The Pope has apologized enough – it’s time the Islamic fanatics stopped

His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, after "apologizing" twice for the remarks he made in Germany, and meeting with Muslim residents in Rome, will next confer with Muslim envoys from about 20 countries.

I think the Holy Father has "apologized" enough. He’s declared, very clearly, that the Byzantine quotation he cited didn’t reflect his own views, he hadn’t meant to insult the Prophet Muhammad, etc. Short of expressing a matter of faith ex cathedra, Papa Joseph Ratzinger has humbled himself and reached out to Muslims for dialogue.

However, Catholic churches continue to be attacked, grenaded or burned, a Catholic nun has been murdered, and other assaults on Christians are being conducted all over the Middle East and in other Muslim-dominated countries, like Indonesia.

Enough should be enough. If the fundamentalist protesters, angry clerics, mullahs and militants, don’t simmer down, it is incumbent on their governments to crack down on the troublemakers and curb their excesses. Christians will not long, I’m certain, be willing to be held hostage to Muslim explosions of fury every time some cartoon (like the Danish dozen) or prominent figure in the Infidel world (that’s our world) are conceived or perceived to have insulted or cast aspersion on the Prophet Muhammad or the "Islamic Faith."

Sanamagan. Do they want to resurrect the wars which raged, with runaway bloodletting – the latest ones having been waged in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Kosovo – over the centuries? The Christians repulsed the Muslim Turks at the Gates of Vienna, defeated their fleet at Lepanto. The Ottoman Turks overran the ancient Christian kingdom of Byzantium, and massacred everyone, including the Emperor himself. The North African Morrocans, Berbers, Arabs and Bedouins conquered the southern part of Spain, which they called Al Andalus, raising kingdoms, palaces and universities, and ruling for six to eight centuries there, until the Catholic reconquista drove them out. In sum, they ruled from 720 to 1200.

Islam and Christianity, from the time of the Crusades launched by Pope Urban in November 1095, have confronted each other in intermittent strife. Do the Muslim fanatics, who’ve hijacked Islam, want another bitter confrontation? Probably they do. Truly devout and earnest Muslims must deny them success in their malicious and evil intent.

This is what Pope Benedict XVI probably attempted to stress: the fact that Islam and violence must not be seen to be inextricably intertwined. In this, he meant to speak out forthrightly, although his choice of quotation was deplorably ambiguous and subject to harsh misinterpretation.

However, as I’ve said, enough of this nonsense. People of goodwill must step in to terminate the acrimonious fall-out over what he uttered.

Jesus Christ admonished Christians, when attacked, to "turn the other cheek." There will be those in the Christian milieu whose patience doesn’t go much beyond that.

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Turkey, which – next to Pakistan – reacted the most swiftly and angrily to the Holy Father’s address in the Regensburg University where he had once been a Theology professor, is now urging the Pope to come to Istanbul in November as originally scheduled.

The Turkish government, which according to the legacy of its founding father, the great Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, is supposed to be secular and not Islamic, has obviously realized that the fanatical anti-Pope demonstrations in Istanbul’s streets and harsh denunciations in their parliament, have seriously imperilled the prospects of Turkey being admitted into the 25-nation European Union.

Indeed, why unleash a flood of scores of millions of Muslim Turks into Central and Western Europe, predominantly Christian, by giving Turkey membership in the EU, when there are already millions of Turks and families of Turkish descent already citizens of Germany owing to past decades of the Gastarbeiter program – European opponents of the idea have been saying.

Truth to tell, the Holy Father would do well to cancel his trip to Istanbul, not to "punish" the Turkish government, but from the standpoint of self-preservation.

Those who rage against Papa Ratzi’s alleged linking the Prophet Muhammad’s preachings with violence, and the idea of conversion to Islam by the sword have either deliberate amnesia, or very short memories. The Muslims hail Pope Benedict XVI’s predecessor, the late Pope John Paul II – the first non-Italian Pope in five hundred years – as having reached out to the Muslim world, and preached brotherhood and reconciliation. They forget that he was almost killed by a Muslim assassin, a Turk at that, on May 13, 1981.

The would-be murderer was Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish terrorist, who had earlier announced, on November 26, 1979, that he would kill the Pope during his planned visit to Turkey in January 1980. Warned of this, and even been told it was connected with a "Communist plot," Pope John Paul II had merely asserted: "My destiny is in the hands of God."

Mehmet Ali Agca didn’t get the Pope in January 1980, but he persisted and finally got within 20 feet of the Holy Father soon after he emerged from the Apostolic Palace for his Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square, which habitually included a ride in the Popemobile around the square fronting the Basilica (See it in Tom Cruise’s movie, Mission Impossible III to acquire broad idea of the setting).

As he rode around the colonnade, the smiling Pope waved at the adoring crowd and blessed the Faithful. Suddenly, there was a deafening succession of gunshots. A nun who witnessed the terrible incident later described it: the Pope, his white cassock still immaculate, slumped against his Chamberlain. He was seen tottering under the blow of the bullets. "The Pope had been wounded in the stomach, the right elbow, and the index finger of his left hand." One of the 9 mm bullets from Agca’s 9 mm Browning automatic pistol, passed through his chest only millimeters from the aorta of his heart. An inch the wrong way and the bullet would have been fatal to the Pontiff. On the operating table, the Holy Father was found to have lost 60 percent of his blood.

He came to believe that his life had been saved by Our Lady of Fatima, since her feastday, the anniversary of her first apparition, May 13, was the date of the attempt on his life.

The Holy Father forgave the Turkish assassin, visiting him in his prison cell months later. He conversed with Agca for twenty minutes in Italian. Agca knelt down and kissed the Pope’s hand.

Agca’s contradictory confessions placed the blame, it was reported, at both the door of the Bulgarian Communist government and "an Islamic conspiracy." His own record of murder is plain enough. On February 1, 1979, Agca was a member of a band of terrorists who participated in the murder of Abdi Ipekei, a liberal and editor of Istanbul’s top newspaper, Milliyet. The assassination of his own country’s most influential commentator was pinned on Agca who was nabbed five months after the killing.

He confessed to the deed.

Alas, he "escaped" from prison the following November 25, 1979. What’s startling is that the killer merely walked out of a military prison (great shades of Camp Crame!)

There surely was high-level official connivance because Agca was wearing an army uniform and passed through eight heavily-guarded doors.

In this light, how can the Turkish government then guarantee the safety of Pope Benedict XVI? The Holy Father ought to stay home in Rome, praying for peace, or journey to some safer destination.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . I don’t have any pretensions to being a sports writer, but, by golly, that was a heart-stopper of a game last Sunday – a fight to the finish – between the University of Sto. Tomas Tigers and the Ateneo de Manila’s Blue Eagles. I was disgusted that the Ateneans (both sides, really, were guilty of such boo-boos) missed so many easy baskets. And, along with most onlookers, I thought the game was over when UST’s Allan Evangelista, with 4.3 seconds left, hit the basket with a magnificent fade-away shot. The UST stands were already rejoicing, erupting in joy with their yellow balloons waving. What could the Blue Eagles do, with only a second to go? Coach Norman Black was a genius for having conceived the play, not losing his cool and blaming his boys. However, two Ateneans pulled it off – with steel nerves, panache, and, most of all, plain old-fashioned luck. Macky Escalona threw a bullet-pass from midcourt to Doug Kramer, who, inexplicably, found himself all alone underneath the basket. It turned out, the UST defenders had believed Chris Tiu or JC Intal would receive the pass – and left, sanamagan, Kramer unguarded. It was an easy shot for him. As the old saying goes, victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat. Believe it or not, as an old Atenean, I’m not unhappy when the Blue Eagles taste a defeat or two, especially from "hated" De La Salle – whose team was "out" this season. It teaches Ateneans humility. However, last Sunday I was, to my surprise, cheering away! Whatta glorious outcome it was, when lesser men might have given up. But don’t get me wrong. We mustn’t attribute the last-second triumph to God. He’s neutral in basketball.