VATICAN ISSUES A HAPPY RAMADAN TO ALL
"MUSLIM BROTHERS AND SISTERS"
BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/05/vatican-issues-a-happy-ramadan-to-all-muslim-brothers-and-sisters;
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Says the Vatican in reflecting the muscular efforts of Pope Francis to fully embrace Islam:“We Muslims and Christians are called to open ourselves to others, knowing and recognizing them as brothers and sisters…. this way, we can tear down walls raised out of fear and ignorance and seek together to build bridges of friendship that are fundamental for the good of all humanity.”The endearing use of the phrase “brothers and sisters” invokes a vision of harmony and peace together. This is not the case between Muslims and Christians globally. Too many Christians live under the worst conditions in Islamic countries, as they endure violent persecution daily under the Sharia. The Pope of Islam is living a lie and promoting the same. Ongoing, he has abandoned persecuted Christians, and also persecuted other minority groups including minority Muslim groups and other victims of jihad. He has also turned a blind eye to Islamic supremacist assaults and jihad attacks in Western countries as a result of open door immigration.His pursuit of dialogue has never included the demand that Islamic leaders and adherents accept religious freedoms, and the equality of other faiths and human beings regardless of gender and personal identity. The Pope does not promote a two way street in his so-called advancement of “dialogue”. His expectation is that Christians must embrace “dialogue”, “diversity” and “tolerance” of everyone—including jihadists– but he has no such message and expectation of Muslims.The Pope has also declared Rome to be a “city of bridges, never walls!,” and further stated that “Jesus demands” we take in Muslim migrants. Meanwhile, he lives in a walled city within Rome, surrounded by security, and he is not taking in any migrants himself.Conversely, Cardinal Robert Sarah — prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments — compared “the modern influx of Muslim migrants to the invasions of barbarian tribes that ultimately brought down the Roman Empire in a.d. 475.” Sarah also warned that “it is a false exegesis [interpretation of scriptural text] to use the Word of God to promote migration. God never wanted these rifts.”For the Pope’s trip to Morocco, Vatican media promotions abandoned the traditional papal insignia and replaced it with the cross and the crescent; and the crescent did not appear “alongside the cross, as if a companion to it. Rather, the Islamic symbol encircles the Christian one” symbolizing a kind of submission to Islam.In Islamic law, Muslim lives are explicitly worth more than those of non-Muslims. The Shafi’i Sharia manual Reliance of the Traveller dictates: “The indemnity for the death or injury of a woman is one-half the indemnity paid for a man. The indemnity paid for a Jew or Christian is one-third the indemnity paid for a Muslim. The indemnity paid for a Zoroastrian is one-fifteenth that of a Muslim.” (o4.9) Sikhs rank even lower, as they are not People of the Book. The Pope addresses none of this.Pope Francis has accurately been hailed the “defender of Islam”. As Robert Spencer rightly notes:Pope Francis is not only disastrously wrongheaded about an obvious fact that is reinforced by every day’s headlines; he is also deceiving and misleading his people about a matter of utmost importance, and keeping them ignorant and complacent about a growing and advancing threat.“Vatican Wishes Happy Ramadan to ‘Muslim Brothers and Sisters’”, by Thomas D. Williams,Breitbart, May 10, 2019:The Vatican has sent a special message to all the world’s Muslims, wishing them “a peaceful and fruitful celebration of Ramadan.”The month of Ramadan, which began this year on May 5, is “a month for strengthening the spiritual bonds we share in Muslim-Christian friendship,” reads the message from the Vatican’s office of interreligious dialogue bearing the title “Christians and Muslims: Promoting Universal Fraternity.”“We Muslims and Christians are called to open ourselves to others, knowing and recognizing them as brothers and sisters,” the text states. “In this way, we can tear down walls raised out of fear and ignorance and seek together to build bridges of friendship that are fundamental for the good of all humanity.”“We thus cultivate in our families and in our political, civil and religious institutions, a new way of life where violence is rejected, and the human person respected,” reads the message, which bears the signature of Bishop Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.Our religions invite us to “remain rooted in the values of peace; to defend the values of mutual understanding, human fraternity and harmonious coexistence; to re-establish wisdom, justice and love,” the text says, citing a joint declaration signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam Ahmed a-Tayyeb in Abu Dhabi this past February.That same declaration brought down heavy criticism on the pope particularly due to the assertion that the plurality and diversity of religions “are willed by God in His wisdom,” just as God wills a plurality of colors, sexes, races, and languages.A number of Catholic theologians raised objections to the statement, insisting that it seemed to suggest that either God actively wills error, or that all religions are equally valid paths to God. The existence of a variety of colors, races, and languages in humanity is very different from a variety of contradictory claims about God’s identity and way of acting, they said.In early April, Francis walked back the earlier statement, clarifying that in reality God only permits the existence of many religions without actively willing it.The Vatican’s Ramadan message steers clear of such theological swampland.“We are encouraged, therefore, to continue advancing the culture of dialogue as a means of cooperation and as a method of growing in knowledge of one another,” the message says……
