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Pope Francis claimed Our Lady ‘unites’ Christians and Muslims. Here’s why that’s wrong
LifeSite News ^ | May 31, 2024 | Raymond Ibrahim

Posted on 06/02/2024 6:06:24 PM PDT by ebb tide

Pope Francis claimed Our Lady ‘unites’ Christians and Muslims. Here’s why that’s wrong

Pope Francis paid a visit to detainees at Verona’s Montorio Prison and 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.'

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).


TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; Theology
KEYWORDS: apostatepope; excathedra; frankenchurch; morepopenews; romancatholic; splintersectinrome
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To: delchiante
I wasnt there to take account of who was there.

Were you there when Mary supposedly bore other children?

81 posted on 06/03/2024 6:20:56 PM PDT by ebb tide
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To: ebb tide

Paul’s Jesus is the Passover Lamb, the Unleavened Bread of Sincerity and Truth and First Fruit of those fallen asleep.

That’s Paul’s first/chief importance of the gospel, in accordance with the scriptures..

The Papacy doesn’t have that as their first/chief importance of the gospel.

The Papacy has three different days that compete with those scriptural days that the scriptures and Paul details.

The Papacy doesn’t get His birth right either, but that’s not the first/chief importance of the gospel.

Testing and proving all things is not something you buy into, but it is a remarkable way to tell the falsehoods and inherited lies from the scriptural Truth..


82 posted on 06/03/2024 6:25:16 PM PDT by delchiante
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To: delchiante
Paul’s Jesus is the Passover Lamb, the Unleavened Bread of Sincerity and Truth and First Fruit of those fallen asleep.

Yet, you just stated, "...the Apostles don’t have the same Jesus nor the same gospel" as delchiate does.

83 posted on 06/03/2024 6:29:23 PM PDT by ebb tide
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To: ebb tide

No, but I also wasn’t there when Joseph ‘knew her’.

Perpetual virginity was your claim.
Not mine

The scriptures state Joseph knew her after Christ was born.

How many kids came of it?
No clue.
But perpetually virgin doctrine of demon falls..

It won’t fall from your beliefs but I don’t claim your Mary, so I just accept you have another Mary than the biblical Mary..


84 posted on 06/03/2024 6:31:27 PM PDT by delchiante
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To: delchiante

Again with the “no clue”?


85 posted on 06/03/2024 6:32:46 PM PDT by ebb tide
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To: delchiante
..so I just accept you have another Mary than the biblical Mary.

That you do. And you have also admitted that you have another "jesus" than the Jesus Christ that the Apostles had.

86 posted on 06/03/2024 6:36:31 PM PDT by ebb tide
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To: Trump_Triumphant
Never said you did say they were brothers. That's usually the argument advanced by RC apologists.

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.

Except of course, the accounts in the New Testament by people who actually investigated the situation as in Luke's case.

87 posted on 06/03/2024 6:39:13 PM PDT by ealgeone
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To: ebb tide

No,the Apostles don’t have the same Jesus and gospel as the Papacy.

I simply agree with the Apostles version of Truth, in accordance with the scriptures.


88 posted on 06/03/2024 6:39:41 PM PDT by delchiante
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To: delchiante
Was it recorded in each gospel or just John?

Ah, another cherry-picker. Join the evergrowing crowd.

89 posted on 06/03/2024 6:41:09 PM PDT by ebb tide
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To: delchiante

That’s not what you said earlier.

Can’t you make up your mind?


90 posted on 06/03/2024 6:42:40 PM PDT by ebb tide
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To: ebb tide; delchiante
Who were the authors of the Gospel? Were they not Apostles? Were they not at the Last Supper?

You might want to check the Bible for your answer. You know the Bible....right?? The Book Rome claims to have given everyone.

And nothing in it about trusting in an idol like the Brown Scapular.

91 posted on 06/03/2024 6:47:36 PM PDT by ealgeone
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To: ebb tide

Delchiante quote
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..
.......

Um,this is my statement above..

I stated the Papacy and the Apostles have a different Jesus and a different gospel (focused on the first/chief importance per Paul)

Somehow you read that and misunderstood it or misinterpreted it.

Here’s a summary
The Apostle’s Jesus vs the Papacy Jesus
The Apostle’s gospel vs the Papacy gospel
The Apostle’s Mary vs the Papacy Mary

I’m nowhere in that summation, ebb,even if you try to put me in there...

Who knew there was a different version that could be told from the scriptures that isn’t in accordance with a Beastly catechism and calendar?

Count yourself as one who now knows there’s a competing version of Truth out there, in accordance with the Scriptures..


92 posted on 06/03/2024 6:57:21 PM PDT by delchiante
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To: delchiante

You said, “...the Apostles don’t have the same Jesus nor the same gospel”.

I did not misunderstand anything.


93 posted on 06/03/2024 7:08:09 PM PDT by ebb tide
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To: delchiante
You might want to check the Bible for your answer.

Were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John not apostles?

Where is the Gospel of Eagle One? Where is the Gospel of Delchiante?

94 posted on 06/03/2024 7:11:58 PM PDT by ebb tide
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To: ebb tide; delchiante
You said, “...the Apostles don’t have the same Jesus nor the same gospel”.

To: ebb tide

No,the Apostles don’t have the same Jesus and gospel as the Papacy.

I simply agree with the Apostles version of Truth, in accordance with the scriptures.

88 posted on 6/3/2024, 9:39:41 PM by delchiante [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 83 | View Replies | Report Abuse]

95 posted on 06/03/2024 7:12:53 PM PDT by ealgeone
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To: ebb tide

Check again.....that scapular is blinding you to the answer.


96 posted on 06/03/2024 7:14:00 PM PDT by ealgeone
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To: ebb tide

I gave you a nice little chart so you can see the issue plainly now..

And you are well within your right to follow the Papacy.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Roman Beast has a counterfeit Christ that isn’t the Passover Lamb,isn’t the Unleavened Bread of Sincerety and Truth, isn’t the First Fruits of those fallen asleep.

And the only way to tell the difference between the counterfeit and the Genuine, is the scriptures.

The Words and Deeds are identical.
The Holy Days that the Beast tries to sell as Truth are counterfeits..

The Apostles weren’t faced with that kind of test, but the last 2,000 years has brought in much leaven and doctrines of demons designed to deceive..


97 posted on 06/03/2024 7:23:32 PM PDT by delchiante
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To: ealgeone; delchiante

I’ll leave you two to further debate between yourselves on how to further deny the authors of the Gospel were only Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and that they did not have Jesus nor the Gospel.

I don’t understand nor believe in y’all’s “talking in tongues”.


98 posted on 06/03/2024 7:27:44 PM PDT by ebb tide
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To: delchiante
I gave you a nice little chart so you can see the issue plainly now..

Please, no more talking in tongues. I'm not buying it. It's for kooks.

99 posted on 06/03/2024 7:30:23 PM PDT by ebb tide
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I think someone is jealous.

Satan is also jealous of those he can’t claim to be his own.


100 posted on 06/03/2024 7:35:26 PM PDT by ebb tide
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