AUSTRALIA'S highest ranking Catholic priest has told an American audience the Koran is punctuated with "invocations to violence" and the central challenge facing Islam lies in the struggle between moderate and extremist forces.Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell said reading Islam's holy book was vital "because the challenge of Islam will be with us for the remainder of our lives". In a speech to leading Catholic businesses in the United States, Dr Pell said the September 11 terrorist attacks had been his wake-up call to understand Islam better.
He said there were inconsistencies in claims that Islam was a faith of peace with those that suggested the Koran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims. Factual errors, inconsistencies, anachronisms and other defects were difficult for Muslims to debate openly, Dr Pell said. "In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages," he said.
Dr Pell's speech was delivered in the United States on February 4 but only appeared on the archdiocese's website on Wednesday.