Right on TIme: 'Pope Targeted in Suicide Attack'

Newsmax
Sep. 18, 2006

Pope Benedict XVI has been targeted by the Mujahideen's Army movement in Iraq for a suicide attack, according to the Jerusalem Post.

The threat — revenge for the Pope's recent comments about Islam and jihad — was posted on a Web site used by rebel movements in Iraq. A message posted by the Mujahideen's Army said members of the organization would "smash the crosses in the house of the dog from Rome."

European religious and political leaders have backed the Pope in the wake of the Muslim protests over his academic lecture at Regensburg University Tuesday, saying the Pope's words had been misinterpreted.

"Rather than criticizing Islam, the Pope is actually offering it a helping hand by suggesting that it do away with the cycle of violence," Father Samir K. Samir, one of the Vatican's leading experts on Islam, wrote in the Catholic newspaper Asia News.

The Pope's academic lecture "was trying to show how Western society — including the Church — has become secularized by removing from the concept of Reason its spiritual dimension and origins which are in God," Samir stated.