Pope Benedict Criticizes Islam

Submitted by Ed Melik (United States), Sep 27, 2006 at 23:47

In reference to your quote by "a Sheik and posted on Aljazeera on Aug 11/06"

"What's wrong with you Muslims? You have set your sights too low. Don't you know that the world belongs to you? Instead of fighting the Jews, you need to fight the whole world. You should've had control over the whole world by now. Allah is angry because you have forgotten."

Does any reasonably thinking person in the world believe or accept the above statement by a self-proclaimed and self appointed so call Sheikh with no standing among the legitimate "imams" of Islam? If such ignorant and unqualified preachers from any religion could be taken as the true representatives of its followers or faith then you should perhaps read the comments and speeches by the late Rabi Meier Kahane of Israel, Jerry Falwell, the 700 Club clans and the rest of the paid-off televangelist mouth pieces. If these kind of self-righteous and self-appointed leaders of some vague splinter groups of mainstream religions become the spokesperson of the mainstream religions, then we really are faced with a serious world problem.

As far as the suicide bombing dilemma is concerned, it was well adopted and glorified over 50 years before anyone in the world heard of the "Islamic suicide bombers". These glorified ever-living heroes were from the "Kamikaze" suicide bomber squads of Japan. What does that make of Japan an the rest of the Japeanese people if your assertion is correct citing the countries and the years of suicide bombings?

Has Japan maintained that necessity of time when it was considered an honor for the families whose sons, and even in some cases, thier daughters laid their lives on the line for the sake of their faith, honor and belief that demanded such sacrifices? Of course not. Japan rose from the ashes of nuclear destruction of which we as Americans are the only nation known to resort to such inhumane acts. As a matter of record, anyone can find among the archives of Pentagon and the Department of Defense a plan to utilize so called "limited parameter atom bombs" that would only incinerate a designated envelope of an area by such an atom bombs that were supposedly assigned to be dropped in Iraq in case if our forces faced biological weaponry as was falsely fabricated by the criminal neo-cons whose short-sighted and arrogantly concocted Plans backfired on their faces and they, so conveniently, are tucked away in safer pastures to be unseen.

So the issue at hand is the "suicide bombers" whether one calls them the "Islamic bombers" the "Islamic fascist" the "Islamic terrorists" they are part and parcel of our bankrupt and defunct foreign policies. Considering our American greed driven, quick-gained, short sighted and self-fabricated solutions to our Wall Street driven false economy, are the main causes of so many apology ridden mistakes and blunders that every former Presidents, the former crooked Congressmen, doubly corrupt and crooked Senate members, and a great many imbeciles of the past and many in the present administration who continue to accept the blame. It's like President Bush's speech to the nation where he says "I take the blame of Iraqi mistakes". Does this kind of "I take the blame" nonsense justifies the blunders that has caused our heroes in uniforms whose lives we have so cheaply traded for so called "veteran's benefits"? How many thousands more have to die for phony slogans of "democracy in the Middle East"?

One begs to ask the question. Where were these "Islamic bombers" during the "Cold War"? How come immediately after the fall of the Soviet Empire", suddenly the "Islamic Fascists" sprung out of the blues? Soviet Union crumbled to ground in 1990. In short 10 years after that, we are now suddenly faced a "hundred-time worse threat than the Soviets"… the Islam. Where was Islam 10 years ago? Why no Islamists bombed anything in America except the only bombing of a federal building that was by our own decorated war hero Timothy McVeigh of Murrah building in Oklahoma City. Never in the history of America such an incident took place. Some say, it was a precursor to the ultimate… 9/11 twin tower destruction. I don't buy it but it's not impossible. I've been reading a lot of material on a website www.JonesReport.Com. It certainly, raises some very logical and compelling issues.

So getting off the horse of beating Islam and the rest, it is only fair to assume, through a process of deduction by reasoning based on true facts, that all religions have their share of nut cases and Islam, Christianity, Judaism and other religions are not spared from such abrasions. I think keeping an open mind and willing to listen or understand the facts based on realities, one can reach to a more productive and I believe, more constructive understandings. Fighting anyone in such numbers as 1.6 billion Muslims and labeling all of them as "Islamic fascists" would only exacerbate and worsen the situation.

It is a fact and I know more about Islam as an American Muslim than most of the non-Muslim Americans that there is larger percentage of uneducated and poor Muslims around the world than those with some form of academic or formal college educational background. One must remember that a great majority of Muslims including President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, President Musharaf of Pakistan and almost all the Presidents before them in that part of the world attended some form of Madrasas. This is another folly of the West that labels all the Madrasas as the "breeding grounds of terrorism". Is it then right to say that every Jewish Synagogue and Christian Churches that operate schools are preaching Zionism and right wing Christianity or Jewish Defense League's (JDL) philosophies. I am sure this is farthest from the truth. Oldest university in the world was started in Egypt named Al-Azhar.. I've been told. And there are some of the oldest Universities running in India, Europe and other parts of the world today that are older the United States. So one must have the courage to head to the reasons and facts.

I disagree to the claims and prophesies of those who think Islam is a menace or some kind of "third world war mongering" religion. If anyone bothers to read Quraan, the holly book of the Muslims (of Islam) one would be shocked to see how closely related Islam is to Christianity and Judaism. How many of us in the West know that each and every prophet of Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible are exactly the same prophets of Islam and not one prophet of any generation of any of the above holly books is considered higher in reverence than the other including prophet Mohammed (PBUH). Most revered and holiest of the holly prophets of Islam are Moses and Jesus while in Islam Abraham is the father of all three religions including Islam. So let's try and keep an open mind instead of rushing to our guns to shoot all the Muslims down. By the way, if one observes a Muslim, specially an Arab, it certainly does not give an impression that there are such commonalities among these religions. What Muslims in general and Arabs in particular practice and live their lives by is totally in contrast to the teachings of Islam. It is fact and I know it first hand as I have lived and worked among Arabs.

I know for fact that I revered Islam and the teachings of Quraan ( that I knew little of) based on what my father practiced and tried to force me to do the same, but unfortunately did not succeed, than after spending time with the Arabs. I came back home to America with a very confused state of mind and to a great degree of speculation and suspicion about many of the practices that most of the Muslims in general and the Arabs in particular, try to exhibit. I used the word "exhibit" purposely and this is exactly what most of them do… practice and preach Islam for exhibition purposes only to impress upon each other of how pious they are by making 5 trips aday to the mosques and as soon as the bare necessities of prayers are completed how madly they rush out of the mosque as though someone is standing with guns to demand their exits. It is truly a shameful exhibition of great majority of mosque going Muslims.

We need more understanding and tolerance than war mongering nonsense. A few bad apples in any religion does not make a religion a captive or a hostage of those misguided self-proclaimed right wingers with one and only one agenda, to rid other non-believers. I've heard them in churches from South Africa to South Wales and from far corners of Toronto Canada to the remotest areas of California and everything in between. I am also a church, synagogue and temple going Muslim!

An American idiom is so appropriate here to mention:" Chickens have come to roost" Our American foreign policies have been disaster one after another. Our one of the oldest and the greatest Asian ally was President Suharto of Indonesia who was a very tyrannical leader for decades. With the help of CIA and other US Agencies he succeeded in brutally killing hundreds of thousands of suspected communists of Indonesia. We rewarded him with 45 billion dollars of IMF money that went straight into him family accounts. Suharto family is considered to be the 6^th. richest family in the world with family assets acceding over 18 billion dollars. At our foreign policy and upon our approval and instructions Suharto's regime has brutally and publicly killed over 280,000 Indonesian Muslims. "The purge of the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) was part of a U.S. drive to ensure that Communists did not come to power in the largest country in Southeast Asia, where the United States was already fighting an undeclared war in Vietnam. Indonesia is the fifth most-populous country in the world" wrote Kathy Kadane of States News Service. In 1966 Bertrand Russell said "In three months five times as many people died in Indonesia as in Vietnam in 12 years". Who do you think Suharto killed? His own Muslims who joined the Soviet Communist Party as an evil necessity to balance the cowardice act of our American foreign policy that has resulted the killings of hundreds of thousands of poor and hopeless masses of the most populous Islamic country where the largest breeding grounds of "Jihadists" or so called "terrorists" exists. What the Americans did, rewarded the richest people of Indonesia. The results are there for all of us to see.

Shah of Iran was one of the most trusted and reliable ally of the United States and then, a large trading partner of Israel. Our foreign policies are paying the dividends there today. We created the most suppressive and tyrannical regime of Iran under Shah of Iran. He operated the most terrifying network of Stalin-like secret service named SAVAK whose mission was to root out the opponents and crush any democratic movements. How did we reward the Shah? By giving him the most sophisticated listening and monitoring devices to spy on its citizens, provide him with the cruelest and atrocious interrogative tools, made Irani air force the envy of the region with some of the most advanced aircrafts and weaponry. He was one of our best ally and working partner with Israel (in secrecy of course). Shah made Iran one of the most advanced Islamic country with the most sophisticated research labs, universities, scientific institutions and of course totally and forcibly westernized the entire country against the wishes of the poor masses of Iran. Eventually he became too strong for the safety of Israel who wanted to be the only military power in that region. The rest is history.

Ayatollah Khomeini was given political asylum by Mr. Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Ayatollah remained a prominent and respected guest of Iraq for 18 years under Mr. Saddam Hussein. At America's encouragements when Mr. Khomeini started to interfere with Iran, Mr. Saddam Hussein told him not to interfere with Iran's internal matters while he's a guest of Iraq. Eventually America facilitated him to form a government in exile in Paris France. He sure didn't turnout to be such a great American ally!

Similar fate was met with President Marcos of Philippines, one of the oldest and most trustworthy American ally.

Manual Noriega of Panama was one of our staunchest friends who was on CIA's payroll since the mid 60's. Despite the full knowledge of then CIA Chief, George Bush his drug operations were totally ignored for he was fulfilling one our nation's so called "national interests". Vice President George Bush during Reagan administration was fully informed and did nothing to rid this menace that has since destroyed America's moral fabric that is in tatters now. He went along with our Washington's rewards as long as he was not stepping of America's tows of talking about the return of the stolen Panama Canal Zone.

So after a well planned and pre-orchestrated and after news media's rehearsals to unleash a wraith of "demonization of Noriega" that justified the killings of thousands of innocent Panamanian by the super giant of the space age military might, and after a successful installation of a puppet in the nick of time when the treaty was expiring and the canal was supposedly was to be returned to the Panamanian people and its government, we, without any legal precedence, arrested President Noreiga who is now keeping his ailing Panamanian mouth shut in American jail to make sure he does not speak to the press and spill his beans.

Osama bin Ladin was hailed as one of the greatest heroes by the Americans during the Afghan-Soviet struggle. We forced Pakistan to make every possible help and assistance available to Osama and his world recruits from the Muslim countries to create a Jihad Army" that will certainly guarantee defeat to the Soviets. Our CIA, the Rand Corporation, the NSA, and dozens of other think tanks knew the facts that once one induces the "Jihad" element among its believers who are faced with a non-Islamic invader to their countries, the enemy will never prevail regardless of the might of its army and space age technologies. How right the CIA and its cohorts were. Osama and his Jihad army with CIA, Pentagon and other's training and resources, made him an unbeatable foe for the Soviet that resulted a humiliating defeat for the Soviets who left Afghanistan without with great losses.

What did we as Americans do with this army of Jihadists? The hell with them. We succeeded in causing a disgrace and humility to the unconquerable Soviets .. "the evil empire". And we all celebrated in Washington DC's steak houses, bars, the senate and the places of state businesses for public purpose.

Above mentioned few references are only to emphasize the short sightedness, ignorance and arrogance of our American mindset. We were going to shield America with an invisible bomb proof canopy where no weapons of the enemy will be able to penetrate the United States stratosphere… remember the infamous President Ronal Regan's "Star war" technology with particle charge high intensity super hot laser beans to burn the rockets and bombs in space? Well, here we were with over 150,000 most advanced super soldiers of the American defense Forces in Iraq with space age technology to fight the rag-tag army equipped with obsolete weaponry that did not work most of the time due to old age parts that cannot be maintained due to 14 years of total embargo on Iraq. What did the Iraqis do? Put rocket launchers of donkey carts and blew some of the most fortified hotels in the middle of Baghdad. That speaks enough of our space age advance army.

It's not the weapons that fight the wars. It's the soldier. Islam's Jihad (Islamic soldiers) and its well planned strategy by the CIA and the rest to fight the Soviets is, what is now creating havoc for our boys and girls in uniform while the incompetent, sell-outs, shameless congressmen and the Senators yak all day and night long in their ivory towers. Why did no Jihadists ever think of hurting America before? Why suddenly in such a short span of time, such a formidable enemy has sprung out? From where? CIA and the rest of the lying, conniving, and ruthless killers know from where and how. And so does the cohorts of the State department, the establishment media.

Not much space and time to expand more. Will continue the dialogue.

Ed

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