Islamophobia Watch

Australia's most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, would rather provoke debate than have sensible discussions about Muslims, the Islamic Council of New South Wales (ICNSW) said. ICNSW spokesman Ali Roude today said Dr Pell admitted he knew little about his subject matter.

Mr Roude said: "When Cardinal Pell asserts that 'Islam is a much more warlike culture than Christianity', I must refuse to concede him the point. It was Western European Christians who launched the Crusades, who conquered most of the world (including the Muslim majority regions) during the Age of Discovery, who grew strong and wealthy through the exploitation of Muslim peoples under centuries of colonialism, and who still today refuse to engage seriously on the issues of debt relief, disarmament and trade reform."

Daily Telegraph, 6 June 2006

In response to the question "So you believe jihad is not a modern distortion of Islam, but something that arises from its internal logic?", Pell replied: "That's the million dollar question. I don't know. It remains to be seen. To put it another way, can a good moderate Muslim be faithful to the Koran? I think it depends on who's going to win where, if there is going to be a struggle between the moderates and the extremists."

This is just not good enough for our friends at Western Resistance. Ruy Diaz writes: "What Cardinal Pell considers 'a million dollar question', of course, is not a question at all, but an established fact: Islam's 14th centuries of rape, murder and mayhem have been propelled by the words and actions of Islam's founder, Muhammad. The irony in this is that Cardinal Pell still goes out of his way to give Islam and Muslims a way out. He doesn't worry enough about Muslim immigration and demographic trends that put the non-Islamic future of Europe in doubt."

Western Resistance, 5 June 2006