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Possible ISIS Attack on Pope Francis Thwarted

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News reports out of Italy indicate that a potential terror attack on Pope Francis was thwarted today when four suspects were arrested in two countries:

Acting on a tip from the FBI, Italian authorities arrested four people in Italy and Kosovo Tuesday who were suspected of planning an attack on Pope Francis, the Local reported. The seat of the Roman Catholic Church is the Vatican, situated just outside of Rome, where security has been high since the Islamic terror group known as the Islamic State, ISIS or Daesh, threatened attacks on the Italian capital.

All four people arrested by police during raids in Brescia, Vicenza and Perugia, Italy and Kosovo are from Kosovo, a region inside Serbia in southeastern Europe where international recognition remains disputed. The four people stand accused of participation in a terror ring with specific intent to target the pope.

“The [alleged] terrorist team propagated the ideology of jihad through social networks,” police said, as reported by the Local. The group allegedly claimed on social media that Francis would be “the last pope.”

Some will no doubt ask themselves: why, when Pope Francis has been so conciliatory and even complimentary toward Muslims, would they want to kill him?

1P5’s Islamic expert Andrew Bieszad offered an explanation in his article, Does the Islamic State Want to Assassinate the Pope? 5 Things Catholics Need to Know:

As I’ve previously written, the public statements made by Pope Francis concerning Islam are not only incorrect, but dangerous. Despite the pope’s attempts to be conciliatory towards Islam, it is a religion inherently prone to violence. According to Islamic theology, an individual’s human dignity is conditional upon their belief in and practice of Islam. Non-Muslims, while they possess the form and attributes of persons, are (according to long-held Islamic understanding) no different than animals, and can be treated as such. This makes violent treatment of non-Muslims entirely acceptable according to the precepts of the Islamic faith.

The Catholic Faith instructs us that God is Love (1 John 4:8), and that we must show charity even to our enemies. As Catholics, we abhor ideology that does not honor basic human dignity.

But for Muslims, the understanding of non-Muslims as somehow less than human is simply a reality that cannot be changed, since Islam teaches that this is a truth which has been divinely revealed. Islam defines Allah’s nature in terms of his will, since Allah does what he wills (Quran 14:29) for no reason other than will itself. The Catholic Faith honors and rewards mercy and love, and spreads by encouraging the hearts of men to seek the true way to go to God in a world filled with sin and evil. Islam, however, honors and rewards force and power, and promises the pinnacle of worldly delights and even vengeance as the consummate measure of blessing in this life and the hereafter.

Islam teaches that a Muslim may lie if it is done “in the cause of Allah.” What is this cause? It is traditionally defined by Islamic theologians as the process of making converts to Islam, or in fighting jihad. Muslims have a name for this form of lying: taqiyya. One of the most common forms of taqiyya in modern times has been the effort to spread the notion that Islam is a “religion of peace.” In reality, Islam is very clear that aggressive war against non-Muslims and religious piety are inseparably related:

“Verily, Paradise is under the shade of swords”

(Bukhari, Book 52, #73)

Narrated Ibn ‘Umar: Allah’s Apostle said: “I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform a that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done…

The fact is that from an Islamic viewpoint, Pope Francis’ statements about the Muslim faith actually further Islamic beliefs. However, he is not only not of their faith but is the leader of the largest group of Christians in the world. In the Muslim mind, this sets up a paradox — an infidel of the highest order is supporting their religious ideas, yet he is manifestly not a Muslim. The question about Pope Francis for Muslims becomes whether is he going to fully accept Islam (since he is already promoting it) or persist in his infidelity, and thus merit the punishment for infidels. What Pope Francis may see as an act of outreach and solidarity to Muslims is actually interpreted by Islamic theology as a form of partial consent to the Islamic faith, and thus merits an aggressive push to encourage him to complete the process of his conversion to Islam.

How aggressive? There’s a reason why Islam is known as a religion which “converts by the sword.”

The fact is, despite the pope’s overtures of friendship toward Islam, it is impossible for Muslims to ever love and respect non-Muslims, as their theology forbids them from doing so. What they do respect is power. The way Catholics can earn the respect of Muslims is not to apologize for our beliefs, but to stand firm in them, and persist in spite of all opposition. To win converts from Islam, the Catholic Church must show strength and promulgate truth greater than that shown Islam itself. It can do this by holding its ground, professing without fear the Gospel of “Christ crucified” and the doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus – outside the Church, there is no salvation.

Anything less is asking for trouble.

That’s only the first reason. See the other four here.

Remember, too, that the Islamic State invariably mentions in its statements that it plans to attack Rome. Some commentators have interpreted this to mean a broad metaphor for the West, and of those nations that comprise the remains of Christendom. But ISIS made its specific aims quite clear when a picture of its flag was photoshopped onto the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square last year on the cover of Dabiq, the official publication of the Islamic State:

magazine-dabiq (1)

Islam has a long memory. The soldiers of ISIS are still fighting the great battles of history, especially those in which the forces of Islam lost to the Catholic armies of Europe. Whether or not the individuals arrested today were capable of carrying out an attack, the threat to the Vatican is real. As I’ve written before, it’s time for Rome to wake up be ready.

15 thoughts on “Possible ISIS Attack on Pope Francis Thwarted”

  1. I think he should just stay home from now on. It’s safer for his person and safer for The Church because it keeps him off airplanes.

    Reply
  2. Pope Francis rode in car with an Imam while in Kenya. Everything is ok, no reason to be afraid, except of those fundamentalists, which seems to include traditional catholics

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  3. The hubris in thinking one can convert the nations by attempting to tell others what they ‘really’ believe is astounding. I cannot help but think that ‘believing’ Muslims will be offended by what the Holy Father had to say. His statements continually prove that he knows nothing of what it means to be Muslim and his incessant simplifications could be more of an irritant than anything else.

    Reply
    • Why should he know anything of what it means to be Muslim? He doesn’t know anything of what it means to be Catholic.

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      • Exactly, Deacon. It is a grandiose presumption that not knowing your Faith or being weak in expressing it is a common bond of which to be proud. One to make you smile. That is why the presumption of tepidity, that is Francis announcing that Muslims are tepid and/or really in union with Catholics, is insulting to them.

        My husband when overseas earned the respect of those Muslims he encountered just by praying grace before meals. The commentary, you are not like others who say they believe in God but never pray. Did he attempt to pray with them? NO. Did they respect him for it. Yes.

        Reply
  4. It is not surprising that Muslims are planning to attack the Pope. Discord and disruption are weapons in their armoury. The Pope is after all to them the head of a sect of unbelievers.
    Francis’s statements about Islam are not only wrong but can in no way be considered Catholic. They would be considered offensive by many, at least 30 +, of his papal pre-decessors.
    Charity yes, but Truth also. When we see evil then say so.

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  5. Unfortunately for the West, Pope Francis isn’t the only seriously deluded non-Muslim. If you want to rapidly stop conversation at a Christmas party this month, talk to the nice people there, the bien pensants, in terms similar to those used here by Andrew Bieszad. Watch their faces blanch as the party’s host rushes to change the topic of conversation to absolutely anything else. Americans and Europeans have fed so long at the trough of purblind stupidity, have ingurgitated so much of the sentimental slop peddled by the likes of Oprah and those of her ilk, that they have lost the ability to think straight about what they see happening all around them. And, if they are Catholics, they frequently worsen matters by pretending their credulity is Christian charity or benevolence.

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    • Johnny…that was so eloquently stated and so true. Here on the east coast, to even mention anything connected to Islam is to get nasty looks for one’s non PC manner of speaking. The Seminary in Hartford CT is now a Catholic/Islamic dialogue center..and I get sick just thinking about that fact. A couple years ago Robt Spencer was invited to speak at the Catholic Men’s club of Worcester, MA.
      A day before he was to come and ‘dialogue’ with the local imams of Worcester, Bishop McManus contacted Spencer and told him not to come…no doubt, the Bishop thought Spencer might become confrontational..Surely cannot have that!
      I, along with others in New England, were upset that the BIshop told R Spencer to stay home….many of us wrote to the bishop asking why he prevented him from coming. Of course, I never get any responses from my 3 letters so I called and got some stooge in the Bishop’s rectory…who said a bunch of nothing..blah, blah. It was less than a month later I read in the paper that the Bishop did a hit and run accident while DUI….hope that was a wake up call for the sad sack.

      Reply
      • If we survive the current onslaught, many will one day wonder why we refused to listen to writers like Robert Spencer, Ibn Warraq, William Kilpatrick, and a host of others who tried to warn us about the Mohammedan menace. Men and women from that future time will read the thoughts about Islam of men like Pope Francis and find it puzzling that such drivel ever got serious consideration. They will ask why we turned a deaf ear to eyewitnesses like Nonie Darwish, today a Christian refugee from the vile religion of Mohammed, who warns that it is Islam itself and not some anomalous version of it, that is the source of the violence and barbarity we see all around us. It will astonish them to learn that former Muslims like Dr. Wafa Sultan, even though she herself is an atheist now, could not make so much as a dent on the liberal mindset with passionately argued and honest books like her A God Who Hates. And they will come to regard colluders like Bishop McManus the way the world presently views collaborators of a former era like Robert Brasillach and Joseph Darnand.

        Reply
        • We will survive by God’s power (revelation 9:20) and there will be a Nuremberg-like trial for all Liberals and the Muslims that survive (not many) so the scourge of Liberalism and the “religion of peace” don’t ever raise their ugly heads. Christ said in Luke 22:36 “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” No matter what wimpy Popes and Presidents say, I am sticking to my “guns and religion” until they both start going everywhere protected by a company of old ladies armed with flowers, instead of athletic bodyguards armed with guns.

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          • Your point about armed guards is well taken. Have you ever noticed that billionaires like Soros are always telling us how to help the poor? That men like Obama and Biden, men surrounded by automatic weapons, repeatedly tell us to disarm? Ironic, isn’t it?

  6. The heretics and modernists who run the Vatican are so enamoured by Vatican II’ism that they are probably guessing that the solution to threats from ISIS is … more inter-religious dialogue!

    Reply
    • and inter-religious dialogue they will have, and then some. 🙂 They are calling upon themselves their own destruction. Imagine a 2017 with no Liberals, no Modernists, and no Muslims. It’s easy if you try!

      Reply

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