WHAT A BETRAYAL: Pope Francis and Terror

Why are thousands of faithful Muslims sacrificing all to join ISIS? Why does the Muslim world even speak glowingly of ISIS? Why are other Islamic terrorist groups endorsing ISIS? Perhaps they see in ISIS  the true Islam.

In their propaganda magazine Dabiq, the Islamic State described its vision for humanity:

·       “This is a divinely-warranted war between the Muslim nation and the nations of disbelief… Indeed, waging jihad — spreading the rule of Allah by the sword — is an obligation found in the Quran, the word of our Lord… The blood of the disbelievers is obligatory to spill by default. The command is clear. Kill the disbelievers, as Allah said, ‘Then kill the polytheists wherever you find them.’” https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/did-francis-really-say-catholics-are-as-violent-as-islamic-terrorists

ISIS is correct. This is what the Koran teaches, and the Islamic world knows it. The history of Islam testifies to it, but the West continues to deny it, even the leadership who have been entrusted to protect their people.

Pope Francis was just asked: “What concrete initiatives can you advise or suggest in order to counteract Islamic violence? Thank you, Holiness.”

Francis indirectly admitted that he didn’t have any initiative. Even worse, he argued that such an initiative would be misguided:

·       I don’t like to speak of Islamic violence, because every day, when I browse the newspapers, I see violence, here in Italy … this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law … and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics! If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence ... and no, not all Muslims are violent, not all Catholics are violent. It is like a fruit salad; there’s everything. There are violent persons of this religion … this is true: I believe that in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists. Fundamentalists. We have them. When fundamentalism comes to kill, it can kill with the language… I do not believe it is right to identify Islam with violence…How many young people, how many young people of our Europe, whom we have left empty of ideals, who do not have work … they take drugs, alcohol, or go there to enlist in fundamentalist groups… But this is a fundamentalist group which is called ISIS … but you cannot say, I do not believe, that it is true or right that Islam is terrorist.

Why does Francis deny the obvious – Brussels, Nice, Orlando, San Bernardino, 9/11, sex-attacks all across Europe, and the teachings of the Koran? Certainly the Bible doesn’t teach violent jihad for world conquest. Jesus didn’t behead His enemies. Instead, He died for them. In contrast, Mohammad beheaded whole tribes, taking their wives and daughter as sex-slaves, and Muslims appreciate this fact. Consequently, when the Christian sins, he cannot claim that Jesus led him to do it. Christians do not cry “God is great,” as they slaughter the infidels. While Christ civilizes, Mohammad has provided inspiration for the worst crimes imaginable.

The interviewer again tried to bring the Pope back to his original question, “Your concrete initiatives to counteract terrorism, violence?” Francis again made it clear that he wasn’t going to address Islamic terror and the destruction of his own flock in the Middle East and in North Africa:

·       Terrorism is everywhere. You think of the tribal terrorism of some African countries… Terrorism grows when there are no other options, and when the center of the global economy is the god of money and not the person — men and women — this is already the first terrorism! You have cast out the wonder of creation — man and woman — and you have put money in its place. This is a basic terrorism against all of humanity! Think about it!

I guess we haven’t thought about it long enough as the Pope has. We’re just ignorant.

However, never once would Francis admit what Muslims have been consistently saying about their motivation. According to them, it is all about Islam. Why not listen to them? They know the reasons for their actions, and they are very plain about them. Instead, Francis has blindly and stubbornly invoked his own anti-capitalistic analysis as an explanation for Islamic behaviors. Poor oppressed Muslims, according to him. However, no Muslim has ever stated that he became a terrorist because he needed a job or because of the “oppressive” capitalistic system.

What would Francis say about Nazi terrorism and genocide? Would he also say that pious Catholics do the same thing? I doubt it. Why then the difference. Why is he unwilling to name the problem?

What would have happened if the Western allies thought that Nazism was just a product of oppressive capitalism? Would it have made any difference to offer them jobs? In essence, this is what Neville Chamberlain had done, and this allowed the Nazis to solidify their war machine.

Meanwhile, Christians and other non-Muslims are being raped, kidnapped, forced to convert, and slaughtered by the tens of thousands. Who is guilty? Of course, ISIS and the many other Islamic terroristic associations, but also the Pope and the Western leaders who have been allowing this cancer to metastasize.

Not only that, they have provided a protective shield for Islam. They have under-reported and disguised Islamic terror, and they have either criminalized or marginalized any real reporting about Islam. They have even placed Islamic advisors in top positions to determine policy. They have tied the arms of the FBI and law-enforcement, minimizing their ability to protect those they are being paid to protect. WHAT A BETRAYAL!

AN IDEALISM UNACCOMPANIED BY WISDOM IS DEADLY

As an idealistic 21 year-old, I decided that I was going to transform NYC. How? I was going to greet every passerby with a “Hello” and a smile. Why not! I wanted our city to be a friendlier, more humane place, and I felt uplifted that it was I who had the courage to champion this great cause.

I commenced my crusade at Riverside Park, where there was no shortage of people to greet. After several hours, I sat down on a park bench. Shortly afterwards, an older male sat down next to me. I recognized him as one who I had greeted. After several jokes, he invited me to walk up to Broadway to have a beer with him. Although I felt uncomfortable about this encounter, I couldn’t back away from my cause. Already, I had too much invested. Besides, I was the one who had initiated the contact.

He walked so quickly up to Broadway, I could barely keep up with him. When I did reach him, he had already emerged from the grocery with a six-pack. He then insisted in returning to the park, but it had already become dark. Since he had already paid for the six-pack, and I was still on my crusade to change the city, albeit more reluctantly, I followed him, even into the bushes of the darkened park.

In the midst of the bushes, he began to move closer to me. I had intended to drink one beer with him, fulfill my social ideal, and then hastily move on. However, his trajectory would now allow for this. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings – certainly not in light of my idealistic intentions – so I would force him to reject me. I therefore invented an elaborate lie to make myself utterly odious to him, and it succeeded, allowing me time to casually escape, without violating my “idealism.”

It later became painfully apparent to me that my other-centered vision had been built on false premises. For one thing, I lacked the resources to be able to pull it off. More importantly, I had mistakenly thought that if I showed kindness to others, they would show kindness to me and to others.

Sometimes, this is a good strategy, but sometimes, it is not. Neville Chamberlain had thought that the strategy of kindness would work with Adolf Hitler, but he didn’t understand him, and this proved costly.

Why wasn’t I able to modify my strategy or methodology once I had encountered a man who wouldn’t reciprocate in kind – one who wanted to use me for his own benefit? I was too committed to my ideal. I even liked being committed to it. Perhaps Chamberlain had been too committed to his ideal of peace, even after it became obvious that peace was out of reach, when it came to a Hitler. Hadn’t he read Mein Kampf?

Wisdom requires flexibility both in ideal and in action. Instead, I had been strong in commitment and idealism but weak in seeing things accurately and making the necessary adjustments.

Having seen these weaknesses in myself, I can also see them in others. I see these same tendencies among Western ideologues who have committed themselves to the ideal of an international community of brethren. We talk about interfaith dialogues, trying to find sturdy commonalities among the various religions upon which we can build bridges of friendship and cooperation.

While this is a wonderful ideal, perhaps we are once again playing Chamberlain to a Hitler. Perhaps our ideal is ill-fated because we have failed to understand the various players. Perhaps we are making the same mistake that I had made – that kindness will be reciprocated to kindness.

When I speak about the Islamic commitment to world domination and a worldwide Caliphate, people often respond, “You probably don’t have any Muslim friends,” suggesting that, if I did, I wouldn’t have these opinions. I respond that Muslims can be very nice people. I have known several who have assured me that Islam is a peaceful religion, and their own conduct has seemed to affirm their assurances.

However, I also know what the Koran and the Sayings of Muhammad teach, and there is little peaceful about them. In fact, the Koran even warns Muslims that they cannot be friends with non-Muslims:

• [Surah 3:27] “Let not the believers take the disbelievers for friends rather than believers. And whoever does this has no connection with Allah unless it is done [deceptively] to guard yourselves against them, guarding carefully. 

• [5:54] O ye who believe, take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other.

• [60:1] “O you who believe! Take not My enemies and your enemies (i.e. disbelievers and polytheists) as friends, showing affection towards them, while they have disbelieved in what has come to you of the truth”

• [60:4] “Indeed there has been an excellent example for you in Ibraaheem [Abraham] and those with him, when they said to their people: ‘Verily, we are free from you and whatever you worship besides Allaah, we have rejected you, and there has started between us and you, hostility and hatred for ever until you believe in Allaah Alone’”

How do Muslims understand these verses? This is an important question simply because when you cite surah to a Muslim that disagrees with his position, he will tell you that you have to understand the historical context before you can understand the surah. Therefore, I like to also consult Islamic commentators who write to other Muslims, not just us naïve Westerners. One commentator writes (www.koranqa.com; fatwa 59879):

• “Undoubtedly the Muslim is obliged to hate the enemies of Allaah and to disavow them, because this is the way of the Messengers and their followers. 

• “Based on this, it is not permissible for a Muslim to feel any love in his heart towards the enemies of Allaah who are in fact his enemies too.” 

• “But if a Muslim treats them with kindness and gentleness in the hope that they will become Muslim and will believe, there is nothing wrong with that, because it comes under the heading of opening their hearts to Islam. But if he despairs of them becoming Muslim, then he should treat them accordingly.”

Islamic friendship-deception is part of a larger practice known as Taqiyya, which authorizes Muslims to deceive non-Muslims for the sake of advancing Islam.

Knowing this, how then do we relate to Muslims? As a Christian, I must receive the Muslim in love, in hope of showing him a better way. His mind has been taken captive by the Devil to do his will (Eph. 6:12). However, we have a responsibility to him to help him see the light:

• And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. (2 Timothy 2:24-26)

This suggests that we should be willing to embrace our Muslim neighbors with real kindness. However, this doesn’t mean that we are to give the Muslim a platform so that he can spread his religion and take others captive. To do this would be to partake in his evil works. Sadly, this is the substance of many of our interfaith dialogues. Shouldn’t we find it strange that we are never invited into the Mosque to speak about Christianity?

What does this suggest about the possibility of welcoming Muslim refugees into our land? If they are truly Muslim, they must obey the teachings of Muhammad, which are supposed to come from Allah. What do these teachings require of a Muslim? The death of the infidel if he refuses to convert or to submit entirely to sharia law:

• (Koran Surah 8:37) “Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion (Islam) reigns supreme.”

• (4:5) “When the Sacred Months are over, kill those who ascribe partners [like Jesus] to God wheresoever ye find them; seize them, encompass them, and ambush them; then if they repent and observe prayer and pay the alms, let them go their way’.”

• “…kill the disbelievers wherever we find them” (2:191) and “murder them and treat them harshly” (9:123), and “Strike off the heads of the disbelievers” (8:12, cp. 8:60).

How does Islam understand these many commands to do jihad until the entire world is under the Islamic Caliphate? Ibn Khaldun, the 15th century Tunisian historian, stated:

• In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force... Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.

Knowing these things, what does Christ’s love require of me? He came to comfort the afflicted and not to unleash murderers upon the innocent. This must also be our concern. If we were to instead bring murderers and rapists into our communities, this would bring the Church into disrepute.

Immigration is also a form of Jihad:

• He who emigrates (from his home) in the Cause of Allah [Jihad], will find on earth many dwelling places and plenty to live by. And whosoever leaves his home as an emigrant unto Allah and His Messenger, and death overtakes him, his reward is then surely incumbent upon Allah. And Allah is Ever Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. And when you (Muslims) travel in the land, there is no sin on you if you shorten your Salat (prayer) if you fear that the disbelievers may attack you, verily, the disbelievers are ever unto you open enemies. (Koran 4:100-101) 

How can our idealism serve to bring into our neighborhoods those who want to rape, kidnap, and kill? It must not! Idealism is essential to life and the well-being of society, but when idealism is not directed by wisdom, it either dies or becomes malignant.

Neville Chamberlain and the Naïve Media

We believe what we want to believe, and the media is little different. Jonathan Rosenbloom described how the press and the BBC fawned over their gullible Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his politics:

• That included self-imposed censorship on the information reaching the British public. After the Anschluss [the German forced merger with Austria in 1938], British papers carried no pictures of the hundreds shot in the first days after the Nazi takeover, of the tens of thousands arrested and sent to concentration camps, or the Nazi soldiers forcing Jewish doctors, lawyers, and professors to scrub the streets and clean toilets on their hands and knees. When reporters asked Neville Chamberlain about such matters, he snapped at them for believing “Jewish-Communist propaganda.” (Jewish World Review)

Instead, today we are called “Islamophobes” if we raise any question about the Islamic agenda for world domination and the subjugation of all others. However, in both cases, the evidence is unmistakably before us. Rosenbloom wrote that Chamberlain probably never read Mein Kampf, but he certainly should have:

• Hitler laid out in startling fashion both his future plans for the Jews and for German conquest.

We find the same battle plan laid out in detail in the Koran and the Hadiths (the sayings of Mohammad), but yet the Western media continues to refer to Islam as a “religion of peace” and that the Islamic terrorists aren’t real Muslims, despite their unequivocal declarations to the contrary.

Chamberlain and the press clung to a hope, albeit unsupported by any evidence:

• Chamberlain…”could never bring himself to believe that [Hitler and Mussolini] wanted to go to war. Clinging to the security of his ignorance, he created a peace-loving image of them that defied reality.” For a decade, the English and French did nothing in response to fascist aggression in Abyssinia, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and precious little even in the wake of the German invasion of Poland. France and England thereby encouraged Hitler to believe they were too weak to prevail.

However, we are giving Islam even greater encouragement. We invite radical Islamic groups to our White House, employ them in our Homeland security, sponsor pro-Islamic propaganda, bellow out that  “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam,” and list Evangelicals and Catholics as terrorist groups. We have never seen a red carpet unfurled so elaborately. We should not be surprised when our carpet is trodden under.