Dear Rightwing Catholic Islamophobes: Pope Francis just washed the feet of a Poor Muslim

New Left Project
Juan Cole
March 30, 2013.

Pope Francis on Maundy Thursday declined to address enormous crowds. Instead he went to a prison to emulate Jesus’s act of humility before his crucifixion in washing the feet of his 12 disciples. The pope washed and kissed the feet of 12 inmates, two of them women and two of them Muslim (one of the women was Muslim). It is reported that some of the prisoners broke down in tears.

Pope Francis’s willingness to wash the feet of a Muslim woman shows his concern for the very lowest stratum of society. Europe has millions of Muslims, and some are well off and well integrated into society. But many Muslims who immigrated into France and Italy for work got caught when the jobs dried up, and live in poor areas of the cities, being excluded from mainstream society or much hope of betterment. Women have lower status than men in such communities, so a poor Muslim woman in jail is just about the bottom of the social scale.

Pope Francis is from Argentina, which has a large, successful Arab-heritage community that includes Muslims, and he is said to have deeply disagreed with his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, over the latter’s Regensburg speech in which he said things that Muslims found insulting.

The thing that strikes me about all this is that there is a small strand of American Catholic conservatism that frankly despises both the poor and Muslims, and is one of the pillars of prejudice against Muslims (some call it Islamophobia) in the United States. Most Catholics in opinion polls have a more positive view of Islam and Muslims than is common among evangelical Protestants, but the rightwingers among them have a thing about Muslims (and about poor people).

Read the rest here.

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Comment: It is encouraging to see Pope Francis break with the thinking of his predecessor on Islam. 

I like too that he speaks about the poor even though troubling questions remain about his past relationship with the military junta that ruled in Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

I simply do not know enough to make a judgment of the role the pope played in Argentina's Dirty War.  I will endeavor to learn more.

Nonetheless, it is heartening to see the pope push the envelope of humility and inclusion in these early days.

Religious bigots of all stripes should be paying attention.

Onward!