Pope Benedict XVI, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi and the Jews

Do take a read of this article comparing the words of Pope Benedict XVI, the leader of the Roman Catholic church, often accused of being anti-semitic and Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the current Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt and as close to being the academic leader of the Sunni Muslim as anyone.

One wrote this in December 2000:

"Down through the history of Christianity, already-strained relations deteriorated further, even giving birth in many cases to anti-Jewish attitudes, which throughout history have led to deplorable acts of violence. Even if the most recent, loathsome experience of the Shoah was perpetrated in the name of an anti-Christian ideology, which tried to strike the Christian faith at its Abrahamic roots in the people of Israel, it cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance to this atrocity on the part of Christians can be explained by an inherited anti-Judaism present in the hearts of not a few Christians."

The other wrote this in the late 1960s:

"Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness. . . . Only a minority of the Jews keep their word [Koranic citations here]. . . . All Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not."

One said this when visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in May 2006:

"Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke on Sinai and laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are eternally valid."

The other wrote this in 2002:

"Suppose that the series has some criticism or shows some of the Jews' traits, this doesn't necessitate an uproar. . . . The accusation of antisemitism was invented by the Jews as a means to pressure Arabs and Muslims to implement their schemes in the Arab and Muslim countries, so don't pay attention to them."

I am sure you have worked out which gentleman is associated with which comment...



Andrew G. Bostom concludes his piece with this passage:

"Thus it is unimaginable that Cardinal Ratzinger, 20 years prior to being elected Pope Benedict, could have written a 700-page treatise detailing and rationalizing the most virulent anti-Jewish motifs extant in Christian theology, and then continued to extol these motifs unashamedly while pope. Sadly, what is unimaginable in Christendom has not only occurred, but passes virtually without recognition, in the Islamic world."