This morning's Sunday featured a discussion between the BBC's Martin Bashir and The Tablet's Christopher Lamb about Catholic-Islamic relations under Pope Francis. This is part of their exchange:
Martin Bashir: Is this not also Pope Francis and the way he's applying the Christian gospel? So just as the world turns away from migrants desperately crossing perilous waters, many losing their lives in the process, and there's Pope Francis, he goes to the island of Lampedusa, welcomes and prays with them. And as the resurgence of right-wing populism expresses itself in anti-Islamic rhetoric, now we have Pope Francis deciding to visit nations like Egypt and Bangladesh.
Christopher Lamb: The Pope has, throughout his papacy, been keen to de-link Islam from Islamic terrorism, or the the faith of Islam from terrorist acts in the name of God, and I think he'll be keen to again stress that message, whilst also calling on Islamic leaders, by building bridges with them, to also condemn those act of terrorism.Martin Bashir's question was rather loaded, wasn't it?
The question was not only loaded, it was stuffed with several agendas at once. So Lamb seems to have decided to answer a different question entirely, even if it appears to be tangentially related.
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