The Muslim Pope Sheikh Tantawi’s Taqiyya: “Show Islam is a Religion of Peace”

From this report of February 17, 2008, “Show Islam is religion of peace, Muslims told,” the Jew-hating, jihad supporting (against all Israelis, including non-combatants, as well as US troops in Iraq) Muslim Pope, Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, Grand Imam of Al Azhar University—“after receiving an honorary doctorate in Islamic Propagation and Management from Universiti Sains Islam [Kuala Lumpur] Malaysia at a special convocation ceremony”—maintained with complete seriousness, that Muslims (unlike himself, of course) “sometimes tarnished” the “image of Islam.”  He adds,

“The west is not all evil and is not all good. There are some rational people who understand Islam and some of them who believe in Islam.” 

That last phrase about “…some of them who believe in Islam,” recalls Tantawi’s charitable assessment of Jews, from his “magnum opus” 700 pp. treatise extolling Jew hatred in the Koran and Sunna, which states,  

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah, corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness…only a minority of the Jews keep their word….[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims, the bad ones do not. (Koran 3:113)  

What a paragon of self-critical insight, and tolerant ecumenism!  

Sadly the tragedy of Tantawi’s own utter lack of self-criticism, and true ecumenism—as opposed to Islamic supremacism, sacralized bigotry, and deceit, including apparent self-deceit about such attitudes—is pathognomonic of the ills that beset the global Muslim umma, both its leadership, and masses.