Yassine Baradai is simply enunciating standard Islamic theology, which holds that all the Biblical prophets were Muslims (cf. Qur’an 3:67, which says it about Abraham), and that their wayward followers then twisted and hijacked their teachings to create Judaism and Christianity. But the Pope and the Italian Catholic bishops either don’t know this or are afraid that acknowledging its truth will harm the spurious “dialogue” they’re having with Muslim leaders such as Yassine Baradai. That “dialogue” hasn’t produced one single positive result. It hasn’t prevented one Christian from being persecuted, or one church from being burned. But the Pope and bishops are too deeply committed to it to admit its failure.
“Top Muslim Torpedoes Interfaith Dialogue,” by Jules Gomes, ChurchMilitant.com, September 24, 2020:
PIACENZA, Italy (ChurchMilitant.com) – Italy’s top Muslim leader, whose organization supports Pope Francis’ pact with Islam, is causing acute embarrassment to Catholic apologists of interfaith dialogue after he insulted Jews and Christians as heretics.
Yassine Baradai, national secretary of the Union of Islamic Communities of Italy (UCOII) — the largest umbrella organization of the Islamic communities in Italy — sparked outrage after trashing Judaism and Christianity as “heresy” and a “manipulation of the original message of the prophets.”
“Indeed, both these creeds are heresy according to Islam,” and the Koran, Baradai wrote in an Aug. 29 Facebook post summarizing a sermon he’d delivered to mark the festival of Ashura.
“If it were otherwise, we as Muslims would be required to follow Judaism or Christianity, but Islam corrects the crippling made in the residual scriptures of the Torah and the gospel,” Baradai remarked.
“Salvation was offered to the Israelite people and not the Jewish people, who are of recent nascency” since “the children of Israel weren’t Jews,” Baradai argued.
The preacher also claimed that the Old Testament prophets “were not Jews, but Muslims” and “the children of Israel and the Jews are two different things.”
‘Slap in the Face’
“Not a single Jewish leader or Catholic bishop has the courage to protest and debunk these blasphemous public statements against the two Abrahamic religions, even though UCOII is seen as a leading member of the Catholic-Muslim dialogue scene in Italy,” Francesco Maggio, expert in interreligious relations with Islam for Italy, told Church Militant.
“Baradai’s statement is a slap in the face of Vatican II’s pronouncements that ‘Islam is among the three Abrahamic religions’ and that ‘Muslims worship with us a single, merciful God’ — a position from which evangelicals adhering to the Bible have always distanced themselves,” Maggio noted.
“However, UCOII feels the time is now ripe to turn the Vatican’s inclusive policy into an exclusivist policy and thus subvert everything,” he observed.
“And since we are talking about dialogue here, I clearly do not see the same spirit coming from this Islamic leader, the current national secretary of the UCOII.”
Maggio also said Catholic leaders were deliberately “maintaining radio silence” for fear that the controversy might “raise a stink” just before Pope Francis signs his Fratelli Tutti (“All Brothers”) encyclical on human fraternity in Assisi on Oct. 3….
“Top Muslim Torpedoes Interfaith Dialogue,” by Jules Gomes, ChurchMilitant.com, September 24, 2020:
PIACENZA, Italy (ChurchMilitant.com) – Italy’s top Muslim leader, whose organization supports Pope Francis’ pact with Islam, is causing acute embarrassment to Catholic apologists of interfaith dialogue after he insulted Jews and Christians as heretics.
Yassine Baradai, national secretary of the Union of Islamic Communities of Italy (UCOII) — the largest umbrella organization of the Islamic communities in Italy — sparked outrage after trashing Judaism and Christianity as “heresy” and a “manipulation of the original message of the prophets.”
“Indeed, both these creeds are heresy according to Islam,” and the Koran, Baradai wrote in an Aug. 29 Facebook post summarizing a sermon he’d delivered to mark the festival of Ashura.
“If it were otherwise, we as Muslims would be required to follow Judaism or Christianity, but Islam corrects the crippling made in the residual scriptures of the Torah and the gospel,” Baradai remarked.
“Salvation was offered to the Israelite people and not the Jewish people, who are of recent nascency” since “the children of Israel weren’t Jews,” Baradai argued.
The preacher also claimed that the Old Testament prophets “were not Jews, but Muslims” and “the children of Israel and the Jews are two different things.”
‘Slap in the Face’
“Not a single Jewish leader or Catholic bishop has the courage to protest and debunk these blasphemous public statements against the two Abrahamic religions, even though UCOII is seen as a leading member of the Catholic-Muslim dialogue scene in Italy,” Francesco Maggio, expert in interreligious relations with Islam for Italy, told Church Militant.
“Baradai’s statement is a slap in the face of Vatican II’s pronouncements that ‘Islam is among the three Abrahamic religions’ and that ‘Muslims worship with us a single, merciful God’ — a position from which evangelicals adhering to the Bible have always distanced themselves,” Maggio noted.
“However, UCOII feels the time is now ripe to turn the Vatican’s inclusive policy into an exclusivist policy and thus subvert everything,” he observed.
“And since we are talking about dialogue here, I clearly do not see the same spirit coming from this Islamic leader, the current national secretary of the UCOII.”
Maggio also said Catholic leaders were deliberately “maintaining radio silence” for fear that the controversy might “raise a stink” just before Pope Francis signs his Fratelli Tutti (“All Brothers”) encyclical on human fraternity in Assisi on Oct. 3….
