More on Pope and Islam Tom Smith

This defies parody:

CHRISTIAN churches in the Middle East were attacked yesterday as an apology from Pope Benedict XVI failed to quell fury over his controversial comments on Islam.

Five churches were targeted in the Palestine territories and last night, in a chilling development, a violent Iraqi insurgent group vowed to suicide bomb the Vatican in the wake of the Pontiff’s speech. . . .

The chilling statement from the Mujahadeen Army, posted on the website used by militant groups, was addressed to “you dog of Rome” and threatened to “shake your thrones and break your crosses in your home”.

“We swear to God to send you people who adore death as much as you adore life,” said the message, which contained links to video recordings of what the group claimed were rocket attacks on US bases.

The same group has claimed responsibility for scores of attacks in Iraq, including the April 2005 downing of a helicopter carrying 11 civilians, including six Americans. . . .

But the most worrying turn of events took place in the Palestinian territories where gangs wielding guns and firebombs turned their anger on churches. Four churches were targeted in the West Bank town of Nablus, while gunmen opened fire at a fifth in Gaza, leaving the walls pocked by bulletholes and scorched by firebombs.

Only one was a Catholic church. In one of the attacks, five firebombs struck an Anglican church, setting fire to the door. In the attack on the Catholic church, four gunmen doused the doors with lighter fluid before setting it alight. A group calling itself the Lions of Monotheism claimed responsibility.

In Iraq, the government asked Muslims not to take their anger out on the small Christian minority, after the door of a church in Basra was attacked.

That there is something profoundly sick and evil in the Muslim culture of the Middle East and Asia hardly needs to be said.  It is there for anyone to see. There may appear to be institutions and collectivities of faith and reason, to which an apology, were one warranted, might be addressed, but there are not, not really.  I disagree with Mike.  To characterize this behavior as medieval does an injustice to the Middle Ages, when reason may not have been triumphant but was at least ascending.  Somewhere in the NT, oh that’s right, Mathew seven, Jesus says you really have to judge a tree by its fruit and by implication a system of belief by its consequences.  Maybe that’s what Benedict should have quoted, and one hopes he will never feel he has to apologize for that.