The cross and the crescent
A typical news report of the Pope's agenda today would run like this: "Pope Benedict XVI is to meet Muslim leaders in Germany on Saturday, as he continues a four-day visit to his native country. It follows the Pope's meeting with Protestant and Jewish groups in the city of Cologne. On the third day of his trip, the Pope will receive the members of a Turkish Islamic body that operates many of Germany's mosques in Cologne. Germany is estimated to have some 3 million Muslims, most of whom are of Turkish descent."
A headline that you won't see in mainstream media reports about today's meeting goes as follows: "From Cologne to the Conquest of Europe: How the Muslim Brotherhood is Challenging the Pope". The story that follows the headline begins by pointing out that Germany's Muslim leaders asked the pope to visit a mosque, but Benedict XVI declined the invitation, and continues:
His prudence is understandable. Cologne and Munich — where Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop from 1977 to 1981 —are the cities in which the Muslim Brotherhood, which has for decades been the main ideological and organizational source of radical Islam in the world, has gained control of most of the mosques and of active Islam in Germany and in Europe.Mahdy Akef, an Egyptian now residing in Cairo who is the present murshid, or supreme guide, of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide, is an explicit supporter of the suicide terrorists in Iraq. From 1984 until 1987, he directed the most dynamic Muslim center of Germany, in Munich, with its great mosque in the northern part of the city.
Munich was the birthplace of the Islamische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland, IGD, one of the largest Islamic organizations in Germany. The IGD is under the full control of the Muslim Brotherhood and has sixty mosques spread throughout the country.
For a few years, its organizational headquarters has been located in Cologne. The president of this body is Ibrahim Al Zayat, a 39-year-old Egyptian, the charismatic leader of a network of youth and student organizations that are linked to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, WAMY, the largest Islamic youth organization in the world. WAMY is financed by Saudi Arabia, bears a strong, rigorist Wahhabi imprint, and produces vehemently anti-Jewish and anti-Christian publications.
The tireless Sandro Magister has done an excellent job in researching "From Cologne to the Conquest of Europe". Read it.
