Francis in Arabia, the Muslim-friendly pope

The faithful greet and take photos of Pope Francis (L) as he arrives for the weekly general audience at Paul-VI hall on January 30, 2019 at the Vatican. (AFP / Andreas Solaro)
Updated 31 January 2019
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Francis in Arabia, the Muslim-friendly pope

  • His constant appeals for refugees to be welcomed, many of whom are Muslim, have helped win him support from the community
  • Pope Francis puts Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalisms on the same level — they are all “deviations”

VATICAN CITY: When Francis becomes the first pope to visit the Arabian peninsula on Sunday, he takes another important step in his efforts to build bridges with Islam and confirms inter-religious dialogue as a keystone of his papacy.
In the long, complicated and often bloody history of papal relations with the Muslim world, Argentine pontiff Jorge Bergoglio stands out for his fraternal language and broader desire to reach out across religious divides.
“Pope Francis is different from his predecessor Benedict XVI because he prefers interpersonal encounters to theological subtleties,” said Valentino Cottini who teaches Islamic-Christian relations at the Pontifical Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies (PISAI) in Rome.
Retired German pope Benedict XVI, a theologian, spoke the most about Islam, giving 188 speeches on the subject.
But years of glacial relations followed his decision to quote a XIVth century Byzantine emperor who spoke of against Islam.
He insisted the comment during a 2006 speech at Regensburg in Germany did not reflect his own views but the damage was done and street protests erupted in the Muslim world.

Dialogue
Pope Francis, however, avoids analyzing the Qur'an.
His constant appeals for refugees to be welcomed, many of whom are Muslim, have helped win him support from the community, just as when he brought three Muslim families back on the papal plane from the Greek island of Lesbos.
In 2016 and 2017 the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics met with the imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s highest body, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb.
Tayeb, an Islamic philosophy lecturer critical of jihadists who draw inspiration from hard-line salafism, will again meet with the pope on Monday in the United Arab Emirates for an international inter-religious meeting.
“It’s either dialogue or war. We’re condemned to dialogue,” French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran frequently repeated during his time at the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue.
Tauran, who died last year, said that the fact there was any dialogue at all was an enormous achievement.
But he also feared that dialogue would be limited to “little steps at the level of the elites, which don’t turn into laws, don’t reach the street.”
Pope Francis has insisted that “the dialogue is moving forward,” but also said Muslims should look at the Qur'an in a more interpretive way.
But, notes Christian-Islamic expert Cottini: “We have more freedom of interpretation of the founding texts of Christianity, because the status of the word of God in the Bible is not the same as in the Qur'an, which Muslims consider the literal word of God.”

Tactfulness
Pope Francis takes great care not to use the word “Islamist” when an attack is carried out in the name of Islam, preferring to use “terrorist.”
In 2014, he called for Muslim political and religious leaders as well as academics unambiguously to condemn terrorism, a source of Islamophobia.
He also puts Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalisms on the same level — they are all “deviations.”
In 2016 Francis declined to “associate Islam with violence” when asked about the murder of French priest Jacques Hamel by two jihadists.
In the wake of the attack, he said that “the world is at war” but argued that religion was not the cause.
“When I speak of war I speak of wars over interests, money, resources, not religion. All religions want peace, it’s the others who want war.”


Aid cuts could destabilize Daesh-linked camps in northeastern Syria: diplomats

Updated 21 sec ago
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Aid cuts could destabilize Daesh-linked camps in northeastern Syria: diplomats

  • The humanitarian workers were not authorized to speak to the media, and the Roj camp resident had an unauthorized phone used to talk to Reuters

DAMASCUS: Moves by the US administration to cut foreign aid funding risk destabilizing two camps in northeastern Syria holding tens of thousands of people accused of affiliation with the Daesh, aid officials, local authorities and diplomats say.
The seven sources said Washington’s funding freezes and staff changes had already disrupted some aid distribution and services in Al-Hol and Roj, which host people who fled cities where Daesh was making its last stand between 2017-2019.
They are “closed camps,” meaning residents were not detained or charged as Daesh extremists but cannot independently leave the camps because of suspicions that they are affiliated with or support the group.
Aid workers and camp officials — led by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led force that helps run a semi-autonomous zone in northeastern Syria — have long called for the repatriation of camp residents, among them thousands of foreigners including Westerners.
But the rapid changes to US funding streams have prompted contingency plans for the spread of disease, riots, or Daesh attempts to retrieve residents they see as unlawfully detained, two senior humanitarian sources and a Roj resident said, requesting anonymity.
The humanitarian workers were not authorized to speak to the media, and the Roj camp resident had an unauthorized phone used to talk to Reuters.
“If there’s no unfreezing then everything except the camp guards stop. We’re expecting mass rioting and breakout attempts.
Kurdish authorities in the northeast said last month they expected breakout attempts at detention centers holding Daesh fighters and have refused to hand control of them to the new transitional government in Damascus.
The anticipated violence adds to the complex security challenges in Syria, where Islamist rebels installed the transitional government after toppling Bashar Assad and are holding talks with authorities in the northeast to bring all security forces under Damascus’s control.
Sheikhmous Ahmed, head of camps and displaced persons in the autonomous administration of northeast Syria, said US-funded organizations had been crucial in “covering the existing gaps” in basic service provision in the camps.
But if funding halts altogether, Daesh affiliates “can benefit from these existing gaps and lack of support,” he said.
At least one of the organizations operating in the two camps, aid contractor Blumont, has received waivers allowing it to keep operating, said a Blumont official and Al-Hol director Jihan Hanan. The waiver would last the 90 days.
The organization has had to shutter other USAID-funded humanitarian and management services at about 100 unofficial “collective centers” for other displaced people, the Blumont official said.

 


Syria arrests alleged Daesh commander behind shrine attack plot: state media

Updated 59 min 9 sec ago
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Syria arrests alleged Daesh commander behind shrine attack plot: state media

  • Authorities arrested “Abu Al-Hareth Al-Iraqi, commander in the Daesh organization,” said SANA
  • The interior ministry at that time had posted pictures of four men it identified as members of an arrested Daesh cell

DAMASCUS: Syrian Arab Republic authorities have arrested an alleged Daesh commander accused of planning a foiled attack targeting a Shiite Muslim shrine near Damascus, state media reported Saturday.
Authorities arrested “Abu Al-Hareth Al-Iraqi, commander in the Daesh organization,” said state news agency SANA, citing an unidentified intelligence official and using an Arabic acronym for Daesh.
He was “behind the planning of a number of operations,” SANA reported, adding that “the cell that was thwarted in its plan to attack the Sayyida Zeinab shrine” was working under his direction.
Last month, Syrian authorities said they foiled an Daesh attempt to blow up the shrine, Syria’s most visited Shiite pilgrimage site, located south of Damascus.
The interior ministry at that time had posted pictures of four men it identified as members of an arrested Daesh cell.
It was the first time the new Damascus authorities said they had foiled an Daesh attack.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Saturday that the man arrested is “an Iraqi national who was one of the second-tier commanders in Daesh and spent his recent years” in the Badia desert region.
Iran-backed guards used to be deployed at the gates of the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, but fled in December shortly before Sunni Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus, toppling president Bashar Assad.
Over the years, Shiite shrines have been a frequent target of attacks by Sunni extremists of the Daesh group, both in Syria and neighboring Iraq.
Daesh seized large swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in the early years of Syria’s civil war, declaring a cross-border “caliphate” in 2014.
US-backed Kurdish-led forces in Syria territorially defeated its proto-state in 2019, but the militants have maintained a presence in the country’s vast desert.


‘Welcome back’: Israelis cheer, cry as hostages freed from Gaza

Updated 15 February 2025
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‘Welcome back’: Israelis cheer, cry as hostages freed from Gaza

  • All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border
  • They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel

TEL AVIV: Holding up signs reading “sorry and welcome back” and “complete the ceasefire,” hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s “Hostages Square” on Saturday to watch Hamas release three Israeli hostages from Gaza.
In smaller groups, friends and relatives of the released men — Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov, 29, and Israeli-Argentine Yair Horn, 46 — shed tears of joy at the sight of their loved ones, who were made to address a crowd in Gaza from a stage alongside rifle-wielding militants.
All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border, during Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 which sparked the war.
Dekel-Chen’s wife, Avital, who gave birth to the couple’s third daughter two months after her husband was seized, was waiting for him at an army base in southern Israel.
“My breath has returned. He looks so handsome,” she said following his release in a call to her sister aired by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.
Other relatives of Dekel-Chen said they were relieved to see him alive.
“I am excited, and I see that he looks OK, and I want to hug him,” his mother-in-law told Kan, wiping away tears.
Dekel-Chen’s sister-in-law said: “Thank God that everything is OK and they were on their feet.”
They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel, where some residents of Nir Oz have moved to since the attack.
In Kfar Saba, in central Israel, a friend of the Horn family, Ronnie Milo, told AFP that she was experiencing “unimaginable joy” on seeing him return alive.
Ronli Nissim, of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group, said: “It’s an emotional roller coaster, and also very bittersweet.”
“Every time someone comes back... we are just a jumble of emotions,” she said.
“But then we’re thinking about everyone who’s left behind, and we know that they are mistreated, we know that they’re in hell, and they’re just waiting to be released.”
So far under the Gaza truce, 19 Israeli hostages have been released in exchange of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli custody.
The 42-day first phase of the truce stipulates the release of a total of 33 hostages, including eight Israel says are dead, in exchange for some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.
Out of the 251 people abducted during the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants, 70 remain in Gaza, with half of them dead according to the Israeli military.
In Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, Trupanov’s friends and family clapped, cheered and cried as they watched the 29-year-old, who had been held by Hamas’s ally Islamic Jihad, step out of a car in Gaza.
In a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Trupanov’s family said they were grateful to see him return.
“Finally, Sasha can be surrounded by his loved ones and begin a new path,” said the statement, adding that they did not know if Trupanov was “aware that his father, Vitaly, was murdered on October 7.”
“This knowledge — or lack thereof — will completely transform his homecoming from a day of great joy to one of deep mourning for his beloved father,” they said.


Kremlin thanks Hamas for freeing Russian-Israeli hostage: state media

Updated 15 February 2025
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Kremlin thanks Hamas for freeing Russian-Israeli hostage: state media

  • Moscow welcomed the freeing of Alexander Trufanov and expresses its gratitude to Hamas

MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Saturday said it was grateful to Palestinian militant group Hamas for freeing a Russian-Israeli hostage from Gaza in another prisoner exchange with Israel.
“Moscow welcomes the freeing of Alexander Trufanov (identified by Israel as Sasha Trupanov) and expresses its gratitude to the Hamas leadership for taking this decision,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.


Lebanon official media report Israeli drone strike in south

Updated 15 February 2025
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Lebanon official media report Israeli drone strike in south

  • An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike targeting the outskirts of Ainata, said NNA

BEIRUT: Lebanese official media said an Israeli drone struck the country’s south on Saturday, without reporting casualties, days before a deadline in a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike” targeting the outskirts of the town of Ainata, the state-run National News Agency (NNA) said, adding that “nobody was hurt” and that “drones and surveillance aircraft are still flying over the area at low altitude.”