It is so sad that the few critics who commented negatively on my last essay on Libya studiously avoided commenting on or responding to my most serious charge against those Muslims who participated in/supported the well-armed and long-planned insurrection that toppled the Libyan government in the capital city of Tripoli.

I brought to public attention Allah’s command in the Qur’ān which sternly prohibited Muslims from entering into precisely that alliance with NATO with which those misguided Muslims were eventually able to achieve their immediate objective in Libya of seizing the capital city of Tripoli and then claiming recognition as the new government:

{يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ لاَ تَتَّخِذُواْ الْيَهُودَ وَالنَّصَارَى أَوْلِيَاء بَعْضُهُمْ أَوْلِيَاء بَعْضٍ وَمَن يَتَوَلَّهُم مِّنكُمْ فَإِنَّهُ مِنْهُمْ إِنَّ اللّهَ لاَ يَهْدِي الْقَوْمَ الظَّالِمِينَ}

“O you who have faith (in Allah) do not take (such) Jews and (such) Christians as your friends and allies who themselves are friends and allies of each other. And whoever from amongst you turns to them (for friendship and alliance) now belong to them (and not to us). Surely Allah does not guide a wicked people.”

(Qur’ān, al-Māida, 5:51)

They must know that the Qur’an does not here refer to individual friendship between a Jew and a Christian.  Rather, the Qur’an anticipated more than 1400 years ago the mysterious reconciliation that was forged between most European Christians and European Jews - a reconciliation in which the Vatican played a strategically important role by way of exonerating Jews from responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus the true Messiah (‘alaihi al-Salām).

As recently as a few months ago Pope Benedict released a new book in which he cleverly argued that “there is no basis in Scripture for the argument that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus' death”.  How could the Jewish people as a whole bear responsibility for the crucifixion when there were many Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah and hence had no part in the demand for his crucifixion? Did they cease to be Jews when they believed in Jesus as the promised Messiah?