"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Monday, October 16, 2006

POPE RECONFIRMS HE WILL VISIT TURKEY

"Reuters" (via PJM):
The Vatican on Monday officially confirmed that Pope Benedict will visit Turkey at the end of November, a trip that had been put into doubt by Muslim anger over controversial comments he made about Islam. ... The main purpose of the visit is to meet in Istanbul -- the former Constantinople -- with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual head of the world's Orthodox Christians. ... But the issue of Christian unity -- although still the main topic of the trip -- has been largely overshadowed by the worldwide controversy that followed his September 12 lecture at Regensburg University in his native Germany.

In the lecture, he quoted 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus who spoke of the Prophet Mohammad's "command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". ... Since the speech, the Pope or Vatican officials have said at least a dozen times that it has been misunderstood. ... Some of the strongest criticism of the speech came from Turkey, where Turkish nationalists and Islamic activists have pushed for the trip to be canceled.
I predict that the Turkish reaction to his visit will be quite mixed - to say the least - and this will reconfirm what most of us Hawks think about the the dire state of Islam today.

This will, in turn, bring more clarity to the GWOT, by exposing the fanaticism of one of the most liberal of secular Muslim states - (which is growing more fanatical each year). This additional clarity might aid Pope Benedict in his main mission: the re-awakening of Catholic Europe (which is literally fading away). TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE.

[ASIDE: How pitiful that 5 short years after 9/11 -- and just 32 months after 3/11 in Madrid, and just 15 months after 7/7 in London -- that much of the world is still in denial about the nature of the enemy and still need re-awakening!

(I think this is due to the fact that most of Europe, and most of America's Left, are stuck in "the quagmire of post modernism" (Tm) - an ideology taught at every major university, an ideology which has brainwashed several generations into believing the West is a menace to humanity and the environment, and that the USA is the chief menace since WW1.)]

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