"Inter-Faith" Prayers at the Vatican: Imam Prays For Victory Over The Unbelievers

From Vlad Tepes Blog:

Last Sunday, Whitsunday if you like, Pope Francis hosted Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at a ‘Peace Gathering’ in Vatican City. Prayers from clerics of the three faiths had been planned to be part of the programme, as News.va, The Official Vatican Network, reported prior to the visit.

After he had seen the broadcast, Hamed Abdel-Samad, an Islam-critical political scientist and author who lives in Germany, wrote on Facebook:

“In the garden of the Vatican, the Muslim cleric finishes his prayer with the verse from the Quran: ‘May Allah give us victory over the disbelieving people’. This is what I call a prayer for peace.

Since Hamed Abdel-Samad speaks Arabic fluently, he had recognized that the Imam had quoted the last three verses from Sura 2.

On June 10, Bernd Hagenkord, head of the German section of Radio Vatican, published an article in which he contradicts the claim: “No, during the prayers for peace the Quran hasn’t been recited requesting to destroy the unbelievers. […] What a source of unbelievable stuff the internet is.”

In some way he couldn’t know better. Hagenkord attached all prayers (in English) that were handed in to his article. The Imam simply changed the programme.