Pope's conference: "Now it is time for other churchmen to tell their Muslim counterparts ....?

Question

Now it is time for other churchmen to tell their Muslim counterparts that, in addition to dishing out criticism, they must learn how to take it.

The Regensburg lecture amounted to a Christian critique of the violence that is inherent in political Islam. However, rather than fall back on the politically expedient and customary detachment of Islamism from Islam, the Pope chose to distinguish between Christianity's reason-based European underpinnings and Islam's faith-based traditions centred also on literal acceptance of its texts. By implication, his lecture was also an attack on some of the more aggressively evangelical churches found in the US and would have been treated as such if the references to the Byzantine experience had been omitted. In arguing that violence was at odds with reason, the Pope was also tacitly repudiating some of Christianity's bloody inheritance, but this aspect of his lecture has been overshadowed by the furore over Islamic certitudes.

The Pioneer

The text was taken from the Pioneer.

An Indian media taking Hindus and other faiths into considerations...

So the Popes comments are quite univeral actually...

Zeeterah,

1st He did apologize ...
2nd... Haven't seen any Imams apologize lately for their excessive behavior on the Cartoon incidents,
3d Haven't heard any Muslim complain of the international forum lead by the Iranian Clerics and leadership for which all major arab and Muslim world organization attended, and for what ? To discuss about why the West lied about the Holocauste... I find that an insult to humanity
4) No Imams and Ayatollah retracted and were sorry to have link the words of the Pope with an Israelo American plot... ?

Aboosait,

This is pure apologetism...
I will take for exemple the Cartoon "reactions"

To understand the Danish paper as a provokation is deforming the facts... WHY the paper(s) decided to take on the Cartoon is because the "free" Press in the world kepted silence with auto-censorhip.. not out of respect but due to Fear of retaliation... So the paper decided to takle that fear head on, making a statement that if one submit to fear one is not FREE...

Your words as well as the article in the Gardian are "polically correct", apologetic and pretends to be level .... it is shallow relativism...

The issue is fear of criticizing Islam because Muslims as well as Western muslim get into tentrums regardless they receive attention or not...

Rian,

The West as well as India are filled with apologetics who transformed the UN from a body that was suppose to instaure the declaration of Human Rights.... Now contaminated par religious ideologies taken as an alternative to Human Rights.... the UN is a puppet that only serves to blab about the word PEACE and NON Violence...

If the UN truly had the mandate to address Human Rights issues.... Darfour would have been resolved a long time ago...

Rian,

Your text is very illuminating....
So, i guess the issue was already present before the POPE....

The Issue of excessive muslim reactions and violence still present before the Popes comments...

(Darfour) CURRENT Bengladesh Hindus..., Afghanistan's apostasy cases, Egyptian's banning of foreign press etc.. etc...

Answer 1

I am first answering the answerer above who said that India was not converted by sword .

Hindukush got its name after victims of Islam in Afganistan.....

".... The Partition pogroms annihilated the Hindu presence in all the provinces of Pakistan except for parts of Sindh and East Bengal, it did so mostly by putting the Hindus to flight (at least seven million) rather than by killing them (probably half a million). Likewise, the ethnic cleansing of a quarter million Hindus from Kashmir in 1990 followed the strategy of "killing one to expel a hundred", which is not the same thing as killing them all; in practice, about 1,500 were killed. Partition featured some local massacres of genocidal type, with the Sikhs as the most wanted victims.

"Genocide" means the intentional attempt to destroy an ethnic community......Pakistani Army killed 1 to 3 million people, with Hindus as their most wanted target. ......

...... number of Hindu victims in the 1971 genocide was approximately 2.4 million, or about 80%. ....the Hindu population has remained stable at 9.5 million..... 2.4 million missing Hindus ..

...., in the subcontinent as a whole, the overwhelming majority of the victims have been Hindus.... in East Pakistan in 1950 alone killed more Hindus than the total number of riot victims in India since 1948.

During the Islamic conquests in India, it was a typical policy to single out the Brahmins for slaughter, after the Hindu warrior class had been bled on the battlefield. Even the Portuguese in Malabar and Goa followed this policy in the 16th century, as can be deduced from Hindu-Portuguese treaty clauses prohibiting the Portuguese from killing Brahmins.
..... according to the Chach-Nama, "six thousand warriors were put to death, and all their relations and dependents were taken as slaves". This is why Rajput women committed mass suicide to save their honour in the face of the imminent entry of victorious Muslim armies, e.g. 8,000 women immolated themselves during Akbar's capture of Chittorgarh in 1568 (where this most enlightened ruler also killed 30,000 non-combatants).

........A fourth type of genocide is when mass killing takes place unintentionally, as collateral damage of foolish policies....in principle, the missionary religions wished to convert the unbelievers, and preferred not to kill them unless this was necessary for establishing the power of the True Faith.

That is why the mass killing of Hindus by Muslims rarely took place in peacetime, but typically in the fervour immediately following military victories, .... Once Muslim power was established, Muslim rulers sought to exploit and humiliate rather than kill the Hindus, and discourage rebellion by making some sort of compromise. Not that peacetime was all that peaceful, for as Fernand Braudel wrote in A History of Civilizations (Penguin 1988/1963, p.232-236), Islamic rule in India as a "colonial experiment" was "extremely violent", and "the Muslims could not rule the country except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm -- burnings, summary executions, crucifixions or impalements, inventive tortures. Hindu temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On occasion there were forced conversions. If ever there were an uprising, it was instantly and savagely repressed: houses were burned, the countryside was laid waste, men were slaughtered and women were taken as slaves."


"The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was the constant counterpart of the conquerors' opulence."

For its sheer magnitude in scope and death toll, coupled with its occasional (though not continuous) intention to exterminate entire Hindu communities, the Islamic campaign against Hinduism, which was never fully called off since the first naval invasion in 636 CE, can without exaggeration be termed genocide. To quote Will Durant's famous line:

"The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within." (Story of Civilization, vol.1, Our Oriental Heritage, New York 1972, p.459)

Hinduism's losses

There is no official estimate of the total death toll of Hindus at the hands of Islam. A first glance at important testimonies by Muslim chroniclers suggests that, over 13 centuries and a territory as vast as the Subcontinent, Muslim Holy Warriors easily killed more Hindus than the 6 million of the Holocaust. Ferishtha lists several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India (1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a minimum goal whenever they felt like "punishing" the Hindus; and they were only a third-rank provincial dynasty. The biggest slaughters took place during the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi (ca. 1000 CE); during the actual conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori and his lieutenants (1192 ff.); and under the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The Moghuls (1526-1857), even Babar and Aurangzeb, were fairly restrained tyrants by comparison. Prof. K.S. Lal once estimated that the Indian population declined by 50 million under the Sultanate, but that would be hard to substantiate; research into the magnitude of the damage Islam did to India is yet to start in right earnest.

...... Buddhist monasteries and universities flourished under Hindu rule, but their thousands of monks were killed by Ghori and his lieutenants.

Apart from actual killing, millions of Hindus disappeared by way of enslavement....slave markets in Bagdad and Samarkand were flooded with Hindus. Slaves were likely to die of hardship, e.g. the mountain range Hindu Koh, "Indian mountain", was renamed Hindu Kush, "Hindu-killer",..... "

HERE IS THE PART WHICH IS HOLDS THE KEY TO YOUR QUESTION , VAYU.

Just replace words Hindu and Muslim within context of inter religious dialogues of any two or more communities. Its applicable everywherewhen interacting with each other over past grievences:

"What should Hindus say to Muslims when they consider the record of Islam in Hindu lands? It is first of all very important not to allot guilt wrongly. Notions of collective or hereditary guilt should be avoided. Today's Muslims cannot help it that other Muslims did certain things in 712 or 1565 or 1971. One thing they can do, however, is to critically reread their scripture to discern the doctrinal factors of Muslim violence against Hindus and Hinduism. Of course, even without scriptural injunction, people get violent and wage wars; if Mahmud Ghaznavi hadn't come, some of the people he killed would have died in other, non-religious conflicts. But the basic Quranic doctrine of hatred against the unbelievers has also encouraged many good-natured and pious people to take up the sword against Hindus and other Pagans, not because they couldn't control their aggressive instincts, but because they had been told that killing unbelievers was a meritorious act. Good people have perpetrated evil because religious authorities had depicted it as good.

This is material for a no-nonsense dialogue between Hindus and Muslims. But before Hindus address Muslims about this, it is imperative that they inform themselves about this painful history. Apart from unreflected grievances, Hindus have so far not developed a serious critique of Islam's doctrine and historical record. Often practising very sentimental, un-philosophical varieties of their own religion, most Hindus have very sketchy and distorted images of rival religions. Thus, they say that Mohammed was an Avatar of Vishnu, and then think that they have cleverly solved the Hindu-Muslim conflict by flattering the Prophet .Instead of the silly sop stories which pass as conducive to secularism, Hindus should acquaint themselves with real history and real religious doctrines.

Another thing which we should not forget is that Islam is ultimately rooted in human nature. We need not believe the Muslim claim that the Quran is of divine origin; but then it is not of diabolical origin either, it is a human document. The Quran is in all respects the product of a 7th-century Arab businessman vaguely acquainted with Judeo-Christian notions of monotheism and prophetism, and the good and evil elements in it are very human. Even its negative elements appealed to human instincts, e.g. when Mohammed promised a share in the booty of the caravans he robbed, numerous Arab Pagans took the bait and joined him. The undesirable elements in Islamic doctrine stem from human nature, and can in essence be found elsewhere as well. Keeping that in mind, it should be possible to make a fair evaluation of Islam's career in India on the basis of factual history."


Denying the past or try to evade the historical facts will only hinder the future peace process. Accept the facts of the past to see forward and to improve things for future.

Answer 2

It’s a pity that the Pope has chosen to exacerbate a world divide over religious lines that have nothing to do with the real problems humanity faces today, and it is saddening to watch how humanity in the post-cold war era has shifted from a real divide to absurd divides that contribute to humanity’s deteriorating material as well as moral and ethical tragic status quo under the U.S.-led globalization world order

It's like quoting Bin Laden at ground zero on the five year anniversary of 9/11. Unless you're quoting him to call him crazy, don't expect applause from the audience.

John Freedland wrote in the Guardian on September 19:

"This is what makes the Pope's defenders so disingenuous when they insist that he was merely engaged in a 'scholarly consideration of the relationship between reason and faith'.

"He is not a lecturer at divinity school. He is the head of a global institution with more than a billion followers…When he digs out a 700-year-old sentence that could not be more damning of Islam…he has to know there will be consequences."

Attacks on churches in the West Bank should be condemned and should be used as an example of what not to do when offended by a Pope that has done nothing for suffering Palestinian Christians—especially at a time when Christians and Muslims should be uniting (as many have) against a brutal Israeli occupation that dominates every facet of their life.

One does have to be weary of who these "unknown groups" attacking the churches are, just as one had to be weary of the non-nationalist group that sprung up in Gaza and kidnapped the two Fox news journalists.

Those seeking unrest will prey upon incidents like this (taking on a transparent cover) and use the Pope as an excuse.

It was reported by the media that Hamas and Fatah both forcefully condemned the attacks and, as Khalid Amayreh reported, "Sheikh Muhammed Hussein, the highest-ranking Muslim clergyman in East Jerusalem described the bombing as 'immoral, unethical and injurious to Palestinian unity.'"

The West is systematically destroying half the countries in the Middle East and has its eye on a couple more. Muslims have the right to be infuriated by the Western world's collective effort to control the Middle East by force—this includes the policy pushed forth by the Pope.

Answer 3

Pope said that Islam was spread on the base of Violence.
Muslims ruled for 800 years in Spain , but people are still non Muslim there.
Muslims ruled for a 1000 years in India , still 85 percent of the Indian population is non-Muslim. Do you think that 1000 years was a small time? If Islam was to be spread by sword in India , every single non-Muslim will be forced to convert to Islam or else killed. This is very clear that Islam don't allow any Muslim to force some one to convert to Islam. Becaue if some one dont accepts Islam by heart , he is not a Muslim at all. so it is useless to force any one to come to Islam
Muslim never ruled in Indonesia but still it is the country having largest Muslim population.
America is a country in which the growth rate of Islam is highest as compared to any other religion. Is Osama Bin Laden preaching Islam in America????? ?
if Pope has some dignity and courage , he should come to have a speech with Muslim scholars and prove his statements.

"Why can't he see what's being done in Iraq, Afghanistan and West Asia?"

"The Pope has toed the US line of campaign against the Islamic world. But I would like to ask the Pope what he thinks about the US and UK atrocities in Iraq."

Answer 4

The pope apologized twice and on September 25 he invited several Muslim leaders to a private conference to assuage their feelings.

Answer 5

Now the pope says he is upset, should he apologize for his remarks on Islam?
Yes 59% 60716 votes
No 41% 42460 votes
Total: 103176 votes http://edition.cnn.com/POLLSERVER/results/27419.exclude.html

Answer 6

What can I say? I didn't elect him as my Pope and I am not his fan.