The Pope And The Grand Imam--Only One Has Left The Middle Ages Behind

Andrew Bostom takes advantage of Pope Benedict's visit to the US to compare the Pope with Grand Imam Tantawi. On the one hand:

Earlier, writing in December 2000, the future pope (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) affirmed his close alignment with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and the ecumenical thought of his predecessor and dear friend, Pope John Paul II. Ratzinger's statement reiterates this "new vision of Jewish-Christian relations," and even acknowledges a role for Christian anti-Semitism in the Holocaust itself:

Down through the history of Christianity, already-strained relations deteriorated further, even giving birth in many cases to anti-Jewish attitudes, which throughout history have led to deplorable acts of violence. Even if the most recent, loathsome experience of the Shoah was perpetrated in the name of an anti-Christian ideology, which tried to strike the Christian faith at its Abrahamic roots in the people of Israel, it cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance to this atrocity on the part of Christians can be explained by an inherited anti-Judaism present in the hearts of not a few Christians.

He then implores that a new relationship be forged between the Church and Israel out of the tragic ashes of the Holocaust, based upon overcoming "every kind of anti-Judaism," and engaging in sincere, meaningful dialogue.

Then there is the Grand Imam:

In contrast to the pope, consider Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the current Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. For more than a thousand years, since its founding in 792 A.D., Al-Azhar, has served as the academic shrine — much as Mecca is the religious shrine — of the global Sunni Muslim community (Sunnis are about 90 percent of Muslims).

Tantawi's Ph.D. thesis, Banu Israil fi al-Quran wa-al-Sunnah (Jews in the Koran and the Traditions), was published in 1968-69. In 1980 he became the head of the Tafsir (Koranic Commentary) Department of the University of Medina, Saudi Arabia — a position he held until 1984. Tantawi became Grand Mufti of Egypt in 1986, and a decade later he took his current post as Grand Imam.

My forthcoming book The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism includes extensive, first-time English translations of Jews in the Koran and the Traditions. In the 700-page treatise, Tantawi wrote these words:

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people's wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness. . . . Only a minority of the Jews keep their word [Koranic citations here]. . . . All Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.

These are the expressed, "carefully researched" views on Jews held by the nearest Muslim equivalent to a pope.

Actually, back in 2002 MEMRI noted that Tantawi had a change of heart regarding suicide bombings. He changed his mind and decided to support them:

Within the past year, Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, the top Egyptian cleric of Al­Azhar University, has shifted his position regarding the targeting of civilians in suicide bombings. While he previously stated that Palestinians should refrain from targeting civilians, he recently declared that martyrdom (suicide) operations and the killing of civilians are permitted acts and that more such attacks should be carried out. Tantawi's positions were posted on www.lailatalqadr.com, a website associated with Al­Azhar.

"[Sheikh Tantawi] emphasized that every martyrdom operation against any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and an Islamic commandment, until the people of Palestine regain their land and cause the cruel Israeli aggression to retreat…" [emphasis added]

In an editorial last year addressing the case of the 6 Imams who were removed from a plane after acting suspiciously, the Investor's Business Daily notes the activities of other Imams:

Omar Abdul-Rahman, a blind sheikh, is serving a life term for plotting to blow up several New York landmarks. Imam Ali al-Timimi, a native Washingtonian, is also behind bars for soliciting local Muslims to kill fellow Americans. Imams in New York were recently busted for buying shoulder-fired missiles. Another in Lodi, Calif., planned an al-Qaida terror camp there.

In his book The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis paints a picture of Islam that implies that Imams such as Tantawi and his friends are making up the rules as they go:

Because holy war is an obligation of the faith, it is elaborately regulated in the sharia. Fighters in a jihad are enjoined not to kill women, children, and the aged unless they attack first, not to torture or mutilate prisoner, to give fair warning of the resumption of hostilities after a truce, and to honor agreements. [p. 39]

Besides dictating who can be attacked, Sharia also dictates how:

The medieval jurists and theologians discuss at some length the rules of warfare, including questions such as which weapons are permitted and which are not. There is even some discussion in medieval texts of the lawfulness of missile and chemical warfare, the one relating to mangonels and catapults, the other to poison-tipped arrows and the poisoning of enemy water supplies. On these points there is considerable variation. Some jurists permit, some restrict, some disapprove of the use of these weapons. The stated reason for concern is the indiscriminate casualties that they inflict. At no point do the basic texts of Islam enjoin terrorism and murder. At no point--as far as I am aware--do they even consider the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders. [p. 39.]

Which leaves the question of what do you do when the Imams themselves do not follow Islamic law.

Read Bostom's article.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad

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