Pope Francis makes 800 new saints in one day

format_quote Originally Posted by Karl

What about all the Christians that the Romans killed. And the Christians the heathens to the north killed. And the Chinese killed and Japanese killed and the natives of the New World and Australasia etc killed? Is this a political stunt?

He wanted to keep with the previous one's agenda is all and emphasize their crusades into the new century.

format_quote Originally Posted by Independent

In fairness, this is hardly exclusive to Christians - everyone tends to exaggerate the wickedness of their enemies.

If we are being fair, ongoing lies and distortions cannot be justified by saying everyone does it, because in this case, it is simply not true. Till this day we have historical programmes like The War of the Worlds aired on television, presented by professors, devoting their most passionate words to 'Turkish crimes', their genocides of Christians, minimising victims of Western genocides and on the other hand multiplying the crimes of others - up to three times that of older historians. That is just one example amongst many. Where do we find such a relentless campaign for more than ten centuries led by Muslims against anyone else? The following excerpt summarises it well:

The Muslims do not have writing and studies in which the Western Christians are painted in demonic images, as bloodthirsty murderous fanatics so as to justify attacking them, colonising them and killing them en masse. Even during the Middle Ages, when Islamic civilisation was at its zenith, and most Western nations were at a barbarian level, some even at their pre-historic level, Muslims did not use this as a justification to conquer them, slaughter them and loot their wealth. There is not one single work written by a Muslim where the Westerners are represented as sub-human barbarians who warrant sending armies to civilise them by slaying them en masse. Western Christian writing and opinion making, on the other hand, as already seen, is crammed with such writing and image-painting of their foes: thousands of books, tens of thousands of articles in learned reviews and the media, every year; conferences, seminars, films, radio and television broadcasts; hundreds of university courses and thousands of academics and researchers, all dedicated to the task of darkening Islam and Muslims, using as already seen, distortions in all forms and all sorts for the purpose...

S. E. Al-Djazairi, The Myth of Muslim Barbarism and its Aims

It's one of the things that makes looking at the past difficult - our morality, our standards have changed enormously.

I am not so sure they have. We are constantly confronted by the stereotyped, hostile view of the Turks, to the point that it is perfectly normal to hear of 'Turkish atrocities', and these of course being the worst atrocities committed. But this is contradicted by reality, which shows that Turkish humanity and tolerance have remained unique in history. Nobody would ever know that if the myth of 'Turkish Barbarism' was never challenged. The problem is the culture of regarding history as only being true when it denounces Muslim crimes, and distorted if it ever makes the cardinal error of praising anything Islamic or in denouncing Western genocides.

I beg to differ somewhat on this issue.

In the media, I see that there are people who profess to be Muslims who claim that the US is the Mother of all Devils, or something like that. I am not saying that the US is not responsible for some of the sufferings of other people including Muslims but to say that the US is the very root of anything and everything that is wrong, logically, cannot be true. For one, that would make the US very, very powerful, which, in truth, it isn't. I mean, if the US is really that powerful, then it would have done a much better job in, say, Afghanistan.

The way I see it, over-exaggeration is being practiced by all kinds of people for the simple reason that it's a weakness common to all people. Just look at how any story develops. It grows more and more embellished with every re-telling because the raison d'etre of a story-teller is to entertain his listeners and if his listeners are entralled by tales of gory details, then he will keep on pouring the blood, so to say, until you can hardly see the original story for all the muck.

format_quote Originally Posted by Ali Mujahidin

In the media, I see that there are people who profess to be Muslims who claim that the US is the Mother of all Devils

This is a recent phenomenon and not volumes of literature and an individual out lashing rather than an entire culture & a papacy dedicated to it. Of course people are going to lash back, how much BS can one take before a reaction is elicited?

format_quote Originally Posted by العنود

This is a recent phenomenon and not volumes of literature and an individual out lashing rather than an entire culture & a papacy dedicated to it. Of course people are going to lash back, how much BS can one take before a reaction is elicited?

Lash back? Fight lies with more lies? How does that relate to the teachings of Islam?

I am not sure what you're talking about? What lies are those?

what hath the pope to do with God???