21 September 2006
A group of our Fuqaha have asked me to comment on the event of the Pope’s speech made recently in Germany.
This is a FATWA – and in it I will make my assessment of what the event means, what the pronouncements in themselves mean, and the politique these imply. It follows from this that the conclusions reached in this document are intended to lay down the legal basis for a judgment.
This is not a HUKM. According to us, judgment can only be passed by a ruling Amir in a known community, who, on making the judgment, has the necessary powers to assure that the judgment is carried out, for of course, if the Amir cannot carry it out, the judgment itself remains only a slander. Properly speaking, judgment is accomplished only on the action of the sentence having been carried out.
Pope Benedict XVI delivered his speech in Regensburg. Located at that city was the Messerschmidt plant, and one of the most notorious concentration camps. For the first 18 years of his life the current Pope both lived with approval in the Nazi ethos, and was himself a Nazi. In 1927 he was born into the enthusiastic ferment that gave birth to the Nazi movement and saw them empowered in the early ‘30s. At the age of 14 he joined the Hitler Youth. At that age and in that place, one may assume enthusiasm. After two years of good behaviour, at the age of 16, he was drafted into the German Army. He worked in an anti-aircraft brigade. In 1945 he was taken prisoner by US forces and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. He was then 18.
The Jesuits say that if they can be given a child up to the age of six, they will have him for all his life. Following this Catholic doctrine, we may assume that the Nazis have the Pope for all his life. He had been brought up under the Hakenkreuz (Swastika), and as a young man he straightened its edges and took up the Catholic Cross. Flushed with the vision of a masterful governing elite bent on world conquest, in a heady mixture of ruthless power and scientific application that was the Nazi Weltanschauung, the young Ratzinger entered the great historical tradition of a truly ‘Catholic’ Church bent on world control. He entered the Church knowing its historical identity. He knew that the power of the Church over the centuries was sustained not just by torture and genocide, but by the institutionalisation of a system, a closely documented and detailed system, of torture and execution by burning. The Inquisition had been the admired model of Himmler and his S.S.. Added to this was the psychological intensity and cruelty of a celibate priesthood which over these centuries had created witch-hunts across Europe, and the torture and burning of women in an un-counted holocaust of genocide.
In place of the Nazi doctrine of imposing power on the lesser races came the Christian Crusades set up to impose the impossible doctrines of Sacramental christianity on the Islamic civilisation.
Unfortunately, the world in which poor little Ratzinger had been brought up was to change utterly. The seminarist found he had entered a totally different world. The Catholic Church had previously been forced, in order to sustain its absolute power, to submit heretics to torture and burning. The trouble was that the simple application of reason made it impossible for people to believe that the central rite of the Church was true. The so-called Sacrament. The Sacrament was based on the prior existence of an initiate elite, called Bishops. On being ‘consecrated’ by the Pope, who in turn claimed to be the active representative of the disciple Saint Paul, these Bishops could transform bread and wine into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus. (We ask Allah’s forgiveness at having to record this fantasy.)
Against reason, the Church declares “Hic est Corpus!” This is my body. The doctrine is called trans-substantiation, that is, the change of one substance into another. This they claimed, and this they still claim. If this magic does not take place, then at that moment there is no need for Bishops and, by extension, no need for a Pope. It was not until the Reformation that there was introduced firstly the doctrine of con-substantiation and secondly the doctrine of non-substantiation.
It is understandable that the Church has long had problems over the place of reason in their deliberations. I realise that it is difficult for rational Muslims to grasp the extraordinary historical reality by which, over centuries, men and women were submitted to excruciating torture by horrific mechanical instruments, by plunging in water and by burning with fire if they dared to deny that the bread and wine of the priests was the actual body and blood of their Redeemer! It was a double outrage against reason. It was anthropophagy. At the same time, it was theophagy. So the modern Catholics are eating the two-thousand-year-old flesh of a man, and at the same time believing that they are eating God!
It followed from all this that the moment the Church lost the power to torture and burn, and thus impose this nonsense on simple folk, that the Roman Catholic Church would move inexorably into decline and fall.
By mid-20th century the Church was clearly in crisis. The Catholic Church had to find a doctrinal basis to establish themselves, once deprived of the power of compulsion. Compulsion had been removed – where could they go? The answer was clear – move to its opposite: love. Pope John XXIII, accused of communism by many Cardinals, summoned a Concilio at Rome to invent the new Church. In the process, the Latin Mass was dumped for the vernacular. It was hoped in the blur of many translations that the Sacramental offence would be lost. They defined it as Reformation inside the Church. Of course, Re-Formation means that the original form has been obliterated. Pope John XXIII took the Church so far from historical Rome that inevitably an Anti-Pope appeared in France, a M. Lefevre. He ordained Bishops and restored the Tridentine Mass. It took years before they had the courage to excommunicate Lefevre and his Roman Catholic Church. So it was that without apology, but with massive explanation, Catholicism emerged as the Church of Love and Peace, a positive hippy conversion.
At the same time, the Church’s involvement in usury, i.e. modern banking, exposed the Other Side of the Underneath, for the Underneath of a celibate priesthood is, of course, paedophilia. The Pope’s banker was found hanged under a London bridge, and the Vatican’s wealth teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Pope Paul’s inheritor, an innocent who wrote letters to Pinocchio, to his horror, found out the hidden scandal. He was either assassinated, or appropriately died, and in his place came the American candidate John-Paul. This took the Church into the new world of the Bankers’ Rule. His task was to guide Poland to an uprising that would leverage the whole Communist bloc into the capitalist camp. He also inaugurated the Masonic doctrine of ‘Dialogue’ to anaesthetise all religions so that on awaking they were ‘one’, that is, meaningless. Behind this politique was the important factor of John-Paul II’s dismissal of the Jesuits (upholders of Catholic tradition) and the elevation of the ‘secular’, non-priest order of Opus Dei (upholders of the Bankers’ Sect). A Jesuit no longer took the Pope’s Confession.
A final and important doctrinal change was made by the last Pope, and seems to be being upheld by the present Pope. The obligation to replace the Sacramental Church still left Catholicism with the disturbing reality of a new form of Evangelical christianity centred not on the Sacrament but the rite of Baptism. It abolished the Unseen, and man was declared ‘Born Again’ in this life, rather than into the Next Life. Something more profound was required, and the Polish Pope chose the elevation of a doctrine of Mariology. This taught direct supplication to her, and claimed for her Bodily Assumption into heaven. This, in effect, transferred the Divine Presence claimed by historical christianity to the mother of Jesus, already entitled the Mother of God.
I am aware these matters are offensive to reason and I ask my fellow Muslims to bear in mind that they are mentioned uniquely to clarify what the present politique of the Catholic Church is.
The importance of this virtual worship of Mary has very far-reaching consequences, not only theo-politically but geo-politically. In the jewish-dominated Think Tanks of the USA there already exists a long-term strategy for the unification of christianity and Islam, or more precisely, a bi-partite arrangement. This programme would effectively remove both the intellectual and the political threat of religion from the atheist Bankers’ Sect. The end-result would be a de-politicised christianity and Islam. The christians would worship Mary, who would weep eternally over her crucified son. The Muslims would worship Fatima, who would weep eternally over her martyred sons Hasan and Hussein. The Pope would operate out of the Holy City of Rome as a focus for world christians, and the Grand Imam would operate out of the Holy City of Kerbala. Everything that is now happening should also be seen as structurally making moves towards the fulfilment of this Policy.
The ‘peaceful means’ towards this reconciliation is the applied doctrine of Inter-Faith Dialogue.
Henry VIII, England’s greatest King, understood what Luther did not. He saw that Papal power was not based on the Sacramental doctrine alone, but was based on the political power of the Pope. The steady destruction of the political power meant that the doctrines in turn would collapse. Now the key doctrine standing between the Roman Catholic Church in its historicity, and the Bankers’ Sect, which has been in evolutionary growth and power since 1789, is the doctrine against usury.
Our respected brother, Umar Ibrahim Vadillo, has sent me the following relevant documentation. Umar Pasha has informed me that on November 1, 1745, a Papal Bull by Pope Benedict XIV, VIX PERVENIT, was issued ‘On Usury And Other Dishonest Profits’. It is a categoric rejection of usury. The crucial paragraphs of this official pronouncement are excerpted from it.
“3. I. The nature of the sin called usury has its proper place and origin in a loan contract. This financial contract between consenting parties demands, by its very nature, that one return to another only as much as he has received. The sin rests on the fact that sometimes the creditor desires more than he has given. Therefore he contends some gain is owed him beyond that which he loaned, but any gain which exceeds the amount he gave is illicit and usurious.
II. One cannot condone the sin of usury by arguing that the gain is not great or excessive, but rather moderate or small; neither can it be condoned by arguing that the borrower is rich; nor even by arguing that the money borrowed is not left idle, but is spent usefully, either to increase one’s own fortune, to purchase new estates, or to engage in business transactions. The law governing loans consists necessarily in the equality of what is given and returned; once the equality has been established, whoever demands more than that violates the terms of the loan. Therefore if one receives interest, he must make restitution according to the communicative bond of justice; its function in human contracts is to assure equality for each one. This law is to be observed in a holy manner. if not observed exactly, reparation must be made.
IV. There are many different contracts of this kind. In these contracts, if equality is not maintained, whatever is received over and above what is fair is a real injustice. Even though it may not fall under the precise rubric of usury (since all reciprocity, both open and hidden, is absent), restitution is obligated. …
4. … we approve and confirm whatever is contained in the opinions above, since the professors of Canon Law and Theology, scriptural evidence, the decrees of previous Popes, and the authority of Church councils and the Fathers all seem to enjoin it. …
10. …we exhort you not to listen to those who say that today the issue of usury is present in name only, since gain is almost always obtained from money given to another. How false is this opinion and how far removed from the truth! …
… Thus, it is clearly invalid to suggest, on the grounds that some gain is usually received from money lent out, that the issue of usury is irrelevant in our times.”
With this text, Umar Pasha wrote the following:
The answer to your question
Which Pope legalised usury? And when?
It was Pius VIII in 1830 when the Holy Office, with his approval, allowed the justifiable taking of interest. Not only is the taking of interest now allowed, but the 1917 Code of Canon Law even said that religious Orders were to keep their assets on deposit in interest-bearing accounts. (Canon 1523, 4° says administrators of Church property must use for the benefit of the Church, money which can be invested profitably. Cf. T. Lincoln Bouscaren, S. J. and Adam C. Ellis, S. J., ‘Canon Law: A Text and Commentary’, 2nd edition, Milwaukee: the Bruce Publishing Co., 1951, 826. Many actually misinterpret this Canon according to this commentary: “To invest money means to exchange it for non-consumable goods, such as real estate, stocks, bonds, etc. Money deposited in a bank at call is not considered as invested.” Ibid., 251.) In addition, the new Catechism of the Catholic Church makes no mention of usury.
The actual date of Pius VIII’s doctrinal decree is 18 August 1830. This is the turning point. After that there are a whole series of decrees in the same line: 31 August 1831, 17 January 1838, 26 March 1840, and 28 February 1871; and that of the Sacred Penitentiary of 11 February 1832. (These replies will be found collected in ‘Collectio Lacensis’ (Acta et decreta s. conciliorum recentiorum), VI, col. 677, Appendix to the Council of Pondicherry; and in the ‘Enchiridion’ of Father Bucceroni).
Umar Ibrahim Vadillo
From this it can be seen that from Benedict XIV to Benedict XVI there has been a complete surrender of the historical Catholic position on usury. Benedict XVI has inherited a post-Aldo Moro position, that is, abject obedience to and alignment with the strictures, doctrines and punishments commanded by the Bankers’ Sect. At the very point at which he donned the Papal cap, the USA, under the control of that Bankers’ Sect, entered into an unprecedented phase of global imperialism. In the process of this, its leader brutally called its activities a Crusade. Further, its President said, “If you are not with us you are against us.” This Crusade was triggered by the destruction of two skyscrapers in downtown New York, in the same way that World War I was ‘triggered’ by the assassination of the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. As in both cases, the official causality masks the historical causality, which is the working-out of the power-process of a capitalism whose energy is not yet exhausted.
The in-back reality of these events became, with emerging clarity, the factor of Islam’s utterly uncompromising doctrine of the abolition of usury, “Even to a blade of grass,” a doctrine which by its application would imply the end of the world banking system, its institutions and instruments of exchange. It became a matter of great urgency that Islam should be vilified and presented as evil. At the same time, given that one in five people in the world are Muslims, or probably one in four due to lack of Asian data, it was too big a statistic to be written off as the evil enemy, there had to be a ‘Re-Formation’ of Islam in the same terms that had emasculated christianity by first making it politically powerless, and then making it accept usury.
Pope Benedict XVI was discreetly warned that he had to adhere to the atheist’s doctrine of the Bankers’ Crusade, “If you are not with us you are against us.” It was clear that a Nazi Pope was in a very vulnerable position and could easily be damaged or even de-throned. So it was that with significant cunning, and a distasteful dishonesty, Pope Benedict XVI went to Regensburg, as if there he could make Confession and receive Rabbinical forgiveness. What did he say? And what was his purpose?
There are two important statements. One is the now notorious comment quoting the medieval Emperor. Firstly, I would like to deal with his other comment. He said, “The Emperor must have known that Sura 2:256 reads: ‘There is no compulsion in religion.’ According to the experts this is one of the Suras of the early period, when (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) was still powerless and under threat.” There he discourteously mentions the name of the Messenger without title or respect.
It must be noted that his idea of ‘expertise’, as revealed by the rest of his speech, is the doctored information of orientalists, a group of pseudo-scholars which over the last half-century we have learned completely to disregard. Allah the Exalted in the Qur’an (2:256) says:
There is no compulsion where the Deen is concerned.
The correct position of our Fuqaha in relation to this Ayat, which is of great importance, we take from the great European jurist of Granada, Qadi Abu Bakr ibn-Arabi. He says in his Ahkam that this Ayat is abrogated by the Ayat as-Sayf. Allah the Exalted in the Qur’an (47:4) says:
Therefore when you meet those who are kafir strike their necks.
Then when you have decimated them, tie their bonds tightly
and set them free or ransom them, until the war is finally over.
Qadi Abu Bakr goes on to say that there is a second view which is that this Ayat is valid in the domain of an Islamic Amir in relation to those non-Muslims who pay the Jizya, and thus are under the protection of the Islamic Dawlet. It follows from this, to us unarguable, judgment that the legal decision in what lies outside the Islamic Dawlet is Jihad in the Way of Allah. I must emphasise that Jihad has its own rules, and since, by definition, it is ‘Jihad fisabilillah’, it means that the function of it is to bring a domain into the power of Islam, or to protect the frontier of Islam. It is not the same as territorial liberation, although unjust occupation permits of military resistance.
Now, the second statement of Pope Benedict XVI is this offensive quotation of a christian Emperor. It is at this point that Vatican duplicity is revealed. They, and the Pope, have said that this was not the Pope’s opinion but that he was quoting from the medieval Emperor. In the Haram of Madinah, a man in the presence of Imam Malik, may Allah be pleased with him, Imam of Dar al-Hijra, said that so-and-so had said that such-and-such a person had been drunk. Malik immediately ordered that the man be taken out and given Hadd punishment for slander. The man protested that it was not he who said it, but so-and-so. Imam Malik replied, “I heard it from you!” Therefore, in my opinion, Pope Benedict XVI is guilty of insulting the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.
In conclusion it must be asked what his agenda was in taking this risky path. In the short time since the crime was committed the Pope has made it very clear what the programme is. What in his speech he called “genuine dialogue between cultures and religion” will be conducted in terms set by the Vatican. It is significant that the terms ‘culture’ and ‘religion’ have been put together, since this is the Shi‘a framework for dealing with such matters. Islam, of course, is not a culture, but serves as a filter for culture. As for dialogue with other religions, we have simply no Divine authority to do so. What Allah has given us permission to do is to call the kuffar into Islam. Allah the Exalted says in the Qur’an (2:120):
The jews and the christians will never be pleased with you
until you follow their religion.
Say, ‘Allah’s guidance is the true guidance.’
If you were to follow their whims and desires,
after the knowledge that has come to you,
you would find no protector or helper against Allah.
An apology by the Pope now must be considered a frivolous irrelevance.
The Pope has already stated that he wants to meet with Muslim leaders. Such a meeting, in the light of this event, should not be allowed to take place. It must be emphasised, that to us the ‘expert’ is not an ‘Alim but a Faqih, a lawyer not a scholar. Further, that those qualified to speak on Islam could only be acceptable as spokesmen of the Deen if they confirmed that Jihad is a Fard until the Last Day: that Dhimmi status and Jizya are the obligatory protection of non-Muslims: and that Zakat is obligatory as a collected, not given, Sadaqa, and that its primary legal instrument is the Islamic Gold Dinar and Silver Dirham. The Deen of Islam is separate, by their own definition and name, from the Shi‘a religion. Such men, such viable spokesmen for Islam, by that same definition cannot hold discourse with the christian Church, but at the same time have the spiritual obligation to call the kuffar into Islam.
Allah the Exalted clarified this whole matter at the beginning of Sura Luqman (31:1-9):
In the name of Allah, All-Merciful, Most Merciful
Alif Lam Mim
Those are the Signs of the Wise Book –
guidance and mercy for the good-doers:
those who establish salat and pay zakat
and are certain of the akhira.
Such people are following guidance from their Lord.
They are the ones who are successful.
But there are some people who trade in distracting tales
to misguide people from Allah’s Way
knowing nothing about it
and to make a mockery of it.
Such people will have a humiliating punishment.
When Our Signs are recited to such a person,
he turns away arrogantly as if he had not heard,
as if there was a great weight in his ears.
So give him news of a painful punishment.
For those who have iman and do right actions
there are Gardens of Delight,
to remain in them timelessly, for ever.
Allah’s promise is true.
He is the Almighty, the All-Wise.
