The Downside of Dialogue

Crisis Magazine ^ | 9/25/14 | William Kilpatrick

[marshmallow]

Dialoguers say the darndest things. The conclusion to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ document, Revelation: Catholic and Muslim Perspectives, contains the following: “Both Jesus and Muhammad loved and cared for all whom they met, especially the poor and oppressed.”

Would that include the seven hundred men of the Qurayza tribe who were beheaded on Muhammad’s order after they surrendered? Would it include the women and children of the same tribe who were sold into slavery? Muhammad may have cared for some of the poor and oppressed he met, but many people became poor and oppressed precisely because of him. And many others never survived their encounter with the prophet.

What leads Catholic prelates to sign off on a statement that portrays Muhammad as just an earlier version of Will (“I never met a man I didn’t like”) Rogers?

Part of the answer may be simple ignorance. USCCB statements often hold up dialogue as a way to overcome ignorance, but one sometimes gets the impression that the Catholic dialoguers themselves are ignorant of many important Islamic sources. The Koran, for instance, contains only a vague and indirect reference to the Qurayza tribe. For a full account of the slaughter, one would have to read Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah (The Life of Muhammad). That’s not as daunting as it sounds, since a fully indexed English translation is readily available.

[Arthur McGowan]

The USCCB is in the hands of the Hard Catholic Left. They are absolute loons. They are socialist and pro-abortion. There is revolving door from the USCCB and the staffs of Democrats on Capitol Hill.

As for Islam: From top to bottom, i.e., from the Pope on down, the hierarchy parrots the Religion of Peace line. Their commitment to “dialogue” will persist even after a plane flies into the dome of St. Peter’s.

[Oratam]

Daniel Greenfield (The Sultan Knish) wrote a terrific piece on the peculiar insistence of Westerners to believe there is such a thing as moderate Islam.

Here

It's a religion that exists only in the minds of Western liberals and other nonsentient beings. Even Moslems don't believe there is such a thing.

As far as Catholic "dialogue" goes, I think there was a legitimate concern for the well-being of Christians in Moslem lands. That's behind us all now.

Perhaps what sustains this phony ecumenism is the vain hope that a "reformation" might occur within Islam as a result of continuous contact with Christian clerics. If that's the case, how insulting to one's "dialogue partners."

I think Moslem clerics engage in it as a distraction, a form of taqiya, simply buying time until, now actually.

[redgolum]

Choose who you will serve.

[Arthur McGowan]

Thanks for the link to Greenfield.

Cardinals O’Malley, Dolan, and Wuerl, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are precisely the post-Christians Greenfield is writing about. They are socialist, openly, and they are as pro-abortion as they dare to be, given that they have to keep up the pretense of being “Catholic.”

[ebb tide]

“Both Jesus and Muhammad loved and cared for all whom they met, especially the poor and oppressed.”

May St. John the Baptist protect Islam....St. John Paul II