Muslim plot to kill the Pope that never happened
Posted May 19, 2011

Muslim plot to kill the Pope that never happened

by Sheila Musaji


Back in September of 2010, six men were arrested in Britain on the suspicion that they might be planning an attack on the Pope.  The suspicion was raised when a private citizen reported that they had overheard a conversation by a group of North African men that concerned them.  At that time Robert Spencer posted an article with the lead in:  They no doubt want to kill him because of his Regensberg address, in which he quoted the 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologos: “He said, I quote, `Show me just what (Islamic Prophet) Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’” And so to prove that Muhammad didn’t bring what was evil and inhuman, they want to murder the Pope.    That’ll show us, all right.  And, of course, his partner, Pamela Geller re-posted this on her site.

Within days of their arrest, they were released, and even at that time, as Islamophobia Watch reported, the Muslim plot to kill the Pope turns out to be nothing of the sort.

There were no updates to the story on either Spencer’s or Geller’s sites.

The BBC has now reported on May 16, 2011 that:

The government’s terror laws watchdog says six men arrested during Pope Benedict’s UK visit last September were never involved in a plot.

David Anderson QC said police acted appropriately and the arrests were partly prompted by mistaken identity.

The six Westminster street cleaners were seized amid fears they wanted to attack the Pope mobile.

The men were released without charge amid reports that a canteen joke had been misunderstood.

...  Mr Anderson, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said in this report he had met two of the men, spoken with lawyers and had also questioned detectives from Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command.

“There is no reason to believe, with the benefit of hindsight, that any of the arrested men was involved in a plot to kill the Pope, or indeed that any such plot existed,” he said in his report.

The following day, after this article and report had been released, Robert Spencer posted, not an update, or an apology for his original article, but a new article.  This May 17, 2011 article was actually just a reposting of a sensational British article that Spencer titled UK: Muslims who plotted to kill Pope overheard saying that a “Christian should be killed for every page that was damaged” of the Qur’an and added the lead in:  Loose lips sink ships, akhi! Next time stick to the “Islam is a Religion of Peace” theme when out among the kuffar!

These men were released without charge.  The British terror watchdog carried out an investigation and released a report exonerating these men.  And, yet Robert Spencer is unable to believe that it is possible for any Muslim to be anything other than guilty.  It seems that in Spencer’s world - Muslims are guilty even if proven innocent.

This is very devious and unethical behavior, but right in line with an individual who consistently “gets it wrong” when it comes to Islam and Muslims, and who sees no ethical problem with simply removing articles from his site when they are proven to be inaccurate.  Not too surprising for an individual who is the co-founder (along with Pamela Geller) of a group, Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), which has been named as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  The group is also described by the ADL in the following terms: “Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), created in 2009, promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the guise of fighting radical Islam. The group seeks to rouse public fears by consistently vilifying the Islamic faith and asserting the existence of an Islamic conspiracy to destroy “American” values. The organization warns of the encroachment of shari’a, or Islamic law, and encourages Muslims to leave what it describes as the “falsity of Islam.”

This incident joins the lengthy list of wrong information about Islam and Muslims that everyone “knows” or that never happened or is simply not true.