SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Two years after Benedict XVI's comments about Islam sparked protests around the world, the pontiff is once again in conflict with Muslims. This time, friction between the Vatican and Muslims is delaying the construction of what would be Saudi Arabia's first church.
A small group of prominent Islamic scholars recently stood at the airport in Rome, waiting to be picked up. But no one showed up. Instead, the academics had to find their own way to the Vatican, where they had been invited to attend a meeting to establish a "Catholic-Muslim Forum."
It was probably just a slip-up on the part of the Vatican. But it was yet another false step in the ongoing dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Islamic world.
At Easter, the pope sparked controversy when he personally baptized the Cairo-born journalist Magdi Allam. The baptismal water, wrote the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, was "like gasoline on the fire" of cultures.
After the death in 2006 of the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, who was known for her fiercely anti-Islam views, Allam is now considered the most vocal critic of Islam in his adopted home country of Italy. "We have allowed the Islamists to take control over mosques in European countries," Allam writes. "The West, with its naïve attitudes, has nourished its own enemy." His latest book is titled "Long Live Israel." Saudi Church project Runs into the Sand >>> By Alexander Smoltczyk in Rome | April 16, 2008
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL:
Life in a Parallel Society >>> By Norbert F. Pötzl | April 16, 2008
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)
