PLease SaY NaY Pope Benedict XVI

Local imam to join talks at Vatican

With Islam at the center of several explosive situations around the world, one of Michigan's most prominent Muzlim leaders, Imam Hassan Qazwini, headed to Rome on Monday night for five days of Catholic-Muzlim talks focused on interfaith strategies for making peace.

"It's a very promising sign that the Vatican is promoting this dialogue," Qazwini said as he prepared to fly off to meet Wednesday at the Vatican with Pope Benedict XVI. That meeting is to be followed by four days of talks between Catholic leaders and Muzlim clerics from around the world.

Forgive my lack of humility here but it seems that this sort of invitation amounts to nothing more than sanctioning and acceptance.

May I remind us all of this fairly recent episode involving our very own President?
In Who's Protecting the President? you may recall the following from May 6, 2003.....


Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote that "The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer." If this is true, then there should be some serious political reverberations as a result of President Bush's decision to kiss Imam Hassan Qazwini after speaking to an Arab-American community in Dearborn, Michigan on Monday.

This continues a well-noted trend of placing the President in the company of purported leaders of the Muzlim community who do not share the President's moral clarity on terror.

This supposedly "moderate" Imam from the Detroit, Michigan-based Islamic Center of America (ICA) has some disturbing connections to radical Islamists that cannot be overlooked by a conservative President who has been entrusted by the American people to fight a war on global terrorism.


For starters, Imam Qazwini's Islamic Center once invited Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to be the keynote speaker at a memorial for its deceased founder Imam Mohamad Jawad Chirri. At the time, Arab American News described his address as "dynamic" and "always controversial," and reported that he urged the Muzlim community "to become politically active...[and] as powerful as the Zionists."

Translated as : Fear not. We still hate Jews.



For those who do not recall, Louis Farrakhan is the man who once called Judaism a "gutter religion" and who has been banned - for security reasons -- from entering the United Kingdom since 1986. London's left wing journal The Observer has a profile of Louis Farrakhan that points out his "reliance on anti-semitic imagery." A few examples: "Jews are 'bloodsuckers'"; "Hitler 'was a great man.'" It also notes that "he talks of 'settling the score' with white people" and boasts proudly "that black street gangs are 'born warriors of true liberation.'"

Translated as : Fear not. We still hate Jews and White People.



Furthermore, in the lead up to the war that eventually liberated the people of Iraq, the Associated Press reported in October 2002 that Farrakhan believed Saddam Hussein was "making peace with his neighbors" and that the "[Bush] Administration is the greatest threat to world peace." He added, "Only Israel, the United States and Tony Blair...are willing to go along with an attack on Iraq."

Would Imam Qazwini consider these anti-war, anti-Bush viewpoints to be "similarities" or "differences" of opinion?

Imam Qazwini has other troublesome connections to radicals in the United States. He is a board member of the American Muzlim Council and shares this position with some notable terror apologists.

Translated as : Fear not. We still hate Americans too.



And yet our President kissed this man and the Pope now wishes an audience with him.
Does anyone not see that there is a principle at stake here.
Do not deceive yourselves...The terrorists are gauging our response to their venemous words and barbaric tactics.

And for this we reward them with validation and affection?