Posted on 06/02/2024 6:06:24 PM PDT by ebb tide
Catholics may be surprised to learn that the Vatican is exaggerating the similarities between the Blessed Virgin Mary and the figure of Mary, Mother of Jesus, as she appears in the Koran and Muslim hadiths (traditions about Muhammad, the founder of Islam).
On May 18 this year, Pope Francis paid a visit to detainees at Verona’s Montorio Prison, and upon bestowing an icon of the Madonna and Child upon the apparently multi-faith jail, he stated to applause that “the figure of Mary is a figure common to both Christianity and Islam. She is a common figure; she unites us all.”
If this seems innocuous, it also falls in line with the Vatican’s many attempts to convince Catholics that Islam is somehow a “sister faith,” when, in fact, Islam appropriates the names and sacred auras of biblical figures, but then recasts them with completely different, anti-biblical attributes.
In early 2021, for example, the Marian academy in Rome launched a 10-week webinar series titled “Mary, a model for faith and life for Christianity and Islam” in collaboration with the Grand Mosque of Rome and the Islamic Cultural Center of Italy.
Based on his belief that Mary is “a Jewish, Christian and Muslim woman,” Catholic priest, Fr. Gian Matteo Roggio, organizer of the Muslim-Catholic initiative, said he hoped to use “Our Lady” as a model of “open borders” between religious and multicultural worlds.
Easier said than done — at least for those still interested in facts.
For starters, the claim that Mary was a “Jewish, Christian and Muslim woman” is only two-thirds true: yes, she was a Jew by race and background; and yes, she was a Christian in that she literally birthed Christ (ianity); but she was most certainly not a Muslim — a term and religion that came into being 600 years after Mary’s life on earth.
Worse, far from being the Eternal Virgin, as she is revered by the 1.5 billion Christians of the Catholic and Orthodox variety, Islam presents Mary, the Mother of Christ, as “married” to Muhammad in paradise — a claim that would seem to sever rather than build “bridges.”
READ: Spanish priest faces three years in prison for alleged ‘hate crime’ of criticizing Islam
In a hadith that was deemed reliable enough to be included in the corpus of the renowned Ibn Kathir (1300 – 1373), Muhammad declared that “Allah will wed me in paradise to Mary, Daughter of Imran,” whom Muslims identify with Jesus’s mother.
Nor is this just some random, obscure hadith. Dr. Salem Abdul Galil — previously deputy minister of Egypt’s religious endowments for preaching — affirmed its canonicity in 2017 during a live televised Arabic-language program. Among other biblical women (Moses’s sister and Pharaoh’s wife), “our prophet Muhammad — prayers and be upon him — will be married to Mary in paradise,” Galil said.
If few Christians today know about this Islamic claim, medieval Christians living in Muslim-occupied nations were certainly aware of it. There, spiteful Muslims regularly threw it in the face of Catholic and Orthodox Christians who venerated Mary as the “Eternal Virgin.” Thus, Eulogius of Cordoba, an indigenous Christian of Muslim-occupied Spain, once wrote, “I will not repeat the sacrilege which that impure dog [Muhammad] dared proffer about the Blessed Virgin, Queen of the World, holy mother of our venerable Lord and Savior. He claimed that in the next world he would deflower her.”
As usual, it was Eulogius’s offensive words about Muhammad — and not the latter’s obscene words about Mary — that had dire consequences: Eulogius, along with many other Spanish Christians vociferously critical of Muhammad, were found guilty of speaking against Islam and publicly tortured and executed in “Golden Age” Cordoba in 859 AD.
One expects that all of these inconvenient facts will be quietly passed over during the Vatican and Pontifical International Marian Academy’s “outreach” to Muslims. And if raised, no doubt Christians will somehow take the blame, as almost always happens in academic settings.
As one example, after quoting Eulogius’s aforementioned lament against Muhammad’s claim of being married to Mary, John V. Tolan, a professor and member of Academia Europaea, denounced it as an “outrageous claim” of Eulogius’s own “invention.” He then railed against the martyr — not against his murderers or their prophet:
Eulogius fabricates lies designed to shock his Christian reader. This way, even those elements of Islam that resemble Christianity (such as reverence of Jesus and his virgin mother) are deformed and blackened, so as to prevent the Christian from admiring anything about the Muslim other. The goal is to inspire hatred for the “oppressors”…. Eulogius sets out to show that the Muslim is not a friend but a potential rapist of Christ’s virgins. (Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, p.93)
As already seen, however, it is Muhammad himself (or, to be strictly accurate, the hadith) — not any “Christian polemicist” — who “fabricates lies designed to shock,” namely that Mary will be his eternal concubine.
This, incidentally, is the main problem the purveyors of “Abrahamism” fail to acknowledge: Islam does not treat biblical characters the way Christianity does.
Christians accept the text of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, as it is. They do not add, take away, or distort the accounts of the patriarchs that Jews also rely on.
Conversely, while also relying on the figures of the Old and New Testaments — for the weight of antiquity and authority attached to their names — Islam completely recasts them with different attributes that reaffirm Muhammad’s religion as the one true and final “revelation,” as opposed to Judaism and Christianity, whose original biblical accounts on these figures are then seen as “distorted” because they are different from Islam’s later revisions.
READ: Cardinal Dolan equates Easter with Ramadan, Passover, says all are about ‘triumph of light and life’
Far from creating “commonalities,” it should be clear that such appropriation creates conflict. By way of analogy, imagine that you have a grandfather whom you are particularly fond of, and out of the blue, a stranger who never even met your grandfather says: “Hey, that’s my grandfather!” Then — lest you think this stranger is somehow trying to ingratiate himself to you — he adds, “And everything you think grandpa said and did is wrong! Only I have his true life story.”
Would that create—or rather burn—“bridges” between you and this insolent stranger?
Raymond Ibrahim is the author of Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam (2022), Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West (2018), Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013), and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007).
It only took 21 minutes. He's outdone himself!
That scapular idol has really demented your mind.
It's going to drag you down to the very place you're so desperate to avoid.
Only faith in Christ, and only Christ, can save you.
This has been shared with you many times.
And you’ll continue to see it....that guilt, ebb...that guilt.
This is why Satan hates the Brown Scapular
The Scapular – A Powerful Weapon against the Devil
Only a demented mind would join Satan in his attacks.
Someone is bearing false witness. Not a first for him, though.
8But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! 9As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!
Galatians 1:6-9 NASB 95
10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. 11Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14Stand firm therefore, HAVING GIRDED YOUR LOINS WITH TRUTH, and HAVING PUT ON THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, 15and having shod YOUR FEET WITH THE PREPARATION OF THE GOSPEL OF PEACE; 16in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17And take THE HELMET OF SALVATION, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Eph 6:10-17 NASB 95
John 20:23
23 Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained [John 20:23]
Your snide remarks aside, I never said that the brothers were cousins. I believe Joseph was a widower who had other children before he became betrothed to the Blessed Virgin. It’s an ancient tradition, much older than the “cousins” idea, which became popular in the 5th century. As far as your opinion on Catholic apologetics, there isn’t one ancient document, writing or statement that Mary didn’t remain a virgin after Our Lord’s birth. The tradition was held even post-reform
"Only approved" by one lone person who can't even spell "eagle".
No, I didn’t have a scriptural answer to your gotcha type question..
That’s an honest answer to your question
I never said that the brothers were cousins. I believe Joseph was a widower who had other children before he became betrothed to the Blessed Virgin. It’s an ancient tradition, much older than the “cousins” idea, which became popular in the 5th century. As far as your opinion on Catholic apologetics, there isn’t one ancient document, writing or statement that Mary didn’t remain a virgin after Our Lord’s birth. The tradition was held even post-reformation.
No one thinks that Mary and Joseph having relations would be sinful. But Our Lady held eternity in her womb. I think their marriage was a bit different from other marriages.
The Roman Catholic Mary can be a perpetual virgin if they want..
It doesn’t make her the real deal.
And that’s the real rub.
Genuine vs fake/false
Scripture is a powerful weapon to tell the difference..
Sorry for the double post.
Straining at gnats while swallowing camels.
And that was my honest assessment of your “knowledge” of Scripture.
Martin Luther was at the start of the last 500 years.
If he lived when the Papacy finally got their own calendar, maybe the lightbulbs would have gone off and he would have attempted to flee Rome doctrines then..
The Papacy and the Apostles don’t have the same Jesus nor the same gospel.
And it looks like they don’t have the same Mary either..
Lots has happened in about 2,000 years, let alone the last 500.
I wasnt there to take account of who was there.
All I can tell from the scriptures is that Christ’s mother was told to go home with one of His Disciples.
That’s it.
That’s all the scriptures say.
I do know when the bible says Maybe didn’t ‘know her’ until after Christ was born doesn’t mean he met her after the event..
Maybe you need to brush up on biblical marriage and the covenant that’s created when the man ‘knows’ his bride..
That's quite interesting. The Apostles don't have the same Jesus nor the same gospel?
Who were the authors of the Gospel? Were they not Apostles? Were they not at the Last Supper?
Yet, delchiate's little personal "jesus" has nothing to with his apostles, nor the Gospel they preached.
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