(Robert Spencer – Frontpage) “In speaking of those who have left the world ‘fractured by divisions and wars,’ Pope Francis doesn’t seem to have said a word about the religion that actually teaches that believers should wage war against and subjugate unbelievers. But of course, about that religion he has said, ‘Authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.’”
Never missing an opportunity to confuse, disappoint, and demoralize the Catholic faithful, Pope Francis, according to the Latin American Herald Tribune, said on Good Friday that “Christians ought to express shame for the actions of those who are leaving future generations a world ‘fractured by divisions and wars.’”
Speaking to Jesus, the Pope said that “our gaze upon you is full of shame, repentance and hope. Before your supreme love, shame pervades us for having left you alone to suffer for our sins … shame for having chosen Barabbas and not you, power and not you, appearance and not you, the god of money and not you, worldliness and not eternity.”
The Pope added that Christians should also feel shame for those who “allowed themselves to be deceived by ambition and vainglory, losing sight of their dignity and first love,” leaving behind a world “fractured by divisions and wars” and “consumed by selfishness.”
In speaking of those who have left the world “fractured by divisions and wars,” Pope Francis doesn’t seem to have said a word about the religion that actually teaches that believers should wage war against and subjugate unbelievers. But of course, about that religion he has said, “Authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”
So it is the Christians who should feel shame for the strife in the world, not anyone else.
This is nothing new. Pope Francis last September met in the Vatican with Dr. Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Al-Issa, the secretary general of the Muslim World League (MWL), a group that has been linked to the financing of jihad terror. During the meeting, al-Issa thanked the Pope for his “fair positions” on what he called the “false claims that link extremism and violence to Islam.”
In other words, al-Issa was thanking the Pope for dissembling about the motivating ideology of jihad terror, which his group has been accused of financing, and for defaming other religions in an effort to whitewash Islam.
Nor was that the first time a Muslim leader thanked this Pope for being so very useful. Last July, Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar, thanked him for his “defense of Islam against the accusation of violence and terrorism.”
Has any other Pope of Rome in the history of Christianity ever been heralded as a “defender of Islam”? In my forthcoming book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, I detail the centuries of effort that the warriors of jihad poured into trying to conquer and subjugate the Christians of Europe, and the pivotal role that the Catholic Church played in the resistance to the jihad. Pope Francis, unlike his predecessors, would like not have called for a defense against the jihadis, but would have opened the gates to them.