Did the church hold a Muhammad cartoon contest? Did the church tell people that Islam was not actually a religion of peace after all? Will Pope Francis and the U.S. Catholic bishops issue an apology to the jihadist attackers for the effrontery of having a Roman Catholic church in Aden, which constituted an obvious obstacle to the all-important Muslim-Christian “dialogue,” and issue compensation to them for all the fuel and matches that were needed to torch the church?
After all, Pope Francis has declared his “respect for true followers of Islam” and proclaimed that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence,” so he knows that these attackers could not have been motivated by Qur’anic injunctions; the Christians must have “poked them in the eye” or “provoked” the poor dears in some way. Pope Francis and the U.S. Catholic bishops need to issue an apology to the Muslims of Yemen, and pronto.
“Masked attackers set church ablaze in Aden,” AFP, September 16, 2015 (thanks to Lookmann):
Unidentified assailants set ablaze one of the few churches in Yemen’s second city Aden on Wednesday, a day after it had been damaged by vandals, witnesses said.
The masked arsonists torched St. Joseph, a Roman Catholic church in the central Crater neighbourhood of the port city.
A security official said the attackers could be militants of Al-Qaeda.
“The church is in flames,” resident Moetaz al-Maysour told AFP, adding that “masked men started the fire.”…
Of the 22 churches that operated in Aden when the city was a British colony before 1967, only a few remain open, used rarely by foreign workers and African refugees.
Al-Qaeda militants have been accused of several attacks since pro-government forces pushed Iran-backed rebels out of the battle-scarred city in July with support from a Saudi-led coalition….