The Pope Bush & President Benedict XVI [Archives:2006/985/Opinion]
By: Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh
It is regrettable President Bush is no longer the only one offending Islam and the Muslims, now the Pope of the Vatican has joined him with a rare and exceptional accordance between the worldly authority and papal authority in the contemporary history of Christianity. Here lies the danger of this bilateral accord, not only on Islam and the Muslims, but rather to the whole world and the necessity of calling the attention to keep away this accord and its reactions at both the Islamic and Christian worlds.
Those who will keep looking for justifications and causes of this accord in the campaign on Islam and those who will deny the existence of such accordance altogether and attribute it as per chance, are mistaken and deluded. Those looking for excuses do not need to search because the causes are very obvious and those who deny such an agreement and accordance cannot hide. The accordance between the political poll in Washington and the religious poll in the Vatican seems comprehensive and complete. The Pope's talk concerning Islam and the Prophet of Islam was not a tongue slip or resulting from lack of knowledge of the reality of Islam or what waves of Islamic anger and denunciation would sweep all over the world.
Clearly, the talk of the Pope came to frankly and to openly express his belittling of the Islamic world and the state of weakness, division and political differences it has reached in addition to deterioration of the relations among the rulers and themselves and between them and their peoples. This situation made politicians and religious men in the world not care about whatever they want to talk about Islam without any feeling of fear or observance of an Islamic world drowned in differences and conflicts. Those differences and conflict that are repeatedly appearing and for those hostile to prove that such successive blows and slaps would not unit the Muslims or make them agree on one stand, it rather made them appear more different and disintegrated.
Those who accuse the Pope of ignorance about Islam forget he does not lack knowledge about the Muslims who represent one third of the globe population, he is rather assured their weakness has become so deep they cannot respond without denunciation and demonstrations, breaking street lamps and windows of cars.
The talk of the Pope is almost very much like the talk of George Bush on the crusade war and fascism of Islam and though the phrases are different the goal is the same and the purpose is common. The new extremists who govern the United States and influence policies throughout the world have accredited partners in the Vatican which changed from an abode of a religious spiritual care into an institution that does not stop its interference in world affairs.
There is no doubt the present Pope has been chosen to implement such irreligious and non-spiritual task in his installations there were issued from him same annoying signs, some people had been aware of and others neglected. If the previous Pope had succeeded in developing a kind of Islamic-Christian relations, his successor came to destroy what had been realized at the hands of that wise pontiff. What affirms this saying is the talk by the Pope about Islam and the Prophet of Islam in a well-prepared lecture and it was not an unscripted address that may contain mistakes or dominated with enthusiasm, as is the case with speeches addressed to masses, whether religious or political.
The short-term reply can be in this behavior should see Muslims agree on a form of unifying their stands and restoring to them their prestige and becoming an integrated power their adversaries and those of their religion will take into account.
Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh is Yemen's prominent poet and intellectual. He is the director of the Yemeni Center for Studies.
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[archive-e:985-v:14-y:2006-d:2006-09-28-p:opinion]
