Faith groups march together in Jordan

In a demonstration affirming their determination to live side by side, Jordanian Muslims and Christians walked hand in hand in a march last Saturday, to denounce the violence in Gaza, Iraq and the entire region.

Starting from Abdali, where the King Abdullah I Mosque stands next to the Coptic Orthodox Church, the participants walked to Jabal Luweibdeh as the Muslim call for prayer and church bells were heard at the same time to show the unity of Jordanians, the Jordan Times reported. The demonstrators held banners that read: “Muslims and Christians are together.”

The demonstration took place as German bishops called on Muslim leaders across the world to be far more forthright in their opposition to the Islamic State (IS). The group’s terrorist army took over Syria’s north-eastern Raqqa province, whose main town is the “capital” of the self-proclaimed IS caliphate. The IS also controls the Iraqi city of Mosul and much of northern and western Iraq, and has imposed its rule through extreme brutality.

The bishops called on “Muslim religious and political leaders to take up position. The vast majority of peace-loving Muslims must ask themselves which factors lie behind the frightening development in their own religious community. To point at missed opportunities and blame outside Islamic culture is not enough.”

The Vienna-based King Abdullah Centre for Inter-Religious and Inter-Cultural Dialogue (KAICIID) took the initiative of setting up an “international front” against the IS. “We want to bring religious leaders and political decision makers together to stop terrorism,” KAICIID vice general secretary, Claudia Bandion-Ortner, said. A list of religious leaders condemning the IS on the KAICIID homepage included the grand muftis of Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt and the head of religious affairs in Turkey.

On Sunday the custos of the Holy Land, Franciscan Fr Pierbattista Pizzaballa, told a meeting in Rimini that the entire Middle East is undergoing a profound transformation. “The kind of relations or non-relations that for 40 years have characterised these countries of the Middle East have ended definitively,” he said. “The Middle East is in flames.”

Like most church leaders, Fr Pizzaballa went on to argue that “political, economic and probably military” intervention would be needed to protect Christian and other minority communities.

However he went on to argue this “would not save Christianity in the Middle East”. “Their presence will be saved by the little ones, by those who courageously step up and challenge death, selflessly loving their brothers and sisters,” he insisted, adding that “new signs of caring for and protecting one another can be seen”.

Meanwhile the Holy See’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, sent a message of condolence on behalf of Pope Francis for the family of the US journalist James Foley, beheaded on video by a British IS terrorist.