I’m not done with the Pope in a mosque facing the east while a Muslim prays issue yet. You can see the video of it all here.
The bottom line is that those actions, capitulating to the prayer customs of Muslims to please them and their god, ins…

I think Pope Benedict has shown more balls than any Western leader alive. He challegended Islam and particulary its tendency to punish apostates with violence. — aengus

…how many divisions does the Pope have? That’s what’s needed. Not gestures. Not visits. Not half-gestures.

This isn’t a “war of ideas”. It never has been. We’re fighting against a people who aren’t *ALLOWED* to think. Their book and their law doesn’t allow them to question. They are to submit. Full stop.

So, this is what it’s always been: a war of steel against steel. Unless he’s releasing his Swiss Guard to patrol in Faluja, this is all so much eyewash.

The only war the world is engaged in now is the war to see who can kiss the most muslim ass.

Scot, my man, truer words were never spoken. It never ceases to amaze me how basic rules that people apply to every day life get lost when they’re scaled up to global size.

Use as many disclaimers as you want about rank and file Muslims. The ones that run the Islamic world are global scale bullies. Giving up your “lunch money” today will only get you more missing “lunch money” and a “bloody nose” tomorrow. It’s in the nature of bullies.

And Jared? I think

apparent involvement

is the operative phrase, here. I’ve attended enough interfaith events to believe that clergymen behaving courteously during one another’s ceremonies is nothing more than politeness. People who are not Catholic perform “Catholic calisthenics” during Mass. My husband wears a yarmulke when we attend religious events at a synagogue. I expect that if I had cause to go into a mosque during services (I don’t expect this to come up; I don’t think there even IS one within many miles of my home, but you never know), I’d cover my head and face toward Mecca, too … but my thoughts would be my own, and my prayers directed to God, not to Allah.

I think Pope Benedict has shown more balls than any Western leader alive. He challegended Islam and particulary its tendency to punish apostates with violence. His response to the furor over his Regensburg address was robust. He never gave a genuine apology which is why Turkisk protestors are still demanding a (real) apology. His visit to turkey will empower the Christian minorities there (hopefully). I think that Benedict may be one of the crucial Popes of human history if he lives long.

This is hardly a “stunt”

This is just one more example. Praying to Jesus in a mosque wouldn’t in and of itself bother me, but his apparent involvement in a Muslim religious rite (praying alongside Muslim clerics towards Mecca) appears like nothing other than a Christian worshiping a false god in a false ceremony. This is deeply troubling to me, not only in a spiritual sense but in a political sense as well. There are millions of Christians around the world being persecuted vehemently by Islamists. Somehow, the idea of them seeing the #1 Christian leader in the world praying in a mosque with Muslims makes me feel sick.

I pray that God can use this obviously publicity stunt for some good somehow. I certainly can’t see any myself at the moment.

Would he dare risk sending the world’s Muslims into “paroxysms of fury” by falling to his knees and praying at the world’s most famous church-turned-mosque-turned museum, as Pope Paul VI did forty years before him? The answer awaits!

Well, lets just see what sort of nonsence I can make up here.

I say he did pray. Go to about 3/4 of the way through the video. You will hear the following:

“The Pontif hemed in by a phalynx (sic?) of security guards. Any hint of prayer here likely to enrage Turkish Islamists, who still regard this museum as an Ottoman Mosque.”

Notice that he brings his hands up, palm to palm in front of his face for about 1/2 a second during this dialog. Like he would while praying. Hence, he prayed.

OK, its not a very long prayer, but I’m calling it a prayer, dang it! He prayed! In your face, Muffti whatsyourname! In your face!

So the answer to this question Would he dare risk sending the world’s Muslims into “paroxysms of fury” by falling to his knees and praying at the world’s most famous church-turned-mosque-turned museum, as Pope Paul VI did forty years before him? is a definite YES!*

(OK, he didn’t fall to his knees, but why quibble about little inconvenient fact at a time like this? I’m in gloat mode. The Popes not a Dhimmi! Neyeah neyeah neyeah!)

I cannot believe I am seeing this! Ok, so I’m not Catholic. So What! First he “PRAYS” at an Islamic Mosque, then he goes to one of the oldest remaining churches in the world and doesn’t pray there. In this one day he has lost the respect I had for…