"I Had One of Them Muslims In the Back of My Popemobile Once..."

My 'God' people are dumb.

Benedict said "I quote" twice to stress the words were not his

vs.

"We ask the Pope to apologise to the Muslim nation for insulting its religion, its Prophet and its beliefs."

HE SAID THEY WEREN'T HIS WORDS! Don't tell me that the highest clerics not only don't understand humor (ok, those Danish cartoons weren't that funny), they don't even understand the concept of quoting?

What clerics? It's usually just some git who's gone around saying, "Listen to me... I'm important, honest... I know all about the Koran, me..."

Speaking in Germany, the Pope quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor who said Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things.

while catholicism has brought ... anyone? an aids pandemic in africa? er ...

Unfortunately it doesn't explain the relevance of the quote or intentions behind it so there may be objection on that basis.

sorry.

okay, perhaps "brought about" isn't 100% semantically correct. but i don't give a fuck, to be frank.

You really think they listen to the church when choosing not to wear a condom but not when choosing to have sex with someone who's not their spouse?

That wouldn't have happened had you worn a condom, so the church was right after all!

tell you what. you go away and do some reading. and some thinking. start here:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1999/10/07/the-pope-spreads-aids/

x-post: roffle!

i have to go out now; here endeth the lesson :)

There are lots of reasons for the spread of aids; ignorance, poverty shitty governents. The catholic church is way way down the list. But, what the hell, it's an easy pat answer with all the right liberal credentials so you go on believing it. Bye.

Oh and old Ratsnicker should just shut the fuck up about this one.

Still, fuck 'em all, the backwards superstitious cunts.

LOLz at the idea that Catholicism is in favour of reason

Much of which we only have because it got trasmitted into Arabic and back during the medieval period. The medieval church might have had some Aristotle but the only Plato it had was, as I recall, the Timesis, which is not the book I'd recommend starting with.

but you're SUPPOSED to do it sneakily behind closed doors, and not get caught.

good point, well made.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42091000/jpg/_42091934_effigy_ap_416.jpg

"Boss I need the morning off, gotta burn an effigy of the Pope".
"Hang on I prepared a few last year should this very situation arise".

US Bombs Fallujah Mosque; More Than 40 Worshippers Killed
Revolutionary violence engulfs Iraq
by Bassem Mroue and Abdul-Qader Saadi

Needs more hair.

and it all has the democratic seal of approval, at the voting booths

they don't have to say it explicitly, but they are using a pretty powerful image to give weight to the idea that Muslims around the world are going crazy with rage at the Pope. this is not a helpful idea to promulgate, and it's very irresponsible if it isn't strictly true. if, for example, there were highly staged and relatively small demonstrations, organised by militant islamists, as opposed to more representative, less organised mass demonstrations, it is the media's responsibilty to investigate and report that. as it is, I think frenzy-fuelling has won out over responsible journalism.

the fact remains: there are enough mad bastards being mad/shooting nuns etc to make this quite a big story, no?

I'm not saying the media should ignore what is happening so as not to inflame religious tensions. but they should be reporting who exactly these mad bastards are, who is organising them, and how the broader muslim population feels about their actions.

er: we had the muslim council of the UK on p1 the other day saying: "yo pope, yr apology has clarified things and we're happy." again, quite a big platform.

good. there should be more of this, more Muslims, particularly non-Western ones, should be given a platform in the media, and not just in the midst of a big controversy like this.

you say "the media" are making generalisations ... aren't you doing the same? :)

I don't like referring to 'the media' as a monolith, but over the last few days I have just been reading various newspaper websites and the BBC site, and it has all just merged into the same uncritical hysteria. I rely entirely on the media for my information. I don't have the resources at my disposal to go and find out what is really happening, and the BBC and other big media organisations do, and its their job and their responsibility to be as honest, unbiased and critical as possible. and it's incredibly frustrating to me that they don't seem to be doing that.

-- TOMBOT (tombo...), September 19th, 2006 6:18 PM.

I'll be checking your flickr later - don't let me down.

Perhaps, and they are indeed catchall words, but they have some value or they wouldn't have existed for so long. The Muslim world is a very good way of expressing in English, btw, the Islamic expression Dar al-Islam.

so, i mean, he's being taken out of context in the sense that i don't think a lot of the aggrieved parties have probably taken the trouble to tackle the context. but otoh, the context itself would be plenty objectionable to yr average believer in another creed. his call for dialogue between cultures on the basis of "reason" sounds good, until you figure out that what he means by "reason" is "something that christians have and muslims don't."

A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.

"you'll never win the war without ME"

If this was Sunday's paper with the "Pope says sorry but will it be enough?" headline then the Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari from the Muslim council said "For the restoration of good ties between Muslims and the Vatican, we feel it's important that he repudiates the views of the emperor. What we want to see is a clear indication that he himself does not in any way share the emperor's bigoted assessment of the prophet Muhammed." - that to me doesn't read as "apology accepted" in any way, shape or form, though I agree it is good to see more moderate language on the issue.

The same article rounded off with The Sword of Islam saying "If the pope does not go on television and apologise for the offensive comments, we will bomb the churches of Gaza."

Guess which quote I remembered and which one I had to look up :-)

...

ok, THAT was a joke.

If this was Sunday's paper with the "Pope says sorry but will it be enough?" headline

no, it was the daily paper, cols seven and eight ... can't remember the day, though. sorry. and you'll note that i didn't actually say "apology accepted"; i don't think anyone's said that, principally because it's not really an "apology" and there's not much to accept!

but it was certainly an example of what cathy said didn't appear to be happening: the moderate muslim viewpoint being given major exposure in the "western" media. and it's not just us doing that.

they don't have to say it explicitly, but they are using a pretty powerful image to give weight to the idea that Muslims around the world are going crazy with rage at the Pope ... I'm not saying the media should ignore what is happening so as not to inflame religious tensions. but they should be reporting who exactly these mad bastards are, who is organising them, and how the broader muslim population feels about their actions

1) i've not been following the BBC's coverage so i can't say whether or not they said "muslims around the world are going crazy" or not. i'd be interested to know exactly how the picture was captioned. without having seen the page on the day it was published, it's a bit difficult for me to argue, so i'll take you at your word.

2) "who exactly these mad bastards are" ... woah, you think hacks should have been stopping them in the street and getting their names and addresses? it's not quite that simple, is it? sure, by this stage in the game, it's possible to start finding out more, but when those pictures were taken the whole thing was spectacularly volatile. i think it's enough that the pictures were taken; that the report at that time basically stated: "in city x, y number of people took part in violent protests".

facts first: and the facts, like them or not, involved a certain number of furious protests. if those facts were being blown out of all proportion by certain parts of the media ... well, that's nothing new. complain to the organisation in question - or vote with your feet and don't read it in future! there are still plenty of rational and thoughtful news sources out there.

id hardly call mossad, bushco and the CIA 'tiny nobodies'...right?

the photographs that appeared were of seemingly organised protests, it shouldn't have been hard to find out who organised them. all the news reports I read entirely skipped over the question of numbers of protestors. the BBC was using phrases like "Indian Muslims staged protests" - totally vague and giving no indication of the numbers involved. I keep seeing the news story I linked to above about the attacks in Gaza repeated just as "Palestinians shoot up six churches in Gaza", omitted the "no injury or damage was reported in any of the incidents" part. the term "violent protests" that kept being used in itself is hugely ambiguous: who was violent, the protestors or the police? and was there violence against people or just violent rhetoric and damage to property? these questions just weren't being asked.

facts first: and the facts, like them or not, involved a certain number of furious protests. if those facts were being blown out of all proportion by certain parts of the media ... well, that's nothing new. complain to the organisation in question - or vote with your feet and don't read it in future! there are still plenty of rational and thoughtful news sources out there.

if you don't like the news - you don't have to read it! brilliant. I might complain to the BBC or other individual news stories, but that's little comfort - I'm not just a pissed off consumer, this is actually about a massive threat to world peace. East-West and Muslim-Christian confrontation pose a gigantic threat to our frighteningly militarised world. the western media play a hugely important role in all this. responsible media could ease tensions by helping educate the west about Islam and the complex grievances Muslims have against the West. irresponsible media can continue to inflame tensions and give even more substance to the so often heard claims by Muslims that the west is anti-Islam.

No one can deny that there are some violent and murderous people out there, seeking to terrorise others not of their beliefs, and they are the ones saying they are of a particular religion. If that religion does not work with the people trying to stop this, then it is natural that the media will take that out of context and thus label them along with those they have not publicly isolated themselves.

eh? i didn't say that. stop putting words in my mouth! i said that if you don't like a particular source, eg the bbc, don't keep going back to it. might i suggest you read the independent? or the guardian (see below)?

I keep seeing the news story I linked to above about the attacks in Gaza repeated just as "Palestinians shoot up six churches in Gaza", omitted the "no injury or damage was reported in any of the incidents"

well, without being funny: if an article doesn't say "and x people were hurt", you can kinda assume 0 people were hurt, no? not entirely sure about "no damage" if something's been shot at, either.

like it or not, these are stories worth reporting. granted, from what you're saying the BBC does appear to be making a bit of an arse of it. but what would you like it to say? "BUT DONT'T WORRY, EVERYBODY, MOST MUSLIMS ARE NICE?" at the end of every story?

for instance, today the guardian's wrap roundup thing tells us:

There is uneasy coverage of John Reid's address to a group of Muslims
in Leyton, east London, yesterday. The home secretary was heckled by
Abu Izzadeen, who is currently under investigation for allegedly
discussing assassinating Tony Blair.

"How dare you come here to a Muslim area after you have arrested
Muslims?" Mr Izzadeen shouted.

specific reporting of the facts; utterly chilling that people think like this, but this is ONE PERSON BEING QUOTED. so you can't possibly complain.

can you stop tarring everything with the same brush, please? like i say, complain to the BBC and then STOP READING IT.

responsible media could ease tensions by helping educate the west about Islam and the complex grievances Muslims have against the West

er, yes. and it has been doing so. where else have i got my understanding of the situation if not from the media i read and watch? media about which, i should add, i am very selective.

there are an awful lot of spectacularly violent and unpleasant people out there. there is an awful lot of appalling journalism out there. such, sadly, is life.

LOLZ @ undergraduate

http://www.alex-hartmann.net/lj/2006/160906_protest.jpg