When Mehmet Ali Agca, an Islamic Turkish terrorist, shot Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981, Catholics didn’t burn down mosques or kill Moslems. Instead the Holy Father forgave his would-be assassin in true Christian compassion.
Compare his response to that of many Islamic leaders around the world in after a remark made by Pope Benedict XVI last week. He quoted an ancient Byzantine emperor who said Islam spreads its message “by the sword” and some of Mohammed’s teachings as “evil and inhuman.”
Many in the Muslim world quickly proved the emperor right. “You will only see our swords until you go back to God’s true faith - Islam,” said a statement issued by a militant group in Iraq called Ansar al-Sunnah.
Another group linked to al-Qaeda warned that the West and the Pope are “doomed.” Some Turkish leaders said the Pope should be tried for war crimes, and, in London, a Muslim called for the Pope’s execution while mobs chanted that he was a Nazi.
The real Nazis are the Islamic leaders who encouraged the Islamic mobs to riot, set fires to Christian churches, even shooting a Catholic nun to death in a hospital in Somalia.
Some Muslim leaders spoke against the anti-Christian, anti-West jihad but they were the lone voices in the wilderness. The loudest Islamic voices continued to throw the proverbial gas on the fire they sparked even after the Pope apologized twice for offending anyone.
The Pope isn’t the problem. The problem is that extreme fundamentalist Muslims are incapable of living on the same planet as the rest of us.