A timely post about from
www.jihadwatch.org about
Pope Francis. This follows
this post about "
hate crimes" against
Muslims. This follows
this post about
Steve Bannon and
Keith Ellison. This follows
this article
about American energy independence and preventing money from going to
hostile countries. For more, you can read two very interesting books
HERE.
You can follow me here.
When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the new Catholic pope in
2013, he chose the name of Francis to indicate that his pontificate
would be one of mercy and compassion for the poor and needy—for such is
the reputation of his eponym, Saint Francis of Assisi: “the man of
poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation,”
explained Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, as to why he chose that name.
St. Francis (1182-1226) is indeed known for all those qualities. But
he was known for something else that his modern day namesake fails to
live up to: unapologetically confronting Islam.
According to
St. Francis of Assisi and the Conversion of the Muslims by Frank M. Rega:
Fully aware of the dangers, Francis was determined to go
on a mission to the unbelievers of the Muslim nations. The primary
sources are in agreement that he was now ready to sacrifice his life and
die for Christ, so there can be little doubt that the intent of his
journey was to preach the Gospel even at the risk of martyrdom (p. 43).
Along with saving souls, he sought to save lives as well; to help
bring peace to the turbulent world he lived in, where Christians,
responding to centuries of Islamic invasions and conquests of Christian
lands, had gone to war with Islam, that is, the Crusades:
Converting the Muslims by his preaching was the ultimate
goal of Francis’ efforts, and a peaceful end to the war would be a
consequence of their conversion. In the words of scholar Christoph
Maier, “Francis, like the crusaders, wanted to liberate the holy places
in Palestine from Muslim rule. What was different was his strategy….
He wanted their total submission to the Christian faith” (p. 63).
In 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, Francis and a fellow monk traveled
to the Middle East and sought audience with Sultan al-Kamil—despite
al-Kamil’s vow that “anyone who brought him the head of a Christian
should be awarded with a Byzantine gold piece” (p. 57). St. Francis’
contemporaries also warned him that Muslims “were a mean people who
thirst for Christian blood and attempt even the most brazen atrocities,”
(p. 34). The determined monks continued their journey, only to
experience the inevitable:
The early documents are unanimous in agreeing that the
two Franciscans were subjected to rough treatment upon crossing Muslim
territory. The men of God were seized in a violent manner by the
sentries, assaulted, and bound in chains. Celano reports that Francis
“was captured by the Sultan’s soldiers, was insulted and beaten” yet
showed no fear even when threatened with torture and death (p. 58).
Eventually brought before Sultan al-Kamil, the monks sought to
“demonstrate to the Sultan’s wisest counselors the truth of
Christianity, before which Mohammed’s law [
Sharia] counted for
nothing: for ‘if you die while holding to your law, you will be lost;
God will not accept your soul. For this reason we have come to you.’”
Intrigued by the cheeky monks, “the Sultan called in his religious
advisers, the imams. However, they refused to dispute with the
Christians and instead insisted that they be killed [by beheading], in
accordance with Islamic law (p. 60).”
The sultan refused: “I am going counter to what my religious advisers
demand and will not cut off your heads… you have risked your own lives
in order to save my soul.”
During their disputation and in reference to “the centuries-old
Muslim conquest and occupation of lands, peoples, and nations that had
once been primarily Christian,” Kamil sought to trap the monks with
their own logic: if Jesus had taught Christians to “turn the other
cheek” and “repay evil with good,” he inquired, why were “Crusaders …
invading the lands of the Muslims?”
Francis quipped by also quoting Christ: “If your right eye causes you
to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to
lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into
hell.”
Francis then explained: “That is why it is just that Christians
invade the land you inhabit, for you blaspheme the name of Christ and
alienate everyone you can from His worship”—a reference to
Islam’s dhimmi rules which, along with debilitating Christian worship, make Christian lives so burdensome and degrading that
untold millions had converted to Islam over the centuries to ease their sufferings.
There are more interesting aspects concerning St. Francis’ encounter
with Sultan Kamil, including those that find parallels in the modern
world, such as Sharia’s strict bans on blasphemy against Islam and
evangelizing for Christianity (often seen as one and the same) and call
for the execution of apostates from Islam. They are discussed in
this brief article.
For now, consider some important differences between St. Francis and his modern day namesake, Pope Francis.
While the saint accused Islam of persecuting Christians, and sought
to bring them succor—to the point of putting his life on the line—Pope
Francis refuses to confront Islam. When he has the attention of the
world he habitually fails to condemn or even shed light on
the nonstop Muslim persecution of Christians, including millions of Catholics.
Last year he delivered a nearly hour long speech before the United
Nations. Only once did Francis make reference to persecuted
Christians—and he merged their sufferings in the very same sentence with
the supposedly equal sufferings of “members of the majority religion,”
that is, Sunni Muslims. In reality, of course, Sunnis are not being
slaughtered, beheaded, enslaved, and raped for their faith; are not
having their mosques bombed and burned; are not being jailed or killed
for apostasy, blasphemy, or proselytization. That’s because the
terrorists—whether al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, or ISIS—are Sunnis.
And before that Francis issued
his first encyclical—an important document meant to be relayed to the world’s Catholics—with no mention of persecuted Christians.
More recently, after a journalist
asked Pope Francis about the
slaughter of an 85-year-old priest in France, and how he was clearly “killed in the name of Islam,” the pope disagreed and proceeded to offer
a plethora of absurd and silly rationalizations in defense of Islam.
Nor did St. Francis preach passivity before aggression:
A foremost expert on Francis and the Fifth Crusade,
Professor James Powell, wrote: “Francis of Assisi went to Damietta
[Egypt, where Sultan Kamil was] on a mission of peace. There can be no
question about this. We should not however try to make him a pacifist
or to label him as a critic of the crusade.” Another leading crusade
scholar, Christoph Maier, was even more explicit: “Francis thus accepted
the crusade as both legitimate and ordained by God, and he was quite
obviously not opposed to the use of violence when it came to the
struggle between Christians and Muslims.” At one time Francis had
remarked to his friars that “… paladins and valiant knights who were
mighty in battle pursued the infidels even to death…” Francis admired
the deeds of such brave men because “… the holy martyrs died fighting
for the Faith of Christ” (p.70).
This is why those who know the true biography of St. Francis deplore
his modern day transformation into some sort of Medieval “hippy”—or, in
Pope Francis’ words, “the man of peace, the man who loves and protects
creation.” In 1926 Pope Pius XI issued the following statement:
What evil they do and how far from a true appreciation of
the Man of Assisi [St. Francis] are they who, in order to bolster up
their fantastic and erroneous ideas about him, image such an incredible
thing … that he was the precursor and prophet of that false liberty
which began to manifest itself at the beginning of modern times and
which has caused so many disturbances both in the Church and in civil
society!
In the context of confronting Islam, Rega laments that, “for the
revisionists, the ‘real’ Francis was not a bold Evangelist, but a timid
man, whose goal was to have the friars live passively among the Saracens
[Muslims] and “to be subject to them” (p.95).
A final important point: while St. Francis did not mock
Muhammad—though apparently not enough to dissuade the pious from calling
for his head—he unequivocally portrayed the Muslim prophet’s message as
false. Unlike the diplomatic Pope Francis, who never seems to preach
Christ to Muslims but rather confirms them in and validates their
religion, the sincere saint was actually more concerned with the souls
of Muslims, to the point of putting his own life on the line. This used
to be one of the chief concerns of all popes, the “Vicars of Christ.”
But apparently not for Pope Francis.
In short, there’s a fine line between St. Francis’ compassion and
Pope Francis’ cowardice—or worse, complicity. When it comes to
confronting Islam and standing up for the faith and persecuted
Christians, Pope Francis woefully fails to live up to the brave monk
whose name he appropriated.
Posts
