A Call to Arms

Al Qaeda issues warning to Pope

All comments in red belong to me.

AP:CAIRO, Egypt — Al Qaeda in Iraq warned Pope Benedict on Monday that its war against Christianity and the West will go on until Islam takes over the world, and Iran’s supreme leader called for more protests over the pontiff’s remarks on Islam.

Nothing new here. This has been the goal of Islam since its inception. So basically they are just regurgitating the policy line.

Protests broke out in South Asia and Indonesia, with angry Muslims saying Benedict’s statement of regret a day earlier did not go far enough. In southern Iraq, demonstrators carrying black flags burned an effigy of the Pope.

Killing priests, nuns and burning churches...every day Islamic activities.

Islamic leaders around the world issued more condemnations of the Pope’s comments, but some moderates in the Middle East appeared to be trying to put a damper on the outrage, fearing it could spiral into attacks on Christians in the region.

Umm...I think it already has.

On Sunday, Benedict said he was “deeply sorry” over any hurt caused by his comments made in a speech last week, in which he quoted a medieval text characterizing some of the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings as “evil and inhuman” and calling Islam a religion spread by the sword.

What's the big deal? Isn't this exactly what the Koran mandates?

Benedict said the remarks came from a text that didn’t reflect his own opinion, but he did not retract what he said or say he was sorry he uttered what proved to be explosive words.

Nor should he...all he said was the truth. Too bad more leaders are afraid to speak the truth.

The Vatican on Monday sought to defuse the anger, ordering papal representatives around the world to meet with leaders of Muslim countries to explain the Pope’s point of view and full context of his speech.

Why bother? It went over their seventh century intellect.

Roman Catholic leaders stepped forward to defend the pontiff. At an Italian bishops’ conference, Camillo Cardinal Ruini underlined the bishops’ “total closeness and solidarity to the Pope” and said they deplored interpretations of the Pope’s comments “which attribute to the Holy Father . . . errors that he has not committed and aim at attacking his person and his ministry.”

Few in the Islamic world were satisfied by Benedict’s statement of regret.

Too bad.

“The Pope’s words have caused a deep wound in the hearts of Muslims that won’t heal for a long time, and then only after a clear apology to Muslims,” Egypt’s religious affairs minister, Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq, wrote in a column in the government daily Al-Ahram on Monday.

What a bunch of crap. Deep wounds? All they need to do is read the Koran.

An influential Egyptian cleric, Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi, called for protests after weekly prayers on Friday, but maintained they should be peaceful.

By peaceful, the cleric means only some churches should be burnt.

Extremists said the Pope’s comments proved that the West was in a war against Islam.

And this is news? Even though in reality it is the other way around.

Al Qaeda in Iraq and its allies issued a statement addressing the Pope as “a cross-worshipper” and warning, “You and the West are doomed, as you can see from the defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere.

OK Osama..now just come out from hiding in your cave.

“You infidels and despots, we will continue our jihad (holy war) and never stop until God avails us to chop your necks and raise the fluttering banner of monotheism, when God’s rule is established governing all people and nations,” said the statement by the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups in Iraq.

Now I see why he was upset about the sword comment.

Another Iraqi extremist group, Ansar al-Sunna, challenged ``sleeping Muslims” to prove their manhood by doing something other than “issuing statements or holding demonstrations.”

“If the stupid pig is prancing with his blasphemies in his house,” the group said in a web statement, referring to the Pope, ``then let him wait for the day coming soon when the armies of the religion of right knock on the walls of Rome.”

What brave men...issuing statements while hiding behind the Internet.

In Iran, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used the comments to call for protests against the United States. He argued that while the Pope may have been deceived into making his remarks, the words give the West an “excuse for suppressing Muslims” by depicting them as terrorists.

There goes sneaky George Bush...deceiving the Pope into making comments he otherwise would not have said.

“Those who benefit from the Pope’s comments and drive their own arrogant policies should be targeted with attacks and protests,” he said, referring to the United States.

Another threat to kill all the infidels. Doesn't this shit ever get old?

The anger recalled the outrage earlier this year over cartoons depicting the prophet published by a Danish paper. The caricatures, which Muslims saw as insulting Muhammad, set off large, violent protests across the Islamic world.

So far, protests over the Pope’s comments have been smaller. However, there has been some violence: Attackers hurled firebombs at seven churches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the weekend, and a nun was shot to death in Somalia.

Some 200 Khamenei loyalists in the Syrian capital, Damascus, held a protest Monday at an Islamic shrine, dismissing the Pope’s apology. “The Pope’s sorrow was equivocal,” read one banner.

I'm impressed. A Muslim using the word "equivocal".

Dozens protested outside the Vatican Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, and schools and shops in the Indian-controlled section of Kashmir shut their doors in protest.

“His comments really hurt Muslims all over the world,” Umar Nawawi of the radical Islamic Defenders’ Front said in Jakarta. “We should remind him not to say such things which can only fuel a holy war.”

Again...aren't we already in a holy war? It has been declared everyday since Mohammed aped his way across the desert.

Islamic countries also asked the UN Human Rights Council to examine the question of religious tolerance. Malaysia’s foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, said Benedict’s apology was “inadequate to calm the anger.”

This is so laughable it's pathetic. Muslims decrying religious intolerance.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood said the anger should not be allowed to hurt ties with the Middle East’s Christian minorities. But worries among Christians in the region are high.

Guards have been posted around some churches, and the head of Egypt’s Orthodox Coptic Church, Pope Shenouda III, disassociated himself from Benedict’s statements.

The Dominican mission in Cairo also criticized Benedict’s words, saying he chose a text for his speech that “revived the polemics of the past.”

He was reading a document 600 years old but I suppose Christians in Egypt have a legitimate reason to be afraid of retaliation.

“These comments, seen by many Muslims as hurtful, risk encouraging extremists on all sides,” it said in a statement, “and put in danger all the advances in dialogue made in recent decades.”

Advances made in recent decades? He must be referring to the genocide in Sudan, the attack on the World Trade Center, the Cole, the killing and raping of Catholic girls in Indonesia, cutting the heads off innocent journalist, the killing of priests and nuns or any of the other peaceful advances made by the Religion of Peace. How long before its time for ordinary people to start fighting back?