Expect violent backlash if anti-Catholic protests aren't called off: Warning from politicians, religious leaders, and terrorism experts

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has warned, "as a very practical matter", that planned protests against the Pope's upcoming visit to the UK could be "a recruitment bonanza for the IRA, the FLQ and other extremists," referring to the Irish Republican Army and the less well known Front de libération du Québec, a Quebecois terrorist organization.

Blair also warned that British citizens living in Ireland and Quebec will be at serious risk of violent reprisals unless the planned protests are called off.

Immediately after making his statement Blair was hit in the head by a large shoe and had to be rushed to the hospital. The identity of the shoe-thrower is still unknown, but suspicion has focused on the shadowy ultra-ultramontanist group known simply as "Basis", which views Blair as a traitor because he concealed his Catholicism during the time he was in office.

Sporadic rioting has already broken out across Spain, Italy, Poland, France, the Philippines, and throughout Latin America. There are unconfirmed reports of deaths after police opened fire on a crowd throwing molotov cocktails at the buildings housing the British Consulate in Krakow.

President Obama has entered the fray by demanding that British Atheists call off their planned "stunt" of attempting to perform a citizens' arrest, under international law, of the Pope for supposed "crimes against humanity."

Religious leaders, interfaith dialoguers, Quakers, Unitarians, and progressive activists around the world have called for "solidarity with Catholics" and have condemned what they see as a dark wave of Papaphobia that threatens to plunge Western civilization back into an era of murderous scapegoatery the likes of which haven't been seen since the Third Reich.

World famed Sufi mystic, interfaith bridge builder, and expert in predicting violent religious backlashes Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf ably summed up the fears of many when he warned, gravely: "If these protests go ahead as planned, the headlines in the Catholic world will be that Catholicism is under attack in Great Britain, and the extremists have won. This will strengthen the radicals and it will put our people, our soldiers, our troops, our embassies, our citizens, under attack in the Catholic world. And we have expanded and given fuel to terrorism."

[The image in this post was snagged from the tshirthell.com website, where you can get your very own "Arrest the Pope" t-shirt -- the very latest in anti-ultramontanist fashion statements!]