Thursday, April 30, 2009

Prince of Wales watches Christianity v Islam football game

From the London Times-

In the end it was the Hand of God that saved the Christians.

As the Prince of Wales, who would like one day to style himself Defender of Faith, moved towards the sidelines of the Christianity v Islam football tournament, the big German vicar Heribert Süttmann just managed to get his keeper’s glove to the ball and save the honour of the West.

“Quite a match,” the Prince said as he handed the gilded inter-faith cup to the captains of the Vicars and the Imams. The scoreless draw in the Berlin game was a triumph for the ecumenical movement and a relief for the Prince, who argues for mutual respect between competing faiths — but it was a close-run thing.

Before the game, staged in a scruffy stadium in the centre of the Turkish district of the German capital, the odds were strongly on the Muslims thrashing the Christians. Last year they won 9-0. This year they looked even slicker. “My God,” the Christian captain, the Rev Roland Herpich, said, “there are hundreds of them.”

It was seven-a-side but the Muslim clerics, wearing white shirts marked “Imam”, had brought along 15, a sign of how rapidly the Islamic community is expanding in the German capital. They were muscular, well-trained Turks, Tunisians and Egyptians, and as they rolled out their prayer mats in the changing room it was plain that they were counting on Allah.

More here-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6194620.ece

1 comment:

Philip Wainwright said...

Is a cricket match between realigners and remainers possible? We've practiced together enough times...