http://news.yahoo.com/muslim-family-carves-chair-pope-francis-bosnia-mass-120553158.html
ZAVIDOVICI, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Salem Hajdarovac says he didn't sleep for a week when he heard his workshop had been granted the honor of carving a special chair that Pope Francis will sit on during his visit to Bosnia.
Hajdarovac, 61, and his 33-year-old son Edin, both devout Muslims, started working on the chair on Monday in their little workshop in the central Bosnian town of Zavidovici.
They have put all other orders on hold to produce the perfect chair by June 6, when the pontiff will hold a Mass in Sarajevo aimed at boosting efforts toward brotherhood in the country ravaged by war two decades ago.
For decades, the family-run workshop has been carving religious souvenirs for visitors of the Catholic Medjugorje shrine and decorations for churches and mosques, but they see the chair as the highlight of their careers.
"It makes me extremely happy, because to make the chair for such a person is a huge and important thing," Edin Hajdarevac told The Associated Press.
The design of the chair is a secret, they said. All they wanted to reveal is that they will use wood from a walnut tree and that it will depict various religious symbols, such as the Pope's coat of arms and emblems of three Bosnian cathedrals.
The local priest, Miro Beslic, convinced his flock to finance the purchase of the material. The Hajdarovacs will carve the chair for free.
"The whole country is in financial crisis, but once people understood that this is about the pope ... then people accepted the idea," Beslic told the AP.
this is so good it shows that difference in religion does not have to translate in to hate, bigotry and racism for one another instead respect for you and what you believe can only result in a return of that respect except for those who unlike these Muslims only thought of the privilege not that he is Catholic and that they had been in conflict from way back with Muslims. is one really so different from the other extremist on both sides do equally egregious things to the other, evangelicals don't cut off heads at least that we've found but their over zealousness is just as damaging to lives of those they oppose is hanging and burning and shooting multiple times any less horrendous???
religious ideology is what causes conflicts though implemented by those who believe in one or the other if not for the ideology their would not be a religious aggression. evangelicals promote those kinds of scenarios that spark anger and feelings of disrespect tearing or burning Korans if they had done that to the Bible we would be in pretty much the same circumstance because the intent is born of disrespect for another's religion.
bottom line what those of us who have the ability to empathize you don't have to hate especially for a non reason of decades old.
