'Muslims Triumphantly Declaring That The Pope Has Surrendered To Islam'

Iraqi convert to Christianity: ‘Muslims are triumphantly declaring that the pope has surrendered to Islam’

ROBERT SPENCER

“Iraq: Pope’s Trip Leaves Collateral Damage,” by Jules Gomes, Church Militant, March 9, 2021:

ERBIL, Iraq (ChurchMilitant.com) – Pope Francis’ Iraq trip has triggered a tidal wave of mockery on social media, with Muslims gleefully announcing that the pontiff has surrendered to Islamic supremacy, an Iraqi Muslim convert has told Church Militant.

The Kurdish response to Francis on the final day of his visit has been largely negative, as “many Kurds see the pope as a person who flatters wicked people like President Erdoğan,” observed Nasser Aza, an academic from Erbil.

While the pope’s visit has certainly created a feel-good atmosphere among Catholics, Aza is predicting that “the collateral damage for evangelism among Muslims” will be monumental.

Aza, who came to faith in Christ in 2014, told Church Militant that approximately 7,000 to 10,000 Muslims had converted to Christianity from Islam in the last decade, and, as in Iran among Shia Muslims, many more souls are ripe for conversion.

Speaking through an Arabic translator, Aza lamented the fact that only “small pockets of Catholics who are influenced by evangelicals are engaged in evangelization, while the Orthodox churches in Iraq have no interest whatsoever in evangelism.”

Aza, an amateur Arabist who had been brought up to believe that the Koran was linguistically inerrant, said that he began to have doubts about Islam after detecting a number of linguistic errors in the Koran.

When a Christian gave him a copy of the New Testament in Kurdish, Aza, who is of part-Kurdish heritage, broke down emotionally after reading it. “God speaks my language!” he exclaimed, overwhelmed by the fact that the Word had not only become flesh in Jesus but also was written in his own mother tongue.

Keen to reach out to Muslims with the gospel, Aza said he was “grieved that Francis’ interfaith engagement was counterproductive for Christians like him seeking to carry out Jesus’ Great Commission to proclaim the good news and declare Jesus as the only savior.”

“Muslims on social media are triumphantly declaring that the pope has surrendered to Islam,” Aza said. “The mockery is incredible as the Muslims say Francis is bowing to Muhammad as his prophet as he goes on Hajj [Muslim pilgrimage] to the birthplace of the Muslim Ibrahim.”

“Of course, the majority of the converts don’t care and have no interest in the papal visit to Iraq because they strongly feel the pope does not represent them or their passion for the gospel,” he added.

“And while Catholics are rejoicing thinking that the pope will bring about betterment in their situation and pull them out of persecution, the situation for all Christians will worsen because the pope is seen as giving in to Islam and abdicating his role as … head of the Church,” Aza predicted.

“Muslims don’t distinguish between Catholics, Orthodox, Pentecostals and evangelicals,” he explained. “Anyone who is not a Muslim is fair game for hostility and persecution.”…