Padre Convidou Estado Islâmico para Jantar. Recebeu Resposta e Agora Quer Guerra

O vicário da Igreja Anglicana Andrew White (foto acima) trabalha no Iraque. Ele acreditou na força do diálogo e certa vez convidou os líderes do Estado Islâmico para jantar.

Ele recebeu a resposta. O Estado Islâmico disse que ia, mas que ia decapitá-lo. O Estado Islâmico oferece uma recompensa pela cabeça dele.

Depois disso, e de ver tantas atrocidades contra cristãos, White entendeu. Diz agora que apenas uma guerra pode conter o extremismo islâmico, nada mais. Ele condena até ficar jogando bombas de aviões, ele diz que apenas guerra mesmo, com soldados em terra, trará solução.

Nas palavras dele (traduzo em seguida, em azul)

"The only answer is to radically destroy them. I don’t think we can do it by dropping bombs. We have got to bring about real change. It is a terrible thing to say as a priest.  You’re probably thinking, ‘So you’re telling me there should be war?’ Yes!” 

(A única resposta é destruir eles radicalmente. Eu não acho que nós podemos fazer isso jogando bombas. Nós temos de fazer uma mudança real. É uma coisa terrível para um padre dizer isso. Você está provavelmente pensando. Então você nos diz que deve haver guerra? Sim")

Vejam parte da descrição feita pelo jornal inglês The Independent.

Canon Andrew White: 'Vicar of Baghdad' on leading a church in Iraq and being in the crosshairs of Isis.
by Cole Moreton

They were coming for him and his people. Friends were being killed or fleeing for their lives. So Andrew White did what he always does when faced with an enemy. “I invited the leaders of Isis [Islamic State] for dinner. I am a great believer in that. I have asked some of the worst people ever to eat with me.”

This extraordinarily self-confident priest is best known as the vicar of Baghdad, leader of a church in the chaos outside the protected Green Zone. He made his offer last year as the terrorist forces threatened to take the city. Did he get a reply? 

“Isis said, ‘You can invite us to dinner, but we’ll chop your head off.’ So I didn’t invite them again!” 

And he roars with laughter, despite believing that Islamic State has put a huge price on his head, apparently willing to pay $157m (£100m) to anyone who can kill this harmless-looking eccentric. Canon White was a doctor before he became a priest and could be one still, in his colourful bow-tie and double-breasted blazer with a pocket square spilling silk. But appearances are deceptive.

For the last two decades, he has worked as a mediator in some of the deadliest disputes on Earth, in Israel and Palestine, Iraq and Nigeria. He has sat down to eat with terrorists, extremists, warlords and the sons of Saddam Hussein, with presidents and prime ministers.

White has been shot at and kidnapped, and was once held captive in a room littered with other people’s severed fingers and toes, until he talked his way out of it. He is an Anglican priest but was raised a Pentecostal and has that church’s gift of the gab, even though multiple sclerosis (MS) makes him drawl like a posh barfly. “When I went on Radio 4 talking about Baghdad there were complaints because they thought I was drunk. I wasn’t!”

More than 1,200 men, women and children who worshipped with him have been killed in recent years, he says. Four boys he knew were beheaded because they refused to swear allegiance to Islam. The church caretaker was forced to watch as his five-year-old boy was cut in half.
There used to be 1.5 million Christians in Iraq but now there are only 260,000, he says. Some are calling it genocide. Surely he no longer believes that negotiations with Isis could work? White stares at me from behind owlish spectacles. “Can I be honest? You are absolutely right. You can’t negotiate with them. I have never said that about another group of people. These are really so different, so extreme, so radical, so evil.”

So what is to be done? “We must try and continue to keep the door open. We have to show that there is a willingness to engage. There are good Sunni leaders; they are not all evil like Isis.”
But surely there is only one logical conclusion to be drawn? He sighs, and answers slowly. “You are asking me how we can deal radically with Isis. The only answer is to radically destroy them. I don’t think we can do it by dropping bombs. We have got to bring about real change. It is a terrible thing to say as a priest. 

“You’re probably thinking, ‘So you’re telling me there should be war?’ Yes!” 

I am shocked by his answer, because this is a man who has risked his life many times to bring peace.

“It really hurts. I have tried so hard. I will do anything to save life and bring about tranquillity, and here I am forced by death and destruction to say there should be war.”


(Agradeço a informação ao site Jihad Watch)