STUPID US CATHOLIC BISHOPS LAUNCH NATIONAL CATHOLIC-MUSLIM DIALOGUE, SUCH AS WITH HAMAS, MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AL-QAEDA
BY ROBERT SPENCER
SEE: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/02/us-catholic-bishops-launch-national-catholic-muslim-dialogue-partnering-with-muslim-groups-linked-to-hamas-and-muslim-brotherhood; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
“The current regional Catholic-Muslim dialogues are the Mid-Atlantic (partnering with the Islamic Circle of North America), Midwest (partnering with the Islamic Society of North America) and West Coast (partnering with the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California and the Islamic Educational Center of Orange County). Each is co-chaired by a bishop and a Muslim leader from the corresponding regional organization. These dialogues will continue to meet and will work collaboratively with the members of the new national dialogue.”
The Islamic Circle of North America: “Terrorism analyst Steven Emerson claims that ICNA has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological forebear of all radical Islamic movements — including Hamas and al-Qaeda. Documents show that Hamas officials have participated in previous ICNA events. ‘The ICNA’s hatred of the Jews is so fierce,’ writes Emerson, ‘that it taunted them with a repetition of what Hitler did to them.’ In his book American Jihad, Emerson expounds: ‘The ICNA openly supports militant Islamic fundamentalist organizations, praises terror attacks, issues incendiary attacks on western values and policies, and supports the imposition of Sharia [Islamic law].’ ICNA was named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document — titled ‘An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America‘ — as one of the Brotherhood’s 29 like minded ‘organizations of our friends’ that shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation. These ‘friends’ were identified by the Brotherhood as groups that could help teach Muslims ‘that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands … so that … God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions.'”
The Islamic Society of North America: “ISNA leaders view Islam as being superior to all other faiths and destined to replace them. Taha J. Alwani, a leading official of the Fiqh Council of North America, which is run under ISNA, writes: ‘In considering the earth as an arena for Islam, Allah has promised its inheritance to His righteous people, and He has promised that Islam will prevail over other religions.’…In July 2008, ISNA’s lawyers conceded that their organization, through its affiliate NAIT, had given financial support to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook. Their defense was that documentary evidence of those ties dated back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, before the U.S. government had officially designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.”
What do you think is the goal of such groups in engaging in “dialogue” with Catholic bishops? The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2014 statement on “dialogue” quotes the 2007 document sent to the Pope and other Christian leaders, A Common Word Between Us and You. It is likely that not a single one of the bishops was ever curious about where the phrase “a common word between us and you comes from beyond the Qur’an citation provided in that document’s epigraph. If they had looked it up in the Qur’an, they would have found that the full passage is not a call for mutual understanding and mutual respect; rather, it is an exhortation to Christians to convert to Islam: “Say: ‘People of the Book! Come now to a word common between us and you, that we serve none but Allah, and that we associate no others with Him, and do not some of us take others as Lords, apart from Allah.’ And if they turn their backs, say: ‘Bear witness that we are Muslims’” (3:64). Since Muslims consider the Christian confession of the divinity of Christ to be an unacceptable association of a partner with God, this verse is saying that the “common word” that Muslims and the People of the Book should agree on is that Christians should discard one of the central tenets of their faith and essentially become Muslims.
For groups such as ICNA and ISNA, that is almost certainly what the “dialogue” is all about, along with compelling Catholic leaders to remain silent about Muslim persecution of Christians, as when Robert McManus, Roman Catholic Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, suppressed a planned talk at a Catholic conference on that persecution, explaining: “Talk about extreme, militant Islamists and the atrocities that they have perpetrated globally might undercut the positive achievements that we Catholics have attained in our inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims.” Evil works under the cover of darkness, and McManus, drunk on “dialogue,” was happy to supply that cover.
But the typical modern Catholic bishop, coddled, cosseted, regal, arrogant, authoritarian, ignorant, self-infatuated, and utterly devoid of charity, will never deign to acknowledge any of this. They are blind guides.
“US Bishops Launch National Catholic-Muslim Dialogue,” Zenit, February 9, 2016:
Archbishop Blase J. Cupich of Chicago will serve as the first Catholic co-chair of a new National Catholic-Muslim Dialogue, sponsored by the Committee on Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Archbishop Cupich’s tenure as dialogue co-chair will begin January 1, 2017.The bishops’ ecumenical and inter-religious committee has co-sponsored three regional Catholic-Muslim dialogues for over two decades. Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski of Springfield, Massachusetts, chair of the committee, said the time is right to begin a national dialogue.“As the national conversation around Islam grows increasingly fraught, coarse and driven by fear and often willful misinformation, the Catholic Church must help to model real dialogue and good will,” said Bishop Rozanski. “Our current dialogues have advanced the goals of greater understanding, mutual esteem and collaboration between Muslims and Catholics, and the members have established lasting ties of friendship and a deep sense of trust. I am grateful to Archbishop Cupich for agreeing to represent our Conference in this crucial conversation.”
How grand: they’ve established lasting ties of friendship and a deep sense of trust. How many Christians have they saved from Muslim persecution? How many churches have they prevented from being destroyed by Islamic jihadis?
The current regional Catholic-Muslim dialogues are the Mid-Atlantic (partnering with the Islamic Circle of North America), Midwest (partnering with the Islamic Society of North America) and West Coast (partnering with the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California and the Islamic Educational Center of Orange County). Each is co-chaired by a bishop and a Muslim leader from the corresponding regional organization. These dialogues will continue to meet and will work collaboratively with the members of the new national dialogue….
