Dark Ironies

A HARDLINE cleric linked to Somalia's powerful Islamist movement has called for Muslims to "hunt down" and kill Pope Benedict XVI for his controversial comments about Islam.

Sheikh Abubukar Hassan Malin urged Muslims to find the pontiff and punish him for insulting the Prophet Mohammed and Allah in a speech that he said was as offensive as author Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses.

"We urge you Muslims wherever you are to hunt down the Pope for his barbaric statements as you have pursued Salman Rushdie, the enemy of Allah who offended our religion," he said in Friday evening prayers.

"Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim," Malin, a prominent cleric in the Somali capital, told worshippers at a mosque in southern Mogadishu. (source)

(In other words, the cleric is calling for the Pope's death, because he quoted someone who said Islam was vile because it used violence instead of persuasion, and so the cleric calls for violence because the old Emperor pointed out something that Islam does and called it bad. It's not a matter if Islam IS vile in its willingness to use violence, but that once upon a time someone said that Islam was bad. And so, for the perceived sins of a long dead Greek emperor, the Pope should die for mentioning it in passing.)

Muhammad Abdul Bari, general-secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the pontiff needed to repudiate the emperor's views he quoted to restore relations between Muslims and the Roman Catholic Church.

(In other words, the pope should lie about thinking violence in the name of God is bad?)

I truly suspect these people will not be satisfied with anything less than the pope saying Islam is superior to Christianity, and the Prophet is wonderous. And then they are acting out the emperor's behavior for all to see.