A group of French Muslims decided to stand guard outside their town’s cathedral to protect it and show solidarity with Catholic churchgoers.

Muslim residents in the southern French town of Lodeve organised the initiative as a gesture of peace after a deadly Islamic extremist attack on a church in the French city of Nice.

They stood guard outside the Lodeve cathedral for the All Saints’ holiday weekend, and hope to do the same for Christmas.

The cathedral’s priest and churchgoers welcomed the gesture, which also comes amid tensions between France and the Muslim world.

French-born Muslim Elyazid Benferhat said his stomach turned when he heard about the attack in Nice.

A self-described man of peace and pragmatism, Mr Benferhat and a friend gathered a group of young Muslim men to stand guard outside their town’s cathedral.

Parishioners at the 13th-century church were deeply touched. The parish priest said their gesture gave him hope in a time of turmoil.

Mr Benferhat identified himself as “more French than anything”. While his mother was born in Algeria, he was born in France and grew up speaking only French.

“But I am also Muslim… and we have seen Islamophobia in this country, and terrorism,” he said.

“In recent years, I’ve had a pit in my stomach,” because every time Islamic extremist violence strikes France, he said, French Muslims face new stigmatisation, even though “we had nothing to do with it”.

He called the beheading of a teacher near Paris last month an act of “unbelievable, unprecedented cruelty”.

Then when three people were killed last Thursday in the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice, Mr Benferhat said he was so sickened that he wanted to do something “so that everyone wakes up”.

Mr Benferhat, who works for French oil company Total and coaches at a local football club, talked to a Muslim friend who was in Nice that day. He said: “We had this idea. We needed to do something beyond paying homage to the victims. We said, we will protect churches ourselves.”

They recruited volunteers among their friends and at his football club, and guarded the church that night and again for Sunday mass. He said they also co-ordinated with local police, after France’s government promised to increase security at sensitive religious sites.

“It’s very good, these young people who are against violence,” said the cathedral’s priest, Luis Iniguez.

When a local newspaper published a photo of parishioners posing with their Muslim guards, the priest hung it inside the Gothic cathedral, which serves as an anchor for town life. “People were happy to see that,” he said.

The small-town gesture drew national attention, and with it, online invective from some far-right voices.

But Mr Benferhat said the response has been “90% positive”.

His group is considering how to take the idea forward, and would like to do it again for Christmas, and for other towns to follow Lodeve’s lead. But for now all religious services in France are banned at least until December 1 to try to slow the fast-rising coronavirus infections.

Whatever he does next, he said “it will come from the heart”.

Read More: New arrests by French investigators probing church attack in Nice

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The video of a Muslim female in white singing ‘Ave Maria’, has gone viral. 

The Muslim female was seen singing a rendition of the Catholic prayer at the Bogor Cathedral in West Java, Indonesia on Monday November the 6th 2017. The rendition of ‘Ave Maria’ was at a funeral for her friend, Chatarina Suliyanti, according to another attendee at the funeral. 

Several version of the singing have circulated online, with one of the having been viewed more than 1.5 million times. 

Pope Francis said on Saturday he would be “sincere” with U.S. President Donald Trump over their sharp differences on subjects such as immigration and climate change when the two hold their first meeting at the Vatican later this month.

But the pope also told reporters aboard a plane returning from Portugal that he would keep an open mind and not pass judgement on Trump until first listening to his views at their meeting on May 24.

“Even if one thinks differently we have to be very sincere about what each one thinks,” Francis said in a typically freewheeling airborne news conference.

“Topics will emerge in our conversations. I will say what I think and he will say what he thinks. But I have never wanted to make a judgement without first listening to the person.”

The pope’s meeting with Trump could be potentially awkward given their diametrically opposed positions on immigration, refugees and climate change, which he told reporters on the plane “are well known”.

Last year, in response to a question about then-candidate Trump’s views on immigration and his intention to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, Francis said a man with such views was “not Christian”.

Trump, who grew up in a Presbyterian family, shot back saying it was “disgraceful” for the pope to question his faith.

SEEKING COMMON GROUND

The two men also disagree strongly about climate change.

Trump signed an executive order dismantling Obama-era environmental legislation.

Francis has made defence of the environment a key plank of his papacy, strongly backing scientific opinion that global warming is caused mostly by human activity.

Still, Francis said he was willing to find common ground with Trump.

“There are always doors that are not closed. We need to find the doors that are at least partly open, go in, and talk about things we have in common and go forward, step by step,” he said.

Trump will visit the Vatican during a tour of the Middle East and Europe that will also include a meeting in Sicily of the leaders of the Group of Seven leading economies.

The pope is a head of state as well as being leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. Such meetings allow for an exchange of views on world affairs and a chance for the pope to encourage ethical solutions to world problems.

About 21 percent of Americans, or 70 million people, are Catholic. Washington has had full diplomatic relations with the Vatican since 1984, when President Ronald Reagan saw Pope John Paul, a Pole, as a crucial ally against communism.

We have all been horrified by the murder of Father Jacques Hamel in his church in Normandy a few days ago.

The killing of a man in prayer shows that the threat of extremism and terrorism is very real and knows no boundaries. Also, IS inspired extremists know that it is this co-existence between communities which is a threat to their way of life and that communities living, working and growing together are the polar opposite of their desire to create a religious war and divisions. We simply cannot let them tear our communities apart and people of goodwill who are of faith and of no faith must come together to show that we will always remain united in the face of extremism and terrorism.

Furthermore, we cannot give ground to forces that seek to divide us as communities. France may seem a million miles away, but it is merely hundreds of miles away from our capital city and this means that we must remain vigilant and determined to protect the social cohesion, (the grey zone of empathy, respect and tolerance), that Daesh or IS inspired extremists seemingly want to damage.

In light of this, Faith Matters is holding a 2 hour symposia on Monday the 1^st of August between 1-3 pm in the afternoon. The symposia will involve faith and civil society leaders and activists and those who believe that we need to come together and show that we are united in the hope that we can overcome hatred, extremism and terrorism. It will also provide some much needed re-assurance and public messaging for communities at a time when there is uncertainty and where fear levels are sadly rising.

The symposia, entitled, ‘Pour Jacques Hamel “Pour la paix, pour un meilleur vivre ensemble”: (In Memory of) Jacques Hamel, for Peace and Cohesion’, will take place at the following venue on Monday:

Made in Marylebone,
Elgood House,
10 Daventry Street,
London NW1 5NX

Please RSVP: info@faith-matters.co.uk if you are attending as there will be security at the event.

The French statement listed was one that Jacques had said many times and we honour his memory with what he stood for – life, interfaith and co-existence work.

We would be grateful if you could attend the event so that we can stand together at this time and send a strong message to the public that we are communities united in our desire to protect life, reduce extremism and terrorism and to live together with shared values.

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you. The event will start at 1 pm sharp.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops hopes that a national dialogue with Muslims can change perceptions of Islam in the United States.

In the past, efforts to foster Catholic-Muslim have succeeded at local levels. But in the face of rising Islamophobia, Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski, of Springfield in Massachusetts, who chairs the committee, said a wider conversation was needed.

“As the national conversation around Islam grows increasingly fraught, coarse and driven by fear and often willful misinformation, the Catholic Church must help to model real dialogue and good will,” he said in a statement.

This national dialogue will begin at the start of 2017. In the Midwest, Catholic-Muslim dialogue began in 1996 and meets once a year. The co-chairs represent both faiths. One document produced explored how Muslims and Catholics interpret revelation.

In the Mid-Atlanic, a representative from The Islamic Circle of North America co-chairs the yearly meetings that started in 1998. Out in California, a number of Islamic Societies join the yearly dialogue which began in 1999. They co-published Friends and Not Adversaries: A Catholic-Muslim Spiritual Journey in 2003.

A 2014 directive reaffirmed a commitment to Catholic-Muslim dialogue.

How Catholics view other faiths changed following the Second Vatican Council. In 1965, the then Pope Paul VI, delivered the Nostra Aetate, Latin for ‘In Our Time’. This revolutionary document shifted the ‘default position of hostility‘ to reconciliation. For Jewish communities, the Catholic Church moved away from collective blame for Christ’s death. In 2011, Pope Benedict X further exonerated the Jewish people in a theological intervention. Such a stance hoped to end centuries of Catholic-inspired antisemitism.

The Nostra Aetate document had warm words for Muslims and their devotion to God. It spoke of difference but mentioned that:

Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

The Pew Research Center found a slight decline in Catholics in the United States. The 2014 figure stood at 20.8 per cent (down from 23.9 per cent in 2007). Muslims in the United States represent almost one per cent of the general population.

This national dialogue will compliment, not replace existing examples of Catholic-Muslim dialogue. Archbishop Blase Cupich of the Diocese of Chicago will co-chair this national initative. There’s no announcement yet on who will act as the Muslim co-chair.

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