| | | Vatican extends “hearty congratulations” to all Muslims for a “fruitful month of Ramadan”
MAY 3, 2020 8:00 AM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
“The Vatican’s office for interreligious dialogue released a message to the world’s Muslims Friday, extending fervent best wishes for a ‘fruitful month of Ramadan.'”
Fervent is the key word here. A simple well wishing to Muslims, since there are those Muslims who choose not to follow the call to violent jihad, would have sufficed.
There is more behind the Vatican’s message. It’s a follow-up to the trip Pope Francis took to the United Arab Emirates last year, where he signed a document that he asserted was a “new page in history of the dialogue between Christianity and Islam.” The Pope co-signed this document with the jihad-supporting Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayyeb, and described his encounter with leaders of Islam as “a counterpoint to the ‘strong temptation’ to contend there’s a current clash between Christian and Islamic civilizations.” Meanwhile, the Muslim genocide against Christians in Africa and elsewhere hasn’t let up. Only high-level posturing has advanced.
Consider these important questions in light of this joint document:
We will be able to put these claims to an empirical test. Will Pope Francis’ trip to the UAE and the misleading document he signed with the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb, turn one jihadi away from his jihad? Will it prevent one Christian from being persecuted, or one church from being destroyed?
And also, does the Vatican endorse the “fruits” of the highest calling in Islam, which is Islamic martyrdom, i.e., killing and being killed for Allah (cf. Qur’an 9:111)? “Interreligious dialogue” should include answers to such questions, which won’t simply disappear because one-sided “dialogue” and “diversity” gurus want them to. In 2016, al-Tayyeb called for “ unrepentant apostates” to be killed.
Given the violent persecution and genocide against Christians by Muslims, as well as the ongoing jihad goal to obliterate the state of Israel, the Vatican’s fervent message for Ramadan leaves no room to remember the enormous tally of victims of jihad. Instead, the Vatican perpetrates a fallacious moral equivalence, which denies the truth that violent jihad is a fruit in normative Islam, and is “the best form of worship,” especially during Ramadan.
“Vatican Wishes Muslims ‘a Fruitful Month of Ramadan,’” by Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart, May 1, 2020:
ROME — The Vatican’s office for interreligious dialogue released a message to the world’s Muslims Friday, extending fervent best wishes for a “fruitful month of Ramadan.”
The month of Ramadan is “a time for spiritual healing and growth, of sharing with the poor, of strengthening bonds with relatives and friends,” the message states, and also a good moment for Christians “to further strengthen our relationships with you” and to “foster fraternity between Christians and Muslims.”
“It is in this spirit that the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue offers its prayerful best wishes and hearty congratulations to you all,” reads the message, which the Vatican published in Arabic, Italian, French, and English.
The theme of the message is the protection of places of worship.
“For both Christians and Muslims, churches and mosques are spaces reserved for prayer, personal and communitarian alike,” it states. “They are constructed and furnished in a way that favours silence, reflection and meditation.”
Places of worship are “spaces for spiritual hospitality, where believers of other religions also join for some special ceremonies like weddings, funerals, feasts of the community etc.” the message notes. “Such practice is a privileged witness to what unites believers, without diminishing or denying what distinguishes them.”
The Vatican said that its message comes in the context of “recent attacks on churches, mosques and synagogues by wicked persons who seem to perceive the places of worship as a privileged target for their blind and senseless violence.”
Citing a joint document on “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Dr. Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, the message says that the protection of places of worship is “a duty guaranteed by religions, human values, laws and international agreements.”
“Every attempt to attack places of worship or threaten them by violent assaults, bombings or destruction, is a deviation from the teachings of religions as well as a clear violation of international law,” it reads…..
|
|
