“Fears of violent Mideast backlash to pope,” from AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
“We ask him to apologize this false reading of Islam,” said Lebanese cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, one of the world’s foremost Shiite religious scholars.
“We do not accept the excuse of the Vatican that the pope was not targeting Islam and had not intended to engage in a detailed study of jihad (the Muslim doctrine of holy war),” he added.
Fadlallah recently praised Hizballah for waging “a new battle of Khaybar.” Khaybar, of course, was a Jewish community in Arabia against which the Muslim Prophet Muhammad waged an aggressive campaign of conquest and exile.
Outgoing Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya condemned the comments “in the name of the Palestinian people.”
“These remarks go against the truth and touch the heart of our faith,” Haniya said after weekly Muslim prayers in a Gaza mosque.
“The pope should revise his comments and stop attacking Islam, which is the religion of more than 1.5 billion people in the world,” he added.
Hamas, of course, has glorified and celebrated violence against non-Muslims for decades. And here’s some more:
Four home-made devices exploded during the day around the compound of Gaza City’s oldest church, the Greek Orthodox, although there were no casualties and little damage.