Opinion: The new American pope will be a counterbalance to a ‘clash of civilizations’

Pope Leo XIV appears on the central balcony of St Peter s Basilica at the Vatican to bless the crowd below on May Photo by Gregorio Borgia Associated Press Barely a week after he attended the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome President Trump posted an AI image of himself as the next pope just days before the papal conclave was set to begin on May Ironically the world got an American pope but the antithesis of Trump While geopolitics are in disarray due to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East Pope Francis was a stabilizing factor even bringing peace to refugees in San Diego escaping those conflicts and the new Pope Leo has the probable to do the same In ISIS the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria conquered vast swathes of Iraq and Syria Plenty of Iraqis and Syrians witnessed family members ending up in coffins due ISIS terrorism only to flee to a city whose name is Spanish for coffin El Cajon in San Diego county Those who survived Iraq s political turmoil in San Diego county including Christians and Muslims alike appreciate the previous pope s visit to Iraq in and are waiting to see if the new pope can match Francis geo-theological legacy Numerous of them are Chaldean Catholics and there are a good number of Iraqi Shi a refugees another group persecuted by ISIS often killed on the spot for belonging to a different Muslim sect While the COVID pandemic was raging the Pope insisted on making a trip to Iraq in March Pope Francis visited Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani the spiritual leader of Iraq s Shia society The pope s visit to Iraq offered moral encouragement to Iraq s beleaguered and dwindling Christian population that did not have the fortune of escaping The meeting between the pope and the ayatollah has historical resonance When he was elected pope in Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina decided to be named Pope Francis His choice was deliberate and was made in reference to St Francis of Assisi whose legacy the newly elected pope was inspired by St Francis was a Catholic preacher and mystic who during the fifth crusade set out to Egypt to try to promote peace and spread Christianity During the siege on Damietta in he crossed enemy lines and succeeded in meeting Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil nephew of Salaheddin He appealed the Sultan to embrace Christianity which the ruler declined to do Impressed by his audacity however he allowed Francis to preach for several days in Egypt Upon his return to Italy the Catholic preacher revised the rule of the Franciscan order which he had established to encourage his devotees to live among Muslims peacefully and avoid conflict This move was truly revolutionary given the fact that the Catholic church fully encouraged and supported the crusades During a trip to the Vatican in as part of my summer school in Rome on Catholic Italy and the Islamic World I noticed a copy of a book called St Francis and the Sultan at its bookstore I saw that as a sign for optimism Indeed on March Pope Francis visited Ur a Sumerian city that dates back years which according to the Judaic Christian and Islamic traditions is the birthplace of the patriarch Abraham of Ibrahim my namesake By using Abraham s birthplace as a setting for his speech the pope stressed the concept of the Abrahamic faiths as a single tradition The significance of invoking Abraham s legacy during the pontiff s speech at Ur lies in the current polemics in that imagine a Judeo-Christian civilisation in conflict with an Islamic one often referred to as a clash of civilizations Trump s secretary of state Marco Rubio of Florida declared a clash Of civilizations after the ISIS Paris attacks of and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has a tattoo of the words Deus Vult a Latin phrase and meme associated with the Crusades and Knights Templars that can be viewed as Islamophobic But Pope Francis stature provided a geo-theological counter-balance to a world where morals are often overshadowed by maximalist political positions expanding territory and might at the expense of human rights and a sustainable milieu Coming from a mixed Muslim-Christian background I had hoped Pope Leo would continue the legacy of his predecessor He did so even before he became Pope On the same day as the papal conclave began to pick a successor in Rome directly south in Libya another event was to be held albeit with less publicity The Trump administration had a plan to deport a group of settlers to from Vietnam the Philippines and Laos to Libya on a U S military plane until it was blocked by a federal judge May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Filipino Heritage Month making these actions even more of an affront Pope Francis had challenged Vice President JD Vance over deportations arguing that mercy should be given to both citizens and non-citizens alike because human defense outweighs national safety The new pope agrees using X to challenge Vance on deportations and emerging as the first Twitter Pope This is a reminder that respect for human rights would be the best contributor to our national assurance In fact a large number of of the settlers from the Middle East Somalia and Afghanistan coming to San Diego are still fleeing from the conflicts unleashed by the U S close to years ago due to its self-proclaimed war on terror Deporting gang members does not address America s drug addiction that leads to the formation of gangs in the first place and to the failure to improve socio-economic conditions of inner cities Migration to the U S from Central America or from Africa to Europe is partly driven by circumstances change making agrarian lives untenable which the global north has failed to address despite its culpability in carbon emissions leading to rising temperatures At one time in history there were two rival popes Now it seems that there are two rival Americans holding the bulk powerful positions in the world Leo the Lion the new pope seems as the stronger candidate to fight these challenges Ibrahim Al-Marashi is an associate professor of history at Cal State San Marcos and a visiting scholar at University of San Diego and San Diego State University Artivism in the Borderlands Exhibition at the Kroc School of Peace Studies Rotunda and Theater took place April