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While attempting to avoid insulting Islam and its adherents, Pope Francis is dangerously refusing to label Islamic terrorism, and by doing so is refraining from directly addressing the mounting global threat.
Pope Francis on Sunday said he won’t label Islam as “terrorist” because that would be unfair and untrue.
Reporters aboard the papal plane flying him home after a pilgrimage to Poland, which began the day after Islamic terrorists slit the throat of an elderly priest celebrating Mass in a French church and included a visit to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, asked him why he never uses the world “Islam” to describe terrorism or other violence.
Francis replied that “it’s not right to identify Islam with violence. It’s not right and it’s not true.”
He added: “I believe that in every religion there is always a little fundamentalist group.”
“I don’t like to talk of Islamic violence because every day, when I go through the newspapers, I see violence, this man who kills his girlfriend, another who kills his mother-in-law,” Francis said, in apparent reference to crime news in the predominantly Catholic country of Italy. “And these are baptized Catholics. If I speak of Islamic violence, then I have to speak of Catholic violence.”
However, this comparison is not accurate. Whereas crime in Italy is not committed in the name of Catholicism and is driven by impulse or greed, Islamists who carry out terror attacks are doing so in the name of Islam and based on their understanding of the religion. Radical Islam is also at war with the West.
Noting that he has spoken with imams, Francis concluded: “I know how they think, they are looking for peace.”
In Poland, the pope made an unscheduled stop at a church in Krakow to implore God to protect people from the “devastating wave” of terrorism in many parts of the world.
As for the Islamic State (ISIS) group, he said it “presents itself with a violent identity card, but that’s not Islam.”
Expert interpreters of Islam beg to differ, saying that ISIS’ interpretation of Islam is true to the Muslim tradition.
ISIS has openly threatened the Pope, the Vatican and Christians on several occasions.
By: AP and United with Israel Staff
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