The ISIS guys can relax: the last thing the Pope wants to do is remove Sharia from Iraq or anywhere else. Extensive comments from me below.
“Islamic State: Pope’s Iraq Trip Is New Crusade,” by Jules Gomes, ChurchMilitant.com, March 23, 2021:
MOSUL, Iraq (ChurchMilitant.com) – Islamic State (ISIS) is threatening fresh attacks on Iraqi churches following Pope Francis’ visit, with an ultimatum that its jihadists “will remove their crosses very soon” as they did “the first time, with Allah’s permission.”
In a blistering editorial in its Arabic weekly, Al-Naba, the world’s most feared terrorist outfit is interpreting Francis’ interfaith overtures in Iraq as a “crusade” to “remove the shariah of Allah from this land and to establish polytheistic religion in its place” by “lifting his profane cross over the ruins of Mosul.”
Church Militant obtained a copy of the anti-papal polemic and commissioned an English translation of the editorial titled “Messages of the Christian Idolator-Tyrant [Taghut al-Nasara al-Baba] on His Visit to Iraq,” published in the 277th issue of Al-Naba, on March 11.
Eminent Islamic scholar Robert Spencer explained to Church Militant the significance of the appellation taghut al-nasara (used eight times in the editorial to describe Pope Francis): “Taghut refers to idols or idolaters, nasara is the Qur’an’s word for Christians and al-baba is the pope. So taghut al-nasara al-baba is ‘the Christian idolater’ — the pope.”
Tyrannical rulers who arrogate God’s absolute power and use it to oppress people are also called taghut. In modern Iran, the term was applied to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
ISIS claims the pope’s visit “is for propagating new crusader ideas towards Muslim countries, especially Iraq, which has been the site of a grinding war for the last two decades between the Muslims and the mushrikeen.”
Mushrikeen are “polytheists” who commit the unforgivable sin of “shirk” by attributing the unique qualities of Allah to others. Christians are ostensibly mushrikeen because they attribute God’s unique characteristics to Jesus.
The Al-Naba editorial reserves its most acerbic attack on Francis’ interreligious event in Ur, accusing the “Christian idolator-tyrant” of “unleashing an invitation to a new religion of unbelief and atheism” by fostering a convergence of Catholics, Jews and the “the idolator-tyrants [taghut] of Muslim countries.”
According to the editorial:
The so-called “Abrahamic religions” — whether true or false — are said to belong to Ibrahim, the prophet of Allah, and based on the claim that the city of Ur, which the Christian idolator-tyrant visited and from where he launched his campaign for this new religion is the birthplace of Ibrahim, the prophet of Allah.
Excoriating the designation of “Abrahamic religions” as “satanic” for “attributing their false religions to Ibrahim,” the ISIS editorial quotes the Qur’anic verse Surah 3:67: “Ibrahim was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was an upright Muslim; he was not an idolater.”
Spencer, author of 21 books on Islam and the Middle East, explained that the claim “may seem strange to Westerners in light of the fact that Islam was born 600 years after Jesus.”
“But in the Islamic scheme of things, Islam was the original religion of all the biblical prophets,” Spencer emphasized, noting that Muslims regard Judaism and Christianity as false religions which corrupted the prophetic teachings. “This idea is mainstream Islam, not just the province of ‘extremists.'”
Spencer explained that Muslims would view the pope as profaning Mosul by lifting his cross over it because “in Islam, Jesus was not crucified (cf. Qur’an 4:157), and to affirm otherwise is to suggest that Allah is not strong enough to protect his prophets.”
The author of the bestseller The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS elaborated:
Above all, the document criticizes the pope for supposedly wanting to create a new Abrahamic religion based on his “dialogue” with Muslim leaders. Francis would most likely be shocked to find that his very attempts at peace and conciliation are viewed as provocations. But this is yet another example of his getting involved in affairs that he only dimly understands at best and creating more problems than he is solving.
Francis almost certainly doesn’t know that the Qur’an says that “the Jews and the Christians will never be satisfied with you until you follow their religion” (Qur’an 2:120). So even his outreach is viewed as a sinister attempt to seduce Muslims away from Islam.
While the Al-Naba editorial eviscerates Francis’ interreligious program in southern Iraq as religious opportunism, it castigates the pope’s visit to Baghdad as “a message of support endorsing this government of idolatrous criminals.”
Claiming that Islamic State still controls much of Iraq, the editorial describes the visit as a “showcase for the stability of the government with visitors being kept in the illusion of security” and as “propaganda designed to reassure the pope’s crusader friends [Western governments]” and to get them to give loans to a debt-riddled Iraqi state.
“It cannot be ruled out that this religious visit by the Christian idolator-tyrant has purely economic goals,” the editorial states, positing that “some parties seem to have fully funded it to provide moral support to the rafidite government as a reward for securing important contracts which might become public under some other pretext or might be kept strictly private.”…
mortimer says
The pope has likely never read or seen a manual of Sharia law. If he had, he would know how DANGEROUS Sharia is to Christians. Much of Sharia is about REPRESSING and CONTROLLING Christians.
mortimer says
When the Shi’ites and Sunnis are not attacking Jews and Christians they bad-mouth attack one another.
gravenimage says
Islamic State: Pope’s Iraq trip a ‘crusade’ to ‘remove the Sharia of Allah from this land’
……………
Hilarious. More proof that no amount of appeasement from Infidels is *ever* enough.
somehistory says
One more thing about which mo slums are ****wrong.**** May as well be, because they are wrong about everything else. They are completely enamored of satan and his evil. Crooked thinking; twisted, evil, demonic behavior. The ‘pope’ is fine with that, and just wants to get along with his best buds.
citoyen says
Abraham was a muslim living at Ur hundreds of years BCE? I don’t believe it.
This is how organised religions retrofit their narratives. Another example is the preposterous retrofit of Peter as the first Pope three hundred years before the Constantine “conversion” -if Simon the illiterate fisherman was in Rome early in the 1st Century he would have been living in a doss house in the Jewish slum tenements (maybe with Roman kids throwing stones at him and shouting “Look, there goes old whacko Papa Peter…”).
Peter was the first and now at last we have old dodo Francis with his bum in the air just as Mohammad showed his behind to the Jews northwards of Mecca.
Westman says
One must appreciate the risible ability of ISIS and the Pope to be both ignorant and stupid, simultaneously. The Pope offers the neck of Christianity and ISIS rattles on like the PA when it is offered peace.
Does this describe ISIS?: “He will be a wild man – A wild ass of a man, so the word is: rude, and bold and fearing no man; untamed, untractable, living at large, and impatient of service and restraint. His hand will be against every man – That is his sin, and every man’s hand against him – That is his punishment.” Genesis 16:12
ISIS is where misfit, angry, unprepared-for-modern-times, Muslim men go to die. And the world will accommodate them.
somehistory says
Caption for the photo: “I’ve fallen for the evil lies of islam, spread by its violent adherents, and I’m lovin’ it; so much I don’t wish to get up.”
Del says
This naive Islamic dhimmi pope has chased tens of thousands of Catholics away from the Church. What the hell is he thinking? My God he is offensive.