Why the Pope Offends Muslims, Jews and Protestants

Came across this article, although cited late last year, I think is interesting to reprint in my blog.

Why the Pope Offends Muslims, Jews and Protestants
August 17, 2007 | From theTrumpet.com
BY GERALD FLURRY

In September 2006, the pope offended Muslims by quoting a Byzantine emperor from the 14th century. Here is what the emperor said: “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” (emphasis mine throughout).

The pope apologized for offending Muslims, but didn’t retract what he said. And it was a shocking statement.

But here is something far more shocking. I didn’t notice anyone reminding the pope of his own church’s history! He discussed Mohammed’s “command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,” but the truth of history is that no church has spread its faith by the sword more than the Catholics!

The Vatican and Germany primarily comprise the so-called Holy Roman Empire. Six resurrections of that empire have come and gone. I defy anybody to show me a religious empire that has shed more blood in man’s entire history!

In spite of this bloody history, the pope is doing most of the criticizing and condemning.

The seventh head of the Holy Roman Empire is now on the scene in Europe. And the stronger it gets, the more aggressive the Vatican becomes. That empire has had a history of converting people to Catholicism with the sword for about 1,500 years. Bloodshed has repeatedly followed its strong criticisms.

The greatest hero of the Holy Roman Empire is Charlemagne. He waded through a sea of blood to win converts to Catholicism. Still, the last two popes have continually instructed Roman Catholics to remember and resurrect that “glorious” past! That is the opposite of repenting for past sins! Some European Union leaders even discuss how they are waiting for a new Charlemagne to get the Holy Roman Empire moving again. And nobody seems to be alarmed.

Have people forgotten the history of the Holy Roman Empire?

How about the Catholic crusades?

Most religious (and even secular) people are reluctant to criticize the Vatican. But the pope is hurling some scathing criticisms at others—especially other religions.

Since the Vatican is so critical, surely it can stand a little criticism too.

If we fail to learn from history, the bloodshed is going to get a lot worse. This world desperately needs to know where the Vatican’s aggression is leading. All religions have their faults. However, the Vatican acts like it is innocent.

Protestants Not Even a “Church”

London’s Telegraph newspaper reported, “Christian denominations outside Roman Catholicism are either defective or are not full churches of Jesus Christ, the Vatican has reaffirmed. A 16-page document released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Pope Benedict xvi once headed, described Orthodox churches as true churches, but said they are suffering from a ‘wound’ since they do not recognize the primacy [state of being first!] of the pope.

“The document, approved by Pope Benedict, went on to say the ‘wound is still more profound’ in Protestant denominations. ‘Despite the fact that this teaching has created no little distress … it is nevertheless difficult to see how the title of “church” could possibly be attributed to them,’ it said. …

“While there was nothing doctrinally new in the document, it nevertheless prompted swift criticism from Protestants, Lutherans and other Christian denominations” (July 11). But the criticism was anemic compared to the pope’s scathing condemnation of their religion. The reason Protestants revolted in the first place was the corruption inside the Roman Catholic Church.

The pope can’t see how the Protestants could even have the title of “church” attributed to them! Quite an outrage coming from a church with such a bloody history.

This document criticized Orthodox churches almost as severely.

Other religions have a history of being afraid to criticize a powerful Catholic Church. And that situation is only going to get worse, as the Catholic Church rapidly grows in power and influence.

Jews Are “Blind”

Here is an excerpt from the Observer newspaper, July 8: “Jewish leaders and community groups criticized Pope Benedict xvi strongly yesterday after the head of the Roman Catholic Church formally removed restrictions on celebrating an old form of the Latin mass which includes prayers calling for the Jews to ‘be delivered from their darkness’ and converted to Catholicism. …

“However, the older rite’s prayers calling on God to ‘lift the veil from the eyes’ of the Jews and to end ‘the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ’—used just once a year during the Good Friday service—have sparked outrage.

“Yesterday the Anti-Defamation League, the American-based Jewish advocacy group, called the papal decision a ‘body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations.’” Still, the Vatican continues to allow use of the ceremony, and Jewish criticism is becoming muted. The Vatican is certain it sees Jewish blindness, but what about its own blindness?

We all remember that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews in World War ii. There is an abundance of proof that the Vatican helped more Nazis escape at the end of the war than any other institution by far!

How could that happen if the Vatican hadn’t been allied with Adolf Hitler? Is that history a prophetic insight, showing that history is about to repeat itself? Is this the kind of “light” the Vatican wants to give the Jews? Does the Vatican think it was following Christ in those evil deeds?

“The pope also sparked bewilderment when he made no mention of anti-Semitism, or the fact that the Nazis killed millions of people because they were Jewish, in a speech last year at Auschwitz. He also failed to acknowledge that there might be some degree of collective responsibility of the German people” (ibid.).

Is this the voice of a church that has repented of its sins? These are mind-numbing facts that we can’t ignore! And yet the Vatican goes around castigating all other religions and acting like it is the repository of all righteousness. It is a deadly sign of where the European Union is headed!

The Catholic Church has over a billion members and wields frightening power within the European Union and in this world.

Read further  here.

Europe Has Found Her Deadly “Christian Roots” - And the New Charlemagne

A portrait of Charlemagne by Albrecht Dürer that was painted several centuries after Charlemagne's death, the coat of arms above him show the German eagle and the French Fleur-de-lis.

April 14, 2008 | From theTrumpet.com
Pope John Paul II famously encouraged Europeans to “find your roots!” They have accepted the challenge.

by
GERALD FLURRY

The Habsburgs were the sword of the Holy Roman Empire throughout the Middle Ages. They did their killing while supporting artists like Bach, Mozart and Schubert. They were very sophisticated as they slaughtered people.

Adolf Hitler used to love to attend the opera. His mind was saturated with the music of Richard Wagner. He even said that one couldn’t understand the Third Reich without understanding Wagner. That German composer was a sex pervert and an anti-Semite, yet Hitler was intoxicated by him.

In 1983, Pope John Paul ii was in Vienna—300 years after that city was attacked by the “barbarian Turks” and the Polish king rallied the European kings and drove out the barbarians. John Paul said at that time that Europe needed to return to its “Christian roots.” The present pope delivers the same message. But does this world know what those Christian roots really are?

The Vatican leaders understand their history. That is not true of most of the world, which is why many millions of people are so easily deceived about what the pope believes.

You can travel around Europe and see the Habsburg castles even today. Many of them have dungeons below them. Tour guides will tell you that the Habsburgs would have great feasts upstairs, listening to the finest classical music, while people were being tortured to death below. Similarly, Hitler could listen to beautiful opera while his minions were committing unspeakable atrocities.

In 1926, Hitler stated, “Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews …. The work that Christ started but could not finish, I—Adolf Hitler—will conclude.” He did not consider Jesus a Jew, but only a half-Jew because He was begotten by God.

However, the biggest problem that Hitler posed to the world was not his being a fanatical anti-Semite. That is only part of the story. This is where many people are deceived. Hitler was the political head of the Holy Roman Empire.

Much of the world looks upon the Jews as God’s chosen people. In Vienna, Hitler came to believe that God had replaced the Jews with the Germans and the Holy Roman Empire. He learned it in that cultured city—looking at the crown jewels and the opulence of the Habsburgs.

He believed the Germans were God’s chosen people. This is why the crown jewels of that empire meant so much to him.

In 1938, Hitler had brought the insignia of the First Reich, the imperial crown, the orb of empire, the scepter, and the imperial sword from Vienna to Nuremberg. At a rally, he vowed that they would remain there forever.

There is also a spear, called the spear of destiny. Many believe it is the spear that killed Christ—which is pure nonsense. The spear is supposed to have mystical powers. The legend states that if you look at this spear long enough, it will endow you with magical power. Hitler went there often and undoubtedly was mesmerized by it.

Lange’s Commentary says this about the fall of Jerusalem to the Roman armies in a.d. 70: “[T]he stamp of divine retribution was impressed upon the fate of Jerusalem and the temple, even for heathen eyes. We may call to mind the expression even of … Titus: ‘That God was so angry with this people that even he feared His wrath if he should suffer grace to be shown to the Jews’ ….”

Ceasar Titus believed that God had commissioned him to punish the Jews. The “Holy” Roman Empire grew out of that mighty empire.

Lange’s continues: “[H]e refused every mark of honor on account of the victory obtained, with the attestation that he had been only an instrument in God’s hands to punish this stiff-necked nation. Compare the well-known expressions of Josephus, as to the height which the wickedness of his contemporaries had reached.”

Has evil reached this height in America, Britain and the Jewish nation today? Is God concerned about our wickedness?

Josephus said that Titus killed 1.1 million Jews and took 97,000 slaves. There are over a hundred prophecies that tell us biblical Israel is going to be punished by that same empire in the end time. 

The seventh Holy Roman Empire has almost been completely resurrected in Europe today. Pope Benedict xvi is the spiritual head of that empire.

Many leaders in Europe are working feverishly to complete the Holy Roman Empire. Some say that to complete the process they only need a new Charlemagne—a strong leader after the image of the man who was crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in a.d. 800. Then they will have found their Christian roots. More about Charlemagne here and here.

What happened with Rome and Jerusalem in the first century is only a type of what is going to happen on a much greater scale in this end time—according to Bible prophecy.

Few people, even in Europe, understand their own Christian roots. But they should understand. If they did, and knew where a return to those roots is leading the Continent, they would never want to find them again! The Holy Roman Empire is about to radically change the course of world history!

The Pope’s Standoff With Islam

Another recent development in the Vatican highlights the escalating tension between Catholicism and Islam. At his Easter vigil service on March 22, Pope Benedict baptized Magdi Allam—a former Muslim. Allam is a deputy editor of one of Italy’s most powerful newspapers, and he’s also a bestselling author.

Stratfor wrote this about the much-publicized baptism: “Allam is an Egyptian-born convert from Islam to Christianity, and is a prominent outspoken critic of radical Islamism” (March 24). The timing of the baptism was especially significant, as Stratfor went on to point out: “Only days before, on March 19, an Internet posting of an audio message purporting to be from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden accused the pope specifically of fomenting a ‘new Crusade’ against Islam.”

In fact, a new crusade will happen. The Crusades were a series of Catholic-sponsored military expeditions to wrest control of Jerusalem and others parts of the Holy Land from Muslim control. The word crusade comes from the Latin word crucesignatus, which means one signed by the cross. During the Crusades, tens of thousands of bloodthirsty Europeans, operating under the Roman Catholic banner, descended into the Holy Land via the Near East, where they set about pillaging, raping, mutilating and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Jews and Muslims.

Stratfor wrote, “The papacy is a unique geopolitical entity. It was once literally a kingmaker, crowning the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire.” And it’s going to crown another one, who will be the last one.

Soon after that, Jesus Christ will return and establish God’s government over all the Earth. God will save mankind from itself, but He will do it His way and according to His timetable. Today, your Bible says the whole world is deceived (Revelation 12:9). But when Christ returns, He will remove that veil of deception and lead the world in the right way to live.

Before that, however, God prophesies of a great end-time clash between the king of the north (the EU dominated by Germany and the Vatican) and the king of the south (radical Islam). Even now, we are seeing this spectacular clash in its preliminary stages. (For more on this, read our booklet The King of the South.) Prophecy is being fulfilled. You can know where all of these events are leading!

Stratfor continued, “In attempting to galvanize and energize 1 billion Catholics, Benedict might also further alienate 1 billion Muslims.” A superpower is rising in Europe. It will soon impact this world and shed blood as no church-state combine ever has.

Stratfor wrote, “[I]t could very well move the Vatican onto center stage in radical Islamism’s conflict with the West. And that can have profound geopolitical implications.” Yes, indeed!

Now to prophecy. Revelation 17:10 says, “And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.” The “one is” emerged during World War ii as the Hitler-led Axis power. God says one more resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire is coming.

It will be led by the new Charlemagne.

Pope Visits to America - Sex Scandal, Gay Bishop and Interfaith Dialogue.

Pope Benedict has played to rock-concert-sized crowds on his first visit to the United States as head of the Roman Catholic Church.

"This has been a joyous week. It's been a joyous time for Catholics — and it wasn't such a bad week for Methodists, either. The excitement was just palpable," Bush, a Methodist, said at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, an event that coincided with the pope's visit. "It's not every day you get to be the warm-up act to the Holy Father," Bush said to an audience that brought raucous applause.

The pontiff's visit came at a challenging time for the American church. Wounds from the clergy sex scandals are still fresh, in Minnesota and across the nation, and are likely to scar the laity's trust for generations. In many areas, priest shortages and shifting resources are forcing the painful closure of beloved parishes. 

After years of near silence on the issue of the abuse and rape of children at the hands of pedophile priests, Pope Benedict XVI made public acknowledgement of the scandal a central theme of his first visit to the United States as head of the church. The first mention of the scandal came while still en route from Rome when he told reporters he was "deeply ashamed" about the scandal that had caused "great suffering."

It was the first time the papacy had directly addressed the victims of abusive clerics, and it signaled that Benedict's first trip to the United States as pontiff would be not just a state visit but an effort at reconciliation with American believers and an exercise in humility for the church's role in a scandal the pope conceded had been "very badly handled."

He said he is "deeply ashamed" of the clergy sex abuse scandal that has devastated the American church. Roman Catholic sex abuse cases can be found here.

“Only in this way will we give unambiguous testimony to the truth of the Gospel and its moral teaching. This is the method which the world is waiting to hear from us.”

The Pope did not mention specific issues troubling the churches. However, many Protestant groups have been arguing for years over how to understand what the Bible says about truth and salvation, and whether it prohibits gay sex.

The U.S. Episcopal Church caused an uproar among its fellow Anglicans in 2003 by consecrating the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

He also has said he would like to reach out to the Muslim community through dialogue, and Muslims were included in the pontiff's meeting with interfaith leaders in Washington on Thursday night. But many Muslims in America remain wary, saying the pope has created the impression that he is insensitive to their faith.

Many still recall the pope's September 2006 lecture at the University of Regensburg in Germany, in which Benedict quoted a Byzantine Christian emperor saying that "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".  The full text is here.

That lecture sparked days of protests in Muslim countries, some of them violent, and an Italian nun in Somalia was killed in retaliation. The Pope repeated several times that he regretted the offense his speech caused, and that he has deep respect for Islam. But the remarks have caused lingering damage, according to Muslims and some Catholic scholars interviewed.

"I don't think he did enough to apologize," said Omar T. Mohammedi, a member of the New York City Commission on Human Rights.

"For a person of his stature to come out and say this about Islam, it amazes me, it's sad," said Wael Mousfar, president of the Arab Muslim American Federation, a community group in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, a largely Muslim neighborhood. "Islam is the target of everyone nowadays; he just jumped on the bandwagon and joined the crowd."

There have been other perceived slights. For example, the pope confounded Muslims when he baptized a prominent Egyptian-born Italian Muslim convert on international television Easter Sunday. Italy's most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service. The Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Magdi Allam infuriated some Muslims with his books and columns in the newspaper Corriere della Sera newspaper, where he is a deputy editor. He titled one book "Long Live Israel."

"This person chose to be Catholic, it's not a problem," said Imam Shamsi Ali of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. The problem was the pope's celebration of the conversion on a global stage, he said.

Muhammad's (pbuh) SWORD

I’m sorry, I’m probably late with this article since it was published September last year, however since I have just stumbled across it, I would like visitors to read it, its quite interesting!

by Uri Avnery
September 27, 2006

Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.

Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306–exactly 1700 years ago–encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine . Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his superiority.

The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, “walked to Canossa ,” standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope’s castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.

But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week’s speech by the Pope, which aroused a world-wide storm, went well with Bush’s crusade against “Islamofascism,” in the context of the “Clash of Civilizations.”

IN HIS lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God’s actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.

As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this “war of civilizations.”

In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?

To support his case, the Pope quoted–of all people–a Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th Century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had–or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt)–with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:

“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.”

These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say them? (b) Are they true? (c) Why did the present Pope quote them?

WHEN MANUEL II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat.

At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the Danube . They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece , and had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire . On May 29, 1453 , only a few years after Manuel’s death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul ) fell to the Turks, putting an end to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.

During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics.

In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim “Axis of Evil.” Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe , this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.

IS THERE any truth in Manuel’s argument?

The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur’an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant verse 257) which says: “There must be no coercion in matters of faith.”

How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur’an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes–Christian, Jewish and others–in Arabia , when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.

Jesus said: “You will recognize them by their fruits.” The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to “spread the faith by the sword”?

Well, they just did not.

For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece . Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.

True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits.

In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith–and they were the forefathers of most of today’s Palestinians.

THERE IS no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the “spreading of the faith by the sword”?

What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. 

And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi (”Spanish”) Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire ) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.

WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the “peoples of the book.” In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service–a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion–because it entailed the loss of taxes.

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for 50 generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times “by the sword” to get them to abandon their faith.

THE STORY about “spreading the faith by the sword” is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims–the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna . I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.

Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?

There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of “Islamofascism” and the “Global War on Terrorism”–when “terrorism” has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush’s handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world’s oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers’ expedition becomes a Crusade. The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?

Qatar opens first church, Pope Benedict Negotiating with Arab Saudi and the Oxford Issues in Brittain

After decades of worshipping in borrowed spaces, Qatar's growing Christian community is celebrating - albeit quietly - the opening of the country's first church since pre-Islamic times.

"The church will send a positive message to the world," Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, Qatar's minister of energy and industry, told reporters on Friday during the unveiling of the complex.

The Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, will serve Doha's Catholic community, which comprises 90 per cent of the city's 150,000 and growing Christian expatriate population. When completed, the complex will be one of the largest Christian structures in the Gulf, Naim Fouad Wakin, the project contractor, told Al Jazeera.

With the opening of Our Lady of the Rosary, Saudi Arabia remains the only Gulf state to ban churches and open worship by non-Muslims.

Those who oppose churches in the Gulf often quote the Prophet Muhammed as saying "no two religions will come together in the Arabian peninsula".

But Abdul Hamid al-Ansari, former dean of the sharia (Islamic law) school at Qatar University and a vocal advocate of Doha's new church, offered another interpretation.

"This does not mean that churches should be banned in Qatar because religious scholars believe it applies to the Hijaz - specifically Mecca and Medina," Islam's two holiest cities in Saudi Arabia, Ansari said in a local newspaper article.

In Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, churches were seen as one way to attract more foreign workers.

In another news it was reported that a secret negotiations are taking place between the Vatican and Saudi Arabia to allow Christian churches in the strictly Muslim country.

The Vatican is negotiating with Saudi Arabia for “authorisation to build Catholic churches,” says archbishop Mounged El-Hachem, papal nuncio of Kuwait, Qatar, Yemen, Bahrein and the United Arab Emirates.

According to La Stampa, the secret talks, favoured by Saudi King Abdullah, have been taking place for several weeks and are considered an unprecedented for the Catholic church…
The Italian newspaper claimed on Monday that up to 900,000 Catholics live in Saudi Arabia, all of them expatriate workers.

Sad to inform at the same time (the site is here)that In Oxford, undisputed center of British tradition, the construction of the new grand mosque (not to be confused with the Islamic Cultural Center), had not received a warm welcome.

But the Muslims, having won the battle, intend to continue the offensive. They now express their intention to install loud-speakers on the minaret (that rises above the Oxford church steeples) to broadcast the call to prayer.

The pastor of a church near the mosque published an open letter in which he writes:

"We know, even if few say it, that the plans of radical Islam are to 'conquer Europe, England and Oxford.' According to this strategy the call to prayer is like a bridge-head, some are saying."

For the Muslim Council of Great Britain, this argument is as futile as the movement is inevitable: "The call to prayer will figure significantly in the future of Great Britain and of Europe. The adhan is already broadcast three times a day in the great mosque of East London and it has never caused any problem"

In another event, the plans for a Muslim community centre in Solihull have been withdrawn amid calls for greater acceptance towards minority groups.

Solihull Muslim Community Association (SMCA) applied for planning permission to establish the centre, complete with prayer hall, in Dog Kennel Lane, Shirley, with 50 parking spaces. Now the group - which has been searching for a home in the borough for 25 years - has announced that it has withdrawn the plans for "technical reasons".

Fears were rife that racial tension could erupt in Solihull following a leaflet campaign by the BNP against plans for the centre which also included a wudu for washing before prayer.

The leaflet, posted to homes near the proposed site, claimed there was an "Islamification" of Solihull and said the centre would lead to "conflict" and "discontent".

However, Dr Issam Ghannam, of SMCA, dismissed the BNP campaign as being "irrelevant" but called for political groups and church leaders in Solihull to do more to educate "some people".