't readily available to be murdered, an elderly nun -- who has spent four decades nursing poor and sick mostly Muslim Africans -- had to suffice.
Many people are blaming her death and the burning of the churches on the Pope, which is nonsense, of course.
However, the Pope is a learned man and knows how the now infamous Danish cartoons were used as fodder by violent Muslims to kill about 30 people.
He also knows the vast majority of Muslims are tragically kept functionally illiterate by their corrupt leaders and would not be able to understand, let alone read for themselves, his lecture to understand he himself does not ascribe to the emperor's words.
The Pope expressed "regret" one day, said he was "deeply sorry" another and more recently explained further his comments were misunderstood.
"For the careful reader of my text," said the Pope on Wednesday from Rome, "it is clear that, in no way, did I wish to make my own the negative words of the medieval emperor.
"I wished to explain that not religion and violence but religion and reason go together," he said before a crowd of 20,000.
The Pope repeated those comments, which he originally delivered in Italian, in English, Spanish, French and German.
He expressed "deep respect" for Islam and called for a dialogue among religions.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, the funeral for Sister Leonella Sgorbati was held in Nairobi.
The 65-year-old nun worked for the Consolation Order since 1963, spending three decades in Kenya before transferring to Somalia, where she taught nursing at a children's hospital.
"She was in agony at the end," Sister Gianna Irene Peano said, during the funeral at a packed Catholic church in Nairobi.
"But she did not complain," said Peano.
"In fact, she said 'Forgive, forgive, I forgive,' " added Peano, who was at Sgorbati's side when she died from her wounds.
Which brings us to another ancient text, this time from the great English poet Alexander Pope written some 300 years ago, "to err is human; to forgive, divine."
Sister Leonella's dying words clearly revealed the divine, true nature of God much better than a lecturing Pope.
As for the actions and words of a significant number of radical Muslims around the world, they revealed the exact opposite: "Things only evil and inhuman." |
