Posted by
Universal Politics on Thursday, March 20, 2008 9:17:26 PM
Pope tells Saudi Arabia to go to hell and Happy Easter.
I'm joking. I wish I wasn't. I wish the Pope would tell the Saudis to stop persecuting Christians.
Is Saudi Arabia kidding me? So let me get this straight...
To
build a church in Saudi Arabia all I have to do is deny my faith and
convert to Islam so that I can practice Catholicism? I'm sure there
won't be any abuse there either by any of the Saudis. It isn't as if it
is the type of country that would abuse and dominate women and children
and people who are not Islamic.
Riyadh, 20 March
(AKI) - No churches should be permitted in Saudi Arabia, unless Pope
Benedict XVI recognised the prophet Mohammed, according to a Middle
East expert.
While Saudi mediators are working with the Vatican on negotiations to allow places of religious worship, some experts believe it will not occur without this recognition.
Anwar
Ashiqi, president of the Saudi centre for Middle East strategic
studies, endorsed this view in an interview on the site of Arab
satellite TV network, al-Arabiya on Thursday.
"I haven taken
part in several meetings related to Islamic-Christian dialogue and
there have been negotiations on this issue," he said.
"It would
be possible to launch official negotiations to construct a church in
Saudi Arabia only after the Pope and all the Christian churches
recognise the prophet Mohammed."
"If they don't recognise him as a prophet, how can we have a church in the Saudi kingdom?"
Ashiqi's
comments came after a declaration launched by the papal nuncio of the
Persian Gulf, the archbishop Mounged El-Hachem, at the opening of the
first Catholic church in Qatar last week.
The prelate had
announced the launch of "treaties to construct a church in Saudi Arabia
where it is banned to practise whatever religion they want outside
Islam".
El-Hachem estimated three to four million Christians in the Saudi kingdom who want to have a church.
A
member of Saudi Arabia's Consultative Council, Abdelaziz al-Thinani,
rejected the prelate's claims saying that there were no Christians
among the Saudis who were all Muslims.
"Those few Christians do not reside in the country permanently, they come and go," he said.
He
denied there were four million Christians in the kingdom and said the
issue of human rights should not be used to call for the construction
of a Christian church.
Most of Saudi Arabia's Christians are
foreign workers. There are 8.2 million foreign workers in a country of
25.6 million people according to a report by the Saudi Labour Ministry.
I
seriously wonder how anyone can expect the civilized world to take any
Muslim-led country seriously when it claims to want to enter into the
conversation of the world when they lay down this type of garbage.
Saudi Arabia should be removed from the United Nations today.