Last November Pope Francis issued an exhortation entitled Evangelii Gaudium in which he made the following assertions about Islam:
In order to sustain dialogue with Islam, suitable training is essential for all involved, not only so that they can be solidly and joyfully grounded in their own identity, but so that they can also acknowledge the values of others, appreciate the concerns underlying their demands and shed light on shared beliefs. We Christians should embrace with affection and respect Muslim immigrants to our countries in the same way that we hope and ask to be received and respected in countries of Islamic tradition. I ask and I humbly entreat those countries to grant Christians freedom to worship and to practice their faith, in light of the freedom which followers of Islam enjoy in Western countries! Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.As has been reported here at length over the past couple of weeks (see the list of links at the bottom of this post), a Muslim imam was invited to participate in the “prayer for peace” event at the Vatican on June 8. The esteemed alumnus of Al-Azhar University went off-script, however, and asked Allah to help him gain victory over the unbelievers.
The Vatican at first denied that any such thing had happened, and an edited video of the event was released that supported their denial. However, as we reported last week, the end of Sura 2 Verse 286 from the Koran that the imam quoted — which had been judiciously removed from the publicized version — was most assuredly included in the cleric’s Arabic-language prayer.
To provide context for this momentous event, the following information is instructive. Regular readers should bear with me; I know you’ve seen this all before.
’Umdat al-salik wa ’uddat al-nasik, or The reliance of the traveller and tools of the worshipper is commonly referred to as Reliance of the Traveller when cited in English.
The Revised Edition (published 1991, revised 1994) is “The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law ’Umdat al-Salik by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (d. 769/1368) in Arabic with Facing English Text, Commentary, and Appendices”, edited and translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller. The publisher is listed as amana publications in Beltsville, Maryland.
This an authoritative source on Sunni Islamic law, because it is certified as such by Al-Azhar University in Cairo. There is no higher authority on Sunni Islamic doctrine than Al-Azhar; it is the closest equivalent to the Vatican that can be found in Islam.
Consider this passage from Reliance of the Traveller, chapter O, o9.0:



















