Trusting a Man in a Skirt - O

As Americans prepare for the arrival of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, it is notable the Prince of Wales will try to persuade the President of the merits of Islam during his 8 day visit to the US.

Speaking at a meeting with senior Muslim leaders in November 2001, Prince Charles said that he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion. In his address to the group, which included Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, Sir Iqbal Sacrani, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, and Hashir Faruqi, the chief editor of Impact International, an Islamic affairs magazine, the Prince also spoke of his sympathy for America, but went on to state that he wanted to promote better relations between the different religions of the world.

Prince Charles, who will be making his first official foreign tour since his marriage to the Duchess of Cornwall, wants Americans - including Mr. Bush - to share his fondness for Islam. His agenda while in the US includes attendance of a seminar on religions at Georgetown University, Washington, examining how faith groups can alleviate social problems in their community.

Perhaps religious tolerance was not on the minds of the Muslim attackers of three teenage Christian girls who were beheaded and a fourth who was seriously wounded in the Indonesian province of Central Sulawesi. The girls were ambushed while walking through a cocoa plantation in Poso Kota subdistrict on their way to class. The heads of the three dead victims were found several kilometres from their bodies.

Perhaps this beheadings are a sacred ritual, will be condoned by the Prince, because he considers all things holy duing the month of Ramadan. Central Sulawesi has a roughly equal number of Muslims and Christians. The province was the scene of a bloody religious war in 2001-2002 that killed around 1000 people with beheadings, burnings and other atrocities common events.

Since the earlier religious wars there have been a series of bomb attacks and assassinations of Christians. One of the most recent being a bomb blast at a market in Poso, a predominantly Christian town, that killed 22 people in May. The Christian-Muslim conflict is an extension of a wider sectarian war emanating in the nearby Maluku in which up to 9000 were killed between 1999 and 2002.

Prince Charles made it clear in 1994 that when he became Supreme Governor of the Church of England, he would rather be "defender of faiths" than "defender of the faith".
In his acclaimed speech, revered throughout the Arab world, on relations between Islam and the West, he urged the West to overcome its "unthinkable prejudices" about Islam and its customs and laws. During his speech he also said, "Extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity."

Bravo, arms open, we welcome his Majesty and remember, the Cole, The World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the bombing of US Embassies in East Africa in 1998, the bombing of the World Trade Center in 2001, the bombing of the Pentagon in 2001, the train bombings in Spain, the recent terrorist bomb attacks in London, and India. We can also extol his sentiments for religious tolerance on the heals of Iran’s proclamation that Israel should be wiped from the face of the earth.

The problem with religious tolerance when dealing with killers in the name of religion is that when you turn the other cheek, they will cut off your ear, stab your eye and then cut off your head.