Islam spread peacefully?
CAIRO (Reuters) - Muslims deplored on Friday remarks on Islam by Pope Benedict and many of them said the Catholic leader should apologize in person to dispel the impression that he had joined a campaign against their religion.
In a speech in Germany on Tuesday, the Pope appeared to endorse a Christian view, contested by most Muslims, that the early Muslims spread their religion by violence.
"The Pope of the Vatican joins in the Zionist-American alliance against Islam,"
said the leading Moroccan daily Attajdid, the main Islamist newspaper in the
kingdom."We demand that he apologizes personally, and not through (Vatican) sources, to all Muslims for such a wrong interpretation," said Beirut-based Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, one of the world's top Shi'ite Muslim clerics.
Well, gee, duh. Didn't they? Do these Muslims not learn any history in the schools they go to? Or have they just conveniently forgotten? How about the invasion of Spain in 711 for one? How about the taking of Jerusalem and the attacking of christian pilgrims for another (which was the real cause of the crusades). Half of what used to be Christian lands was taken over by muslims before the Crusades finally started up. Look it up in the history books. Places like Turkey used to be Christian.
All of which does not mean that all muslims are war-mongerers. I happen to know a few peace-loving muslims myself.
Catholics and Protestants don't cut off each other's heads, or burn each other at the stake anymore either,... and I'm willing to bet not all of them were for doing all that at the time either.
It's time to get a grip. Society has changed. We might be ashamed of things in our history, but everyone has things in their history, that's how the world was. You can't just make them go away.
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