What Does the Pope Know About His “Friend and Dear Brother” El-Tayyeb?

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Just before he left for to the U.A.E. earlier this month, Pope Francis sent a video message to the Emirati people: “I thank the friend and dear brother the Grand Imam Sheikh el-Tayyeb and those who have organised this meeting for the will and courage to affirm that faith in God unites and does not divide us.”

What does the Pope know about his “friend and dear brother,” Sheikh al-Tayyeb? In 2011, El-Tayyeb, who was then the President  of  Al-Azhar University, railed at Pope Benedict for his “interference” in Egypt’s affairs, a reference to Benedict’s denunciation — how dare he? — of attacks on Copts, and warned of a “negative political reaction” to Pope Benedict’s remarks about Islam. The threatening tone was unmistakable. In a statement, Al-Azhar denounced the Pope’s “repeated negative references to Islam and his claims that Muslims persecute those living among them in the Middle East.” This statement was issued as Muslims were not just persecuting but murdering Copts in Egypt, and killing other Christians in Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, Pakistan.

Pope Francis wanted to repair any harm that his predecessor, as he saw it, had caused to Muslim-Christian relations, and he soon extended an invitation to El-Tayyeb to visit him in the Vatican. “I want to meet him. I know that he would like it,” the Pope said during a February 18, 2016 in-flight press conference.

In May of that year, El-Tayyeb visited the Vatican. There was satisfaction all around. El-Tayyeb knew that the visit would help validate Islam in the eyes of 1.3 billion Catholics, and even to disarm critics, while Pope Francis allowed himself to believe that the visit by his new friend had contributed to “understanding” between the two faiths.

A few months after his visit to the Vatican, El-Tayyeb declared on June 16, 2016, in an interview that appeared on several Egyptian television channels and on the official YouTube channel of Al-Azhar, that apostates from Islam should be killed. He further said that “the concepts of human rights are full of ticking time-bombs” and that homosexuality is a disease. Apparently those remarks did nothing to dampen the Pope’s enthusiasm for El-Tayyeb. Francis’ mind was already made up. Killing apostates? Dismissing human rights as positively dangerous, full of “ticking time-bombs”? Who cares what El-Tayyeb said — we’re friends!

In 2017, the Pope, visiting Egypt, again met with Ahmad El-Tayyeb, and their friendship no doubt deepened. He did not ask then, nor has he raised the matter since, about the free book that Al-Azhar offers readers of its magazine, a book which, according to the well-known Egyptian political writer and thinker, Dr. Khalid al-Montaser, in an article for El-Watan News, continues to encourage enmity for Christians, and even incites their murder.

Montaser began his article by asking, “Is it possible at this sensitive time — when murderous terrorists rest on texts and understandings of takfir, murder, slaughter, and beheading — that Al Azhar magazine is offering free of charge a book whose latter half and every page — indeed every few lines — ends with “whoever disbelieves [infidels], strike off his head?”

Does Pope Francis know about this book that El-Tayyeb’s Al-Azhar sends out free to all who request it, with its repeated command to “strike off the head” of “whoever disbelieves”? Surely in the Vatican there are Arabic speakers who monitor the doings at Al-Azhar, as well as the major Arabic-language press, including El-Watan. Did no one send this information to the Pope? Were those around him in the Vatican perhaps leery of sending him anything critical of the Grand Imam, given that the Pope had made such a public investment in his “friendship” with El-Tayyeb?

Then there is the disturbing matter of El-Tayyeb’s antisemitism, which Pope Francis appears either to be ignorant of, or not to care very much about. The Grand Imam made his most revealing remarks on Jews in an interview aired on Channel 1, Egyptian TV on October 25, 2013:

Ahmad Al-Tayeb: A verse in the Koran explains the Muslims’ relations with the Jews and the polytheists. The second part of the verse describes the Muslims’ relations with the Christians, and the third part of the verse explains why the Christians are the closest and most friendly to the Muslims.

This is an historical perspective, which has not changed to this day. See how we suffer today from global Zionism and Judaism, whereas our peaceful coexistence with the Christians has withstood the test of history. Since the inception of Islam 1,400 years ago, we have been suffering from Jewish and Zionist interference in Muslim affairs. This is a cause of great distress for the Muslims.

The Koran said it and history has proven it: “You shall find the strongest among men in enmity to the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists.”

Does Pope Francis believe, with El-Tayyeb that 1.5 Muslims “suffer today from global Zionism and Judaism”? If he does, that would be intolerable. If he does not, shouldn’t he say something to make clear where he stands on the subject of Jews and of the Jewish state? Visiting the Western Wall and the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem in 2014 was welcome, but he needs to recognize, and not by his continued silence deny, the antisemitism that is everywhere in Islam. Is this a subject he’s fearful of bringing up? Or does he really not recognize the problem?

Further, does the Pope agree with El-Tayyeb that Islam has shared 1,400 years of “peaceful coexistence with the Christians”? In no land that Muslims conquered has there been “peaceful coexistence” with Christians (or with any other subjugated non-Muslims), including Islamic Spain, which is so often held up as an inspiring example of “convivencia,” even though Christians, apparently unconvinced of how happy they were under Islamic rule, spent 770 years fighting for the Reconquista of their own land. Is the Pope afraid to say anything that might anger El-Tayyeb? If so, what kind of “friendship” do they have, when one side is terrified of angering the other?

Then there is what El-Tayyeb did in response to the transfer of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in January 2018. He went into a rage, refused to meet the visiting Vice President Pence and, still more disturbing, he called the recognition [of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital] an “aggression toward people, countries, cultures and civilizations,” and claimed it would “feed terrorism in the region. Decisions like this one nurture terrorism, create it and propel it forward to act and express itself in methods we all reject. When terrorism rises again, the East and West will drown in seas of blood.” That sounds like a threat: Undo the Embassy Move, Or Suffer The Consequences. “Seas of blood.”

So here is what we know about  Grand Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayyeb. First, he despises Jews, for they have always been the “greatest in enmity” toward  Muslims. They are greedy, aggressive, favor their own, work to undermine all others. Second, he believes that apostates from Islam should be killed. Third, he dismisses “human rights,” which, he claims, are a “minefield” of unwelcome consequences. Fourth, he is happy to have Al-Azhar University distribute free copies of a book that every few lines denounces Christians, even inciting — by quoting the Qur’an — their murder. Fifth, El-Tayyeb himself misrepresents the history of Muslim-Christian relations as having always been models of “peaceful coexistence.”

Pope Francis is a strange man. He knows that there is no such thing as “Islamic terrorism.” He either doesn’t know (which at this late date is unacceptable), or doesn’t care (which would be intolerable), about those Qur’anic verses that tell Believers “to strike terror” in the hearts of Unbelievers. Nor does he appear to know the famous hadith in which Muhammad declares that “I have been made victorious through terror.’’ He is convinced that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” Neither the more than 100 Qur’anic verses that command Believers to “fight” and “smite at the necks of” the Unbelievers, nor the 1,400 years of Muslim violence directed at non-Muslims and at fellow Muslims alike, have made much of an impression on this  Defender of the Faith — that Faith being Islam.

If the Pope demonstrates an insufficient understanding of Islam, his appreciation of his own civilization is also lacking. In an interview with the French Catholic newspaper La Croix, Pope Francis took a conciliatory line toward Islam, saying “I sometimes dread the tone” when people refer to Europe’s “Christian” roots. Why shouldn’t Europeans mention the “Christian” roots of their civilization? Does the Pope wish to deny those roots? Why does Pope Francis “dread the tone” of those who recognize, and take pride in, those Christian roots? Is he embarrassed by Europe’s success as a civilization? Does he want credit to be given as well, in a spirit of multicultural madness, to those nonexistent “Islamic roots” of Europe? Of all people, shouldn’t the Pope be in the front rank of those forthrightly reminding Europeans of their “Christian [or more accurately, Judeo-Christian] roots,” at a time of cultural confusion, and insist that they must hold onto them, remain true to them, and resist all attempts to make us believe that in Europe, Islam has been a fructifying and positive influence, rather than the destructive one that, not so many decades ago, everyone of sense recognized?

Grand Imam Sheikh El-Tayyeb of Al-Azhar, the man Pope Francis calls his “friend and dear brother,” is delighted with his Papal interlocutor, and with good reason. But you, and I, with even better reason, must deplore this smiling accommodationist in the Vatican. It would take one of the papal assistants at most five minutes of searching the Internet to find out everything Francis needs to know about El-Tayyeb: his antisemitism, his death sentence for apostates, his oblique threats of terrorism should the American Embassy not be moved out of Jerusalem, the anti-Christian literature distributed for free by Al-Azhar. Search away, papal assistant, please do, and make the Pope take notice of what you find. He’s got to understand the meaning and menace of Islam, as the hour is late, and if he can’t, then he must step aside for someone who can.

First published in Jihad Watch here and here.