OPINION:
Pope Francis is on a mission of peace in Cairo on Friday, hoping to bridge the violent divide between Islam and Christianity and bring about some peace between the two religions.
Good luck with that. Expecting followers of Islam to drop their Islamic ways and quit persecuting those of other faiths — Jews, Christians, and others — is kind of giving new meaning to the word optimism. Why?
Killing, beheading, setting on fire, raping, bombing, machete-chopping — these are all tools of Islam to express dissatisfaction with those who don’t worship allah. Conversely, Christians? The tools are a bit different.
“Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense,” Proverbs states.
Or this, from Ephesians: “With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Might be a bit difficult to bridge those gaps in viewpoints — just sayin’.
But you go, Pope Francis. Give it that college try.
And don’t give a second thought to this reality, from this news account of his trip: “Pope Francis arrives in Cairo … hoping to mend ties with Islamic religious leaders just as Egypt’s ancient Christian community faces unprecedented pressure from Islamic State militants who have threatened to wipe it out.”
That’s from Reuters — probably one of the more laughable understatements to come across media desks in a while.
But here’s the problem with the pope’s mission: Why is he trying to mend ties with a religion that fosters violence and murder?
Shouldn’t at the very least he wait until a peaceful overture is made from those standing in the camp of the religion of violence — from those leading in the Islam faith to make clear, hey, we don’t really want to wipe out Christians and Jews and remove them from the face of the earth?
“Francis will meet with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi; Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand imam of al-Azhar, the world’s most influential seat of Sunni Islamic theology and learning; and Pope Tawadros II, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church who narrowly escaped a church bombing in Alexandria on Palm Sunday,” Reuters wrote.
Know what’s missing from that sentence?
The part where it specifies that Tawadros narrowly escaped an Islamic terrorist church bombing in Alexandria, on one of the Christian world’s most sacred worship days. Others — other Christian worshippers — weren’t so lucky.
And that right there is the problem. Pope Francis, well-intentioned or not, is still pretending like discussion can solve hundreds of years of hatred and persecution. He’s acting as if Islam has not declared war on Christianity, on Jews. And he’s blinding himself to the fact that you can’t bring a talking point to a suicide bomb war and expect peace to prevail.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.