CAIRO, March 20, 2008
Bin Laden: Pope Leading Anti-Islam Crusade
In New Audiotape, Al Qaeda Leader Threatens Severe Reaction Against Europe
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(CBS/AP)
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Interactive Bin Laden & Al Qaeda Where al Qaeda operates, who's been caught, how they're financed and a timeline of attacks on Americans.
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Interactive Tales Of The Tapes Excerpts and analysis of messages believed to have been recorded by Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden's new audiotape message raised concerns al Qaeda was plotting new attacks in Europe. Some experts said bin Laden, believed to be in hiding in the rugged Afghan-Pakistan border area, may be unable to organize an attack himself and instead is trying to fan anger and inspire his supporters to violence.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said bin Laden's accusation that the pope has played a role in a worldwide campaign against Islam is "baseless." Lombardi said the pope on several occasions has criticized the cartoons, first published in several European newspapers in 2006 and republished by Danish papers in February.
The pope angered many in the Muslim world in 2006, when he cited a medieval text that characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith."
The pope later said he was "deeply sorry" and stressed the remarks did not reflect his own opinions. He has since led a public campaign for dialogue with Muslims.
Bin Laden's audiotape was posted late Wednesday on a militant Web site that has carried al Qaeda statements in the past and bore the logo of the extremist group's media wing Al-Sahab.
"The response will be what you see and not what you hear and let our mothers bereave us if we do not make victorious our messenger of God," said a voice believed to be bin Laden's, without specifying what action would be taken.
He said the cartoons "came in the framework of a new Crusade in which the Pope of the Vatican has played a large, lengthy role," according to a transcript released by the SITE Institute, a U.S. group that monitors terror messages.
"You went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings," he said. "This is the greater and more serious tragedy, and reckoning for it will be more severe."
The five-minute message, bin Laden's first this year, came as the Muslim world marks the Prophet Muhammad's birthday on Thursday. It made no mention of the fifth anniversary Wednesday of the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq.
A U.S. counterterrorism official in Washington said "CIA analysis assesses with a high degree of confidence it is Osama bin Laden's voice on the tape" and that there was "no reason to doubt bin Laden is alive."
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the intelligence matters involved.
On Feb. 13, Danish newspapers republished one of the cartoons, which shows Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban, to illustrate their commitment to freedom of speech after police said they had uncovered the beginnings of a plot to kill the artist.
Muslims widely saw the cartoons as an insult, depicting the prophet as violent. Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.
The original 12 cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper and then in several papers across Europe, triggered major protests in Muslim countries in 2006.
There have been renewed protests in the last month, though not as large or widespread. A few dozen university students waved banners and chanted slogans against Denmark on Thursday in Islamabad. The students said they had not seen the bin Laden message.
Ben Venzke, the head of IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors militant messages, called Wednesday's message a "clear threat against EU member countries and an indicator of a possible upcoming significant attack."
Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and security analyst, said bin Laden was likely too isolated to organize an attack. But the al Qaeda leader may be hoping to use anger over the cartoons to inspire violence, he said.
"Even if he has not got the capacity (to launch an attack), he will try to infuse hatred," Masood said.
Denmark's intelligence agency said Thursday that bin Laden's warnings "don't immediately give reason to change" its assessment of the threat level against the country.
Last week, the intelligence agency had warned that reprinting the cartoon had brought "negative attention" to Denmark and may have increased the risk to Danes at home and abroad.
© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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See all 161 Commentswww.thereligionofpeace.com
Islam is a cult. Islam equals death.
Stop Islam before it kills you and your family.
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The Crusaders certainly did murder Christians of the Eastern Orthodox Church...and, there was the Crusade against the Albigensian ''heretics''...and it is, indeed, a "lust for power" that you will find lurking behind all off the religion-inspired madness of the world yesterday and today.
While throughout history people have misused the name of God to carry out their own selfish plans (as we still see today), true religious belief has been the driving force for the greatest cultural achievements.
Many great slaughters have occurred in history. To try to ascribe some correlation between the leaders of various christian religious belief systems is highly flawed. Selectively citing history has the same flavor to it as pulling specific quotes out of the Bible (or Koran, for that matter...). Individual events do not occur in a vacuum, and *must* be considered in context with what went on before, after and simultaneously elsewhere in the world. Crusaders quite happily sacked and burned christian cities and towns as well. I believe one must remember the driving force behind most of those acts was not religion, but rather the lust for power and wealth as is most conflicts.
Most of the discussion I have seen have completely passed over the imbuild culture and tribalism as a source for much of the conflict we see.
It''s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there''s no countries
It isn''t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
- John Lennon
As I see it, things begin to go wrong when religions are enlisted into the service of the secular to preserve the status quo. Opus Dei and the like, for instance, are much more interested in oppressing the People and preserving the Oligarchy than in spreading the teachings of Yeshua....There is always some kind of priestly extortions and rules that serve the economic and political interests of the Establishment...as noted by you in the third paragraph of your response to ''Gaye5''.
If religious teachings and the original doctrines can be altered so not to offend others, would that be satisfactory, and on the road to better relations of one religious following with another?
It''s not only the Moslem, or Christian or Jewish religious cults'' - which are all cults - original doctrine that is offensive to others. ALL suffer the same or similar traits of ethnocentrism, meaning their own is the standard for judging others.
And by the way. It is only the minority of Jews who are religious. Most seem to be secular, modern, or agnostic.
The bottom line here is that if religion must be followed and practiced, then have it''s ancient ways changed for the better. That applies equally to all religious groups.
Thanks for your attempts to contribute toward halting violence, disrespect, murder, etc, in the name of some brand of religion or other.
If their is a god, he/she/it would not be so puny-minded as to punish me for not capitalizing g - o - d. He/she/it would not take offense, and would be understandable if humans engaged in the thinking process, which includes doubt re religion and even doubts/questions re god''s existence!
The other very disturbing issue here is man''s using religion with all it''s awesome, higher-than-everything purpose, to manipulate, incite, and take control of the followers. In other words, employing religious emotion and fear, et al, aspects, as a power tool to dupe and control the masses. The most dangerous and evil people use religion - the weakness in man - to make them act according to that often fraudulent leader''s personal purpose(s).
Religion - all religion - was made up by men who in those ancient times, had no libraries, no foundations of knowledge and soooooooo much less than we have today to make rational, logical, practical decisions.
The disappearance of religion will be the greatest benefit to humankind EVER!
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The existence of Christian, Jewish and other non-Moslem communities in Islamic lands show beyond doubt that your observations are fatally flawed.
If you like, I''ll take you on my Tour of Hateful, Racist and Insane Talmudic Teachings that surpass anything that you will find in any other religious literature in the world in its dripping disdain for Christians and Gentiles. Personally, I don''t like to offer this tour because there are so many Jews out there who abominate the utter garbage that dead and gone rabbins have shat upon paper and called holy and are embarrassed and offended by it...just as there are many followers of Yeshua who shudder at the Sunday Morning circuses, each with an evangelical ring master, selling Jesus for Dollars and preaching Empire and Hate.
In regards to religion, I agree that religion has done many horrible things, but that is not Gods fault, that is the greed of man.. if we followed what the new testement says, there would not be any wars, hatred, hurt children etc, our society was pretty good until we did away with God and now we have to have rules and more rules upon rules to govern the country then more rules, but when we had our responsibility to others and do to others as we would like them to do to us we didnt seem to have half the worlds problems that we have now, of course it never stopped everything..
How many are aware of the fact that in our current days, the ugliest, most hateful, most obscene, most inciting, lies, constant threats to murder, and more dangerously insulting and offensive propaganda, political cartoons, and violent-causing speeches,
come from the Moslem World?
Do Moslems really think that their religion is superior to ALL OTHERS and is beyond question?
The answer to that apparently is "Yes."
Does the Koran really dictate that another culture or religion has no right to exist in its own country, such as Israel? And those different people must be either converted to Islam or be murdered?
If Mohamed the prophet instructed Moslems to force Islam on others by the sword, then that will result in more and more death and destruction to so many.
That sure sounds like hypocrisy to me.
Religion is so troublesome for everybody.
Religion must be eliminated for all of our benefit!
The Church of Christ has often apologized for the wrongs of the pass, for the Crusades, the Inquisitions... I would like to see apologies of Islam for the wrong doings of the pass, for the 1001 battles with millions dead, for the 800 years of conquest and blood shed in Spain, for those 600 years in Portugal, Greece 500 years, Sicily 300 years, Serbia 400 years, Bulgaria 500 years, Rumania 400 years, Hungary 150 years... for the bloody conquests in Africa and Asia for hundreds of years... for the atrocities now going on in Sudan, with already 2 million people dead for the only crime of being a Christian...
Urban II gave the Crusaders two goals, both of which would remain central to the eastern Crusades for centuries. The first was to rescue the Christians of the East. As his successor, Pope Innocent III, later wrote:
How does a man love according to divine precept his neighbor as himself when, and yet does nothing when him brother is held by the perfidious Muslims in strict confinement and weighed down by the yoke of heaviest servitude, Is it by chance that you do not know that many thousands of Christians are bound in slavery and imprisoned by the Muslims, tortured with innumerable torments?
Today we have the same thing in Muslim countries,(which many were once Christian countries)
The second goal was the liberation of Jerusalem and the other places made holy by the life of Christ,
The reconquest of Jerusalem. It is often assumed that the central goal of the Crusades was forced conversion of the Muslim world. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was the Crusaders%u2019 task to defeat and defend against them. That was all. Muslims who lived in Crusader-won territories were generally allowed to retain their property and livelihood, and always their religion. It was not until the 13th century that the Franciscans began conversion efforts among Muslims. But these were mostly unsuccessful and finally abandoned.
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