NYT Rips Pope

NY Times Condemns Pope

"In the most provocative part of a speech this week on “faith and reason,” the pontiff recounted a conversation between an “erudite” Byzantine Christian emperor and a “learned” Muslim Persian circa 1391. The pope quoted the emperor saying, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Muslim leaders the world over have demanded apologies and threatened to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican, warning that the pope’s words dangerously reinforce a false and biased view of Islam. For many Muslims, holy war — jihad — is a spiritual struggle, and not a call to violence. And they denounce its perversion by extremists, who use jihad to justify murder and terrorism."
This just plain contradicts what Muslims and Muslim scholars have said historically. Leave it to the NYT to find the four or five Muslims who believe it's a spiritual struggle to counter the billion or so who believe its time to strap on a bomb belt and set out to find their virgins.