Janus in Vatican
With all due respect, Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran - who is supposedly responsible for the Vatican’s main liaison agency with the Islamic world, needs to do better if he wants to promote peace amongst Christianity and other religions.
Consider this report where he highlights the “extreme” case of Saudi Arabia where freedom of religion was “violated absolutely” with “no Christian churches and a ban on celebrating Mass, even in a private home”. He started off well, calling for a “culture of peace and solidarity that honours all human creatures” (although I think other animals should be loved too, but hey) - but the statement above that teases to link Islam and extremism is uncalled for.
A word of caution for the Guardian too (in fact, more than just a word) - their title reads “Vatican urges Muslim respect for all faiths”, it talks about a Cardinal showing concerns over extremism in Saudi Arabia, and it also carries a paragraph which reads:
The cardinal’s Eid greeting does not single out Muslims for criticism - his appeals are aimed at “religious believers” - nor does he make a direct link between Islam and violence.
Rrrright. And pigs fly.
So Saudi Arabia is extreme in its approach, which is why it doesn’t go down too well with the non-Muslim community. I’ve known a few Christians and Hindus I worked with who feared being sent to that country on an assignment. But tell you what - the KSA was never known to be too compassionate towards people from other faiths anyway. They’ve always been regarded (and recognized) as the custodians of Islam, they’ve always propagated the religious importance of Mecca throughout the country, and the bottom-line is, they are an Islamic state - they’re very clear on what they permit in their nation.
The Vatican ought to focus on improving their relationships with the Muslim world constructively than ‘urging them to respect all faiths’, sprinkling in chatter on terrorism and extremism. It paints a two-faced picture of them that really doesn’t help, considering that this is the same Vatican who protested against the construction of Mosque in Nazareth.
May I also remind the Vatican that the Muslim community, in general, has been more compassionate towards Christians than any other religion. In the ‘metropolitan’ city of Dubai, the commercial hub in the ‘Islamic’ government of the United Arab Emirates, there are at least two Catholic churches and one Protestant church. Orthodox too.
And two lame excuses for Hindu temples.
Sharjah - the most cultured (and extreme) Islamic city in the Emirates - has a church as well, as does Abu Dhabi. No temple in any of those cities. 140kms - Abu Dhabi to Dubai - is a long distance to travel atleast once a week, don’t you think, for someone who wants to offer worship?
Talk about cross-cultural marriages, an upcoming trend in today’s day and age where cultural harmony is peaking, Islam permits more compatibility and is more lenient to Catholics marrying people of their faith. In hindsight and at the grassroots, Catholics and Muslims are a lot closer to each other than the Vatican suggests.
I, for one, got nothing against the Christians (or the Hindus, or the Muslims, or the Sikhs - or any religion for that matter). I went to a Catholic school, I was schooled by nuns, our sweaty bunch of volleyball enthusiasts would prostrate in front of Mary outside Church, we went to Mass even, helped decorate Christmas trees and even built a Crib to celebrate and signify the birth of Christ. I don’t need anyone to tell me how compassionate the Christian people are, how peace-loving and optimistic they are, and how warm their homes are.
It just sickens me to think that the ‘custodians’ of such a wonderful community pass such comments at a global level. It fuels hatred for not-so-fortunate Hindus and Muslims who believe what they hear and read without actually sharing their lives with the Christians, or vice-versa.
In any case, chances of Muslims listening to “the Pope’s interfaith expert” are remote, to say the least.
