Pope Francesco went to Iraq for an Apostolic trip and met Ayatollah Al-Sistani, that is the higher Sciita authority that has demonstrated tolerance towards the other religions; in a nutshell, Pope Francesco Bergoglio tried to steer and strengthen this attitude in favor of the Cristian people in that area.
Thatās the first time a Pope has come this far in the dialogue with Islam. Nevertheless, as newspapers state talking about the epic meeting, what I saw is more of a Bergoglioās monologue than a reciprocal dialogue: āterrorists betray the faithā and gratitude for the protection of the religious minority. From the Islamic man there were no replies aiming at strengthening or highlighting Popeās concept. The Islamic clergymanās attitude resembled the behavior that you may experience when talking to someone that would like to shut up, because he knows that answering he wouldnāt be able to stop himself, due to beliefs or convenience reasons, from saying something that could ruin the vibes. As the bearer of the absolute truth, Islamic religion of today, as the catholic religion of the Middle Age, struggles to exercise tolerance. And, even if man like Ayatollah Al-Sistani gives hope, it will take ages before a real openness, as the one Pope Bergoglio wishes for, occurs.
I think that the Popeās effort, as much as admirable, is weak. I put much more hope in Islamic and other religionās women, they have been suffering from the worst discriminations as minority for ages, even if they are not in a small number at all. Iām thinking about heroes like the chess champion Anna Muzychuck that refused to play in Arabia Saudita to avoid having to put up with stupid and misogynistic local laws. Only women can enhance the situation, because men keep acting with a constant guilty lack of interest. Itās enough to think about Cortinaās ski world championship, that is proceeding undisturbed (shaken only by some little manifestations) despite the fact that the technical director of the Iranian women ski team, Samira Zargari, will not be able to participate because the husband has forbidden her from going, calling for the Sharia.
Iāve been experiencing these religious blindness attitudes myself over the ages through clients that turned to my detective agency Octopus for marriage problems: in the past, when I had just started my Italian investigative agency Octopus, a lot of women, badly mistreated by the husband, quite near the uxoricide, were forced to back off and remain silent from the local priest and the concept of indissolubility of the marriage. Nowadays, when the majority of the clients of the Italian detective agency are Islamic or marriage beneath Islamic creed, itās the Iman or the sharia that transform women, on their way to divorce, to poor persecuted and in some cases martyrs.
There is, then, another family aspect strongly influenced by revolutionary Islam that regards divorces between international couples, dealt by detective agency Octopus. When the ex-husband is Islamic or the ex-wife belongs to a patriarchal family of strong Islamic beliefs, these operations often end up with the abduction of the children from one of the parents. As I wrote on my book āGuide for the tracing of missing peopleā: āthe partner (often a foreign woman and an Islamic man) abducts the children because he/she considers his/her property and, once the marriage is over, he/she will move in with all their belongingsā