…And in other news, bears shit in the woods.

Pope Benedict XVI called on Christians and Muslims today to serve mankind with the “light of God’s truth” while warning that extremists in nations such as Iraq were exploiting religious differences for political and violent agendas.

Speaking at the Al Hussein bin Talal Mosque, the pontiff, whose three-day pilgrimage here is an attempt to mend relations with the Muslim world, said the “tensions and divisions between the followers of different religious traditions, sadly, cannot be denied. However, is it not also the case that often it is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends, that is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society?”

Wasn’t the point of his Pontificating Preachiness’ harangue to condemn stuff like this? And this?Oh. Wait. That’s evidence of the ideological manipulation of christianity for political reasons, by the Vatican

In counterpoint, not everyone welcomes the Pope’s visit.

Jordanian clerics expressed disappointment that Pope Benedict XVI in an address to Muslim leaders on Saturday failed to offer a new apology for remarks seen as targeting Islam. …”What the pope said about the Prophet Mohammed is untrue. Islam did not spread through the power of sword. It’s a religion of tolerance and faith,” Hussein said. The pope had in 2006 quoted a medieval Christian emperor who criticised some teachings of the Prophet Mohammed as “evil and inhuman.”

Which is of course MASSIVELY different from the medieval clerics who justified the evil and inhuman actions of the Inquisition with the doctrine they claimed was inspired by the words of God and Jesus.

Reprinted with permission. deBeauxOs

Pope Benedict XVI began an 8 day visit through the Middle East Friday.

the defence team will concede that he indeed shot the couple, but argue provocation… It is not the eventual outcome of the trial that concerns me here. It is that such a defence is even permitted, based as it is upon patently false notions and premises. What’s next–the defence of necessity in a case of bride-burning? I shall be following this case with interest, and not a little anxiety.

Background on the case is provided by this article in the Ottawa Citizen. The Crown and defence, in the case, would seem to agree that the murders took place as well as that Sadiqi perceived them as honour killings: the question before the court is, does that justify reducing the charges to manslaughter?

The purported CIC strategy document, reproduced at Dawg’s Blawg, is titled “Destabilizing the Opponent” and has as its objective to “define and discredit the radical Islamist movement and agenda in Canada and its non-Islamist allies; link their enmity and war on Israel with their shared hostility to Canadian (Western) values and society.” It goes on to specify activities with respect to advocacy, media monitoring, combating youth indoctrination and political NGOs, and a “counterstrike” against Islamic Monitor by distributing “moderate voices from Arab and Muslim countries.”

One of the areas of activity would seem to call for surveillance of, and attacks on, non-Islamist Canadian groups:

Fifth Column: the collusion of the “anti-imperialist” Left and radical Islamism

Expose ideological and personal ties between local actors and foreign radical/terror groups (e.g. Cairo Conferences, etc.) and highlight common hatred of Canadian (Western) society (CAIA, Tadamon, Canadian Peace Alliance, International Socialists, etc.), monitor activities and publications.

Background information on a few of the CIC’s directors is provided by Terrible Depths.

It’s a group that appears to enjoy fomenting anti-Muslim hysteria. The organization even sucked in that indefatigable anti-Muslim campaigner and promoter of campus snitch lines, Daniel Pipes. Pipes was forced to retract comments he made about Liberal MP Omar Alghabra, which had been based upon misinformation received from CCD. (Pipes refers in his screed to Ezra Levant’s further smears of Alghabra, which I dealt with some time ago, and makes additional defamatory remarks that need not concern us here.)

CCD’s legal counsel has been none other than David Harris, whose inflammatory anti-Muslim commentary is notorious in its own right, and who has recently been fussing out loud about “out-of-control immigration.”Harris was in the news last year making some credulous public comments about a hilariously silly “bugged money” story emanating from the US Defence Security Service.

Dr. Dawg’s analysis prompted Buckets at Bouquets of Gray to point out that Kent’s Coalition was one of the supporting organizations in a bid to get Chief Justice Beverley Maclaughlin removed from the committee which gave Henry Morgentaler his Order of Canada – and to ask “whether Peter Kent… had anything to do with this ridiculous charade.”