Breitbart reported less than two weeks ago that “the Vatican has created a special committee to draw out the principles contained in the controversial Abu Dhabi document, signed last February by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar.” The Pope believes something great was accomplished in the U.A.E. when he and Sheikh Ahmad El-Tayeb signed a document about “human fraternity.” He has high hopes it will lead to all kinds of good things — you know, things like Mutual Understanding and World Peace. He’s not the only enthusiast. Senior Catholic clerics in this country were quick to endorse his achievement:
The declaration signed by Pope Francis and Sheik Ahmad el-Tayeb, the grand imam of al-Azhar, during the pope’s trip to the United Arab Emirates “is a clarion call for robust dialogue that leads to peace,” said the Catholic chairman of the National Catholic-Muslim Dialogue and the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs.
A “clarion call”? For a certain type of mind, all calls are “clarion,” just as majorities are always “vast,” taxpayers are always “hardworking,” growth is always “exponential,” threats are always “existential,” rage is always “unbridled,” and elegance is always “understated.” By their banality shall ye know them.
We have been having, for several decades, all kinds of interfaith “dialogues” which consist of Christians calling for peace and understanding, and expressing their deep respect for Islam, the “authentic” version of which is “opposed to every form of violence,” as Pope Francis famously said. The Muslim clerics pocket those positive remarks about Islam by their naive Christian interlocutors, without offering similar praise of Christianity in return. Now such a “dialogue” has taken place at the very highest level, between Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, Ahmad El-Tayeb.
It is not we who will decide, but posterity, whether or not this “joint statement on human fraternity” turns out to be “historic,” rather than just one more of the feelgood exercises that people deeply committed to the interfaith racket have been pushing for the last two decades.
“Violence too often predominates between Christians and Muslims” — a formulation that leaves out the fact that the violence always originates from the Muslim side; Christians are the victims who, very occasionally, fight back. There have been over 35,500 acts of Muslim terror since 9/11/2001 alone. In the United States, there have been major terror attacks by Muslims in New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Bernardino, Fort Hood, Little Rock, Chattanooga, Orlando. In Europe, there have terror attacks in Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Nice, Toulouse, Magnanville, St. Etienne-du-Rouvray, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Würzburg, London, Manchester, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Malmö, Helsinki, Turku, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Beslan. Muslims have repeatedly attacked Coptic churches in Egypt, killed Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, in northern Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, and Syria, and murdered Assyrians in Iraq. Yet these two Catholic clerics, Cardinal Cupich and Bishop Bombera, appear to believe that there is some kind of equivalence between Muslim attackers and Christian victims: “Violence too often predominates between Christians and Muslims” — a curious phrase, with that free-floating “violence” unattached to any actor. That violence somehow “predominates” — how? why? when? — between Christians and Muslims. Not a word from the Christians about what Muslims read in the Qur’an and Hadith that explains that violence. Once you are caught in the interfaith web, it’s impossible to tell the grim truth, that the violence “between Christians and Muslims” comes overwhelmingly from the Muslims, as commanded in the Islamic texts. But no Christian taking part in these interfaith meetings dares to quote the Qur’anic verses about Infidels and Jihad, for fear of offending Muslims who would then break off that “dialogue” by which Christians set such store.
No comments:
Post a Comment