Day: September 23, 2017

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

“Dr. Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Al-Issa…expressed the appreciation
of the Muslim world for the pope’s ‘fair positions’ regarding ‘the
false claims that link extremism and violence to Islam,’ as well as for
his insistence that extremism is not distinctive of Islam but is found
among followers of all religions.”

In other words, he thanked 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.
“Despite the group’s official opposition to violence and terrorism
and its pursuit of intercultural dialogue, it has been the subject of
several ongoing counterterrorism investigations in the U.S. related to Hamas, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.”
Has the Pope met with any of the survivors of the Muslim persecution of Christians?
Let me be clear: I don’t object to the Pope’s meeting this man. After
all, Jesus was a friend of tax collectors and sinners. But the meeting
appears to have been a pointless feelgood session, probably featuring
some sly dawah from al-Issa: “the two men reportedly exchanged views on a
number of ‘issues of common interest’ including peace and global
harmony, and discussed cooperation on issues of peaceful coexistence and
the spread of love.”
The spread of love. Yes, that’s what the Muslim World League is all about.
“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)

“Pope Francis Welcomes Leader of Muslim World League to Vatican,” by Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart, September 21, 2017:

Pope Francis met with the secretary general of the Muslim
World League (MWL) in the Vatican Wednesday, a group that has been tied
to Saudi financing of jihadist terrorism and the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Dr. Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Al-Issa, who served for several years as
Saudi minister of justice in Riyadh and is now secretary general of the
MWL, expressed the appreciation
of the Muslim world for the pope’s “fair positions” regarding “the
false claims that link extremism and violence to Islam,” as well as for
his insistence that extremism is not distinctive of Islam but is found
among followers of all religions.
The Muslim World League is a Saudi Government-funded Islamic
non-governmental organization, founded on May 18, 1962 in Mecca for the
propagation of Islamic teachings. Despite the group’s official
opposition to violence and terrorism and its pursuit of intercultural
dialogue, it has been the subject of several ongoing counterterrorism investigations in the U.S. related to Hamas, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Two months after the 9/11 jihadist attacks on U.S. soil, Newsweek writer Evan Thomas reported
that the Muslim World League was one of “two interrelated global
charities” directly funded by the Saudi government that were used by
Osama bin Laden to finance his operations. The organizations were left
off the list of groups sanctioned by the United States “in order to
avoid embarrassing the Saudi government,” Thomas wrote.
In 2004, Harper’s Magazine declared
that the Muslim World League had been “long known to have funneled
money to Al Qaeda” and is financed directly by the Saudi government.
“MWL is an evangelical organization that was created to help spread
Wahhabism, the Saudi brand of Islamic fundamentalism,” the article
stated.
According to the New York Times, an internal, top-secret
report from the Treasury Department obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act stated that the International Islamic Relief
Organization (IIRO), “an offshoot
of the Muslim World League,” supported terrorist organizations
beginning in the early 1990s “through to at least the first half of
2006.”
The MWL has also come under fire for its alleged anti-Semitism and the Anti-Defamation League claims that the MWL has frequently been a platform for anti-Israeli rhetoric. It has also been accused of using its English-language “Journal” to spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
At their first International Islamic Conference on Dialogue in Mecca
in 2008, the MWL invited Yusuf al-Qaradawi to speak. During his speech,
he said he would “never sit with Jews on one platform and never hold
dialogue with those Jews who have committed injustice against us and
support Israel.”
On Tuesday, Al-Issa spoke at an international conference
in Rome on “Tolerance in Islam” along with Joseph Levi, the former
chief rabbi in Florence, and Bishop Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, secretary
of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.
For his audience with the Pope, Al-Issa was accompanied by a
delegation of seven people. The Vatican released a series of photographs
of the encounter, during which the two men reportedly exchanged views
on a number of “issues of common interest” including peace and global
harmony, and discussed cooperation on issues of peaceful coexistence and
the spread of love….

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republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

“I won’t hide my concern in the face of the signs of intolerance,
discrimination and xenophobia that have arisen in different regions of
Europe, often fueled by reticence and fear of the other, the one who is
different, the foreigner.”
Maybe people have “reticence and fear of the other” because of “the
other’s” tendency to perpetrate jihad massacres, and to boast of his
imminent conquest of Europe. The Pope, by portraying opposition to the
Muslim migrant influx as a moral issue and trying to shame people out of
that opposition, is helping to expose the non-Muslim people of Europe,
and their children and children’s children, to a future full of misery
and bloodshed. Is that really what a Christian leader should be doing?
“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)

“Pope Francis Says Concern for ‘Cultural Identity’ Doesn’t Justify Opposition to Mass Migration,” by Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart, September 22, 2017:

Pope Francis spoke out strongly Friday in favor of
welcoming more migrants throughout Europe, telling his hearers to beware
of the “intolerance, discrimination and xenophobia” that have sprung up
around the continent.

In his audience
with the European national directors of the Church’s pastoral work with
migrants here for a meeting sponsored by the Council of Episcopal
Conferences of Europe (CCEE), the Pope recognized the consternation
caused by the “massive migrant flows” in Europe that have “thrown into
crisis migratory policies held up to now.”

At the same time, Francis rejected national immigration policies
designed to protect the cultural and religious identities of the peoples
of Europe.

“I won’t hide my concern in the face of the signs of intolerance,
discrimination and xenophobia that have arisen in different regions of
Europe,” the pontiff said, which are “often fueled by reticence and fear
of the other, the one who is different, the foreigner.”
“I am worried still more by the sad awareness that our Catholic
communities in Europe are not exempt from these reactions of
defensiveness and rejection, justified by an unspecified ‘moral duty’ to
conserve one’s original cultural and religious identity,” he said.
A report
this summer by the Centro Machiavelli found that Europe’s immigration
crisis is causing an ‘unprecedented’ shift in Italy’s demographics.
As of last January, Italy had over five million foreigners living as
residents, a growth of a remarkable 25 percent relative to 2012 and a
full 270 percent over 2002. At that time, foreigners made up just 2.38
percent of the population while fifteen years later the figure has
nearly trebled to 8.33 percent of the population.
If current trends continue, the report states, by 2065, first- and
second-generation immigrants will exceed 22 million persons, or more
than 40 percent of Italy’s total population.
In his address Friday, Francis appealed to the Church’s own history
of missionary work among different cultures, as well as the universality
of its mission in the world.
“The Church has spread through every continent thanks to the
‘migration’ of so many missionaries who were convinced of the
universality of the message of salvation in Jesus Christ, destined for
the men and women of every culture,” he said.
“Temptations to exclusiveness and cultural entrenchment have not been
wanting in the history of the Church,” the Pope continued, “but the
Holy Spirit has always helped us to overcome them, guaranteeing a
constant openness toward the other, considered as a concrete possibility
of growth and enrichment.”
Pope Francis said he was convinced that “the Holy Spirit will help us
to keep an attitude of trusting openness that will allow us to overcome
every barrier and scale every wall.”
In his address, the Pope also suggested that Europeans’ trouble with
migrants may be due in part to a lack of greater cohesion among European
nations and an incomplete process of political unification.
“In my constant listening to the particular churches in Europe I have
perceived a profound uneasiness in the face of the massive arrival of
migrants and refugees,” Francis said. “This uneasiness must be
recognized and understood in the light of a historical juncture
characterized by an economic crisis that has left deep wounds. This
uneasiness has been aggravated, moreover, by the scope and composition
of the migrant flows, by a substantial lack of preparedness in the host
countries and by frequently inadequate national and community policies.”
“But the uneasiness is also indicative of the limits in the process
of European unification,” the pontiff continued, “of the obstacles faced
by the concrete application of the universality of human rights, and of
the walls encountered by the integral humanism that constitutes one of
the most beautiful fruits of European civilization.”…

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ALSO SEE:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/09/robert-spencer-on-pope-francis-the-pope-of-islam 
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