Ibn Waraq's Prophetic Words


  
 
  
      Ibn Warraq in Why I Am Not a Muslim wrote:
Page 29 :  Will Dr .Carey forgo his vicarious pleasure at this punishment of
atheists and wake up from his dogmatic slumbers when Muslims begin slashing
paintings depicting the Crucifixion in the National Gallery ? After all ,
every crucifixion , in whatever form , is an insult to Muslims and denies
the veracity of the Koran , which remains , for all Muslims , " the Word of
God Himself " .


  Page 9 : Will that closet hooligan Trevor -Roper wake up from his
complacent slumbers , when those " poor hurt Muslims " begin demanding the
withdrawal of those classics of Western literature andf intellectual history
that offend their Islamic sensibilities but must be dear to Professor
Roper's heart ?


   Page 10 WIANAM :

" Will these Muslims start burning Gibbon , who wrote ...
    What of Roper's beloveed Hume who wrote ...
     What of Hobbes ...
   " What of The Divine Comedy , the greatest poem in Western literature " See how Mahomet is mangled ! Before me Ali weeping goes , cleft in the face from chin to forelock ; and all the others , whom thou seest here were in their lifetime sowers of scandal and of schism ; and therefore are they thus cleft ".
    In his  notes to his translation of the Divine Comedy Mark Musa sums up Dante's reasons for consigning Muhammad to Hell : ... "

 

 Now read this story from the Times ( London ) .

FRIDAY JUNE 29 2001

 

Muslims say fresco must be destroyed 

FROM RICHARD OWEN IN ROME 

MUSLIM leaders in Italy are demanding the removal or destruction of a priceless 15th century fresco in Bologna that they say offends Islam by showing the Prophet Muhammad being cast into the flames of Hell.

The row over The Last Judgment by Giovanni da Modena, in Bologna Cathedral, could threaten the already strained relations between the Roman Catholic Church and members of Italy’s Muslim community.

The recently established Union of Italian Muslims has written to the Pope and Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, the outspoken conservative Archbishop of Bologna, complaining that the fresco shows clearly Muhammad, the founder of Islam, among those condemned to burn in eternal flames.

The protesters said that Giovanni da Modena had shown Muhammad being "thrown into hell, completely naked, with a snake wrapped around his body and a demon next to him about to torture him". They said that Muslims had never depicted Jesus or the Virgin Mary on the walls of a mosque.

In the letter they called for the "barbarous" fresco to be removed from the wall of the Bolognini chapel, inside the 14th-century cathedral of San Petronio.

Adel Smith, the head of the Union of Italian Muslims, appealed to the many thousands of Italian Muslim residents of Bologna to attend a rally outside the main mosque in Rome today.

Anti-Muslim feeling in northern Italy was inflamed last year when Cardinal Biffi claimed that a Muslim invasion was threatening the values of Christian Europe. He said that Muslim immigrants often failed to integrate into Italian society because they were determined to stick to their own ways. He urged the Government to encourage counter-immigration from Roman Catholic countries.

A spokesman for the cardinal said yesterday that it was "absurd to suddenly discover after 600 years that our most famous treasure is offensive to the Islamic religion".

There are half a million legally registered Muslims — many from North Africa — and about another 500,000 are thought to be living illegally in Italy.

The Northern League, led by Umberto Bossi, which is now part of the Centre Right Government led by Silvio Berlusconi, has campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform and has called for the defence of Christian society against outside influences. It has also held marches to protest against the building of mosques.

In Bologna Nabil Baioni, head of the moderate Islamic Cultural Centre, said that not all Muslims in the city shared the view that the fresco should be removed. "I have lived here for 40 years and have never noticed the image before now," he said. "It’s rather difficult to see anyway. I think this Smith represents only himself."

The Union of Italian Muslims says that it has a large following and that the painting is unacceptable to Muslims throughout the world. In its letter to the Pope it said: "It constitutes an even graver offence to the religion than that caused by Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses."

Signor Smith said that the problem had started in the Middle Ages with Dante, Italy’s national poet, who had placed Muhammad in the ninth circle of Hell in his Inferno. He demanded that the teaching of Dante be suspended in Italian schools in immigrant areas.

Don Oreste Leonardi, prefect of the sacristy of Bologna Cathedral, said that the identification of the figure in the fresco in tiny Gothic writing was "so small that it is almost invisible".

He said that the fresco, painted in 1415, was one of Bologna’s greatest treasures, and the artist had merely reproduced the popular medieval vision of Hell.

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Perhaps it is time for the West to wake up to the reality. 

 

 
 

 

 

 

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