Here's your apology Sheikh. AIRMAIL!!
Posted on 03/19/2005 4:02:25 AM PST by Pipeline
Muslims demand papal apology for crusades Highest Sunni authority sends official request to Vatican
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: March 19, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
The world's highest Sunni Muslim authority has demanded an official apology from the pope for the medieval Christian crusades.
Sheikh Fawzi Zafzaf, president of the Interfaith Dialogue Committee of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, said his panel sent the request to the Vatican in February, the Morocco Times reported.
The demand arose from Pope John Paul II's apologies to the Jewish people and his visits to Syria and Egypt a few years ago, Zafzaf said.
Al-Azhar is only asking for a similar treatment, he stated.
The Morocco paper said the Vatican's ambassador to Egypt has declined to comment, saying Al-Azhar's request is being considered by the Holy See.
While many Christians have expressed remorse for the crusades, some scholars insist the common characterization of zealous imperialists attacking peaceful Muslims is wrong.
Thomas F. Madden, author of "A Concise History of the Crusades," contends the Crusades "were in every way a defensive war."
"They were the West's belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world," he wrote in a National Review column. "While the Arabs were busy in the seventh through the tenth centuries winning an opulent and sophisticated empire, Europe was defending itself against outside invaders and then digging out from the mess they left behind. Only in the eleventh century were Europeans able to take much notice of the East. "
Madden said the event that led to the crusades was the Turkish conquest of most of Christian Asia Minor, modern Turkey.
"The Christian emperor in Constantinople, faced with the loss of half of his empire, appealed for help to the rude but energetic Europeans. He got it. More than he wanted, in fact," wrote Madden, associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University.
Over the past several years, pronouncements from Al-Azhar have sparked controversy.
In 2003, Al-Azhar's grand sheikh, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, stated suicide bombers are considered "martyrs" under Islamic law.
In December 2002, the Islamic Ruling Committee in Al-Azhar declared the acquisition of nuclear weapons to be a religious obligation for Islamic states.
A member of panel, Sheikh Ala A-Shanawi, said, "The Islamic nation has to recognize the enemy, and to prepare itself accordingly."
Answering a question he received, A-Shanawi wrote, "Allah's messenger [Muhammad] would have prepared himself with all the resources possible in order to deal with the enemy. Therefore, if the Islamic nation is not equipped with the desired weaponry needed, it will be forced to suffer the consequences, and will be blamed for negligence."
The sheikh continued, "All Islamic nations are required to seize nuclear weaponry, giving the nation the utmost respect. We see how far behind our nation is as a result of not being prepared as well as it should be, while the enemy has equipped itself with the best weaponry there is, which it will use to harm and destroy Muslims."
Mr. Sheikh, if you run your nose into our fist, don't blame us for the damage.
How about the Muslims setting the appropriate stage for an apology--say the return of St. Sophia's in Constantinople for starters?
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
"While many Christians have expressed remorse for the crusades..."
Not this one. Eff the muzzie garbage.
Why don't we start with Muslim original sin. They can give back to Christendom everything they stole outside of the Arabic peninsula...like Syria, the Lebanon, Jordon, Iraq, Egypt, the Sudan...all of which were Christian before that pagan Muhammad brought the 600 year regression to the world.
All Muslims are our enemies until the Second Coming!
Here's your apology Sheikh. AIRMAIL!!
I'm sorry he feels that way.
"The sheikh continued, "All Islamic nations are required to seize nuclear weaponry" "
Oh Please - make our day!
Any Crusade thread needs some Chesterton..
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade. . .
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
- G.K. Chesterton "Lepanto"
Here's when.........NEVER!
No, I am not exaggerating. Click the pic, go to "last," and read backwards.
If you aren't informed about this stuff, you will be made sick. If you are informed, you will be made mad, all over again.
How about if instead of apologizing for the old Crusades, we have another one to finish the job? Don't they always say the Crusades stimulated trade and brought cultural benefits? Although we'll have to do this one without the French and the Germans. Urban II bump.
Ok, and an apology for the Moorish Invasion of Spain, the invasion of eastern Europe, the excesses of the Ottomans, crimes against the Lebanese Christians and Copts in Egypt all deserve an apology,
oh, and while they're at it: HOW ABOUT A BIG APOLOGY FOR 9/11!
Saladin would have thought Sheikh Fawzi Zafzaf was a girly man for "asking" for an "apology."
Wow... I need to get my eyes checked... I was wondering why muslims wanted an apology from PayPal!
Mark
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