What we have here is a failure to communicate

Pope Benedict recently made some remarks that upset part of the Muslim community. His comments were a small part of a lengthier speech concerning the relationship of faith to reason:

… This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur’an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three “Laws” or “rules of life”: the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur’an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of “faith and reason”, I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: “There is no compulsion in religion”. According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels”, he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”. The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God”, he says, “is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…”.

Incendiary stuff. The Pope quotes a scholar who quotes a 13th century emperor who condemns of the spread of Islam by the sword. Blasphemy.

The BBC:

Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted party, said Benedict’s remarks were either “the result of pitiful ignorance” about Islam and its prophet or, worse, a deliberate distortion.

“He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world,” Kapusuz told Turkish state media. “It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades.”

“Benedict, the author of such unfortunate and insolent remarks, is going down in history for his words,” Kapusuz added. “He is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.”

Yeah, Benedict is practically a mass murderer.

Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state offered an apology of the modern we’re sorry that you misunderstood us sort.

The Holy Father is very sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers

This will not do at all. Benedict must grovel. Beheadings, riots, and bombings no doubt soon to follow.

A word to Christians. Please consider your actions before you apologize. The central doctrine of Christianity is the divinity of Christ. Muslims deny the divinity of Christ. By being a Christian you implicitly contradict the Koran and so insult Islam. No apologies will ever suffice. Only two things can remove the insult of your faith: your submission to Islam, or your death.

Update: Anyone interested in a fine analysis of what Pope Benedict actually said might want to read Out Damned Spot.

Posted on September 16th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: religion

4 Responses to “What we have here is a failure to communicate”

  1. Fatih, on September 16th, 2006 at 5:08 pm Said:

    Good parody of posting.It’d make inter-religious relation much better. yeah.

  2. pwyll, on September 16th, 2006 at 5:14 pm Said:

    Not my goal. I’d rather speak the truth.

  3. Paco Malo, on September 16th, 2006 at 9:01 pm Said:

    The lesson Pope Benedict needs to learn from this matter is that he is a public figure living in the age of sound bite journalism. No matter how well reasoned, or how good his overall message was — that message being, as I understand it, that there is no place for violence in any religion — his words will be manipulated to his varied audiences’ purposes.

    Only time will tell if the new Pope has learned to keep it simple or pay the price.

  4. pwyll, on September 17th, 2006 at 10:19 am Said:

    Victor Hanson makes a similar point:

    And what are we to make of poor Benedict XVI, the scholastic, who, in a disastrous display of public sensitivity, makes the telling point, that Christianity, in its long evolution to the present, has learned to forsake violence, and to defend its faith through appeals to reason—and thus can offer its own experience in the current crisis of Islam. And by quoting from the emperor rhetorician Manuel Paleologus—whose desperate efforts at strengthening the Morea and the Isthmus at Corinth a generation before that awful Tuesday, May 29, 1453 all came to naught—the Pope failed to grasp that under the tenets of radical Islam of the modern age, context means little, intent nothing, learning less than zero. If a sentence, indeed a mere phrase can be taken out of context, twisted, manipulated to show an absence of deference to Islam, furor ensues, death threats follow, assassins load their belts—even as the New York Times or the Guardian issues its sanctimonious apologies in the hope that the crocodile will eat them last.

    We learned the now familiar rage with the Danish cartoons, Theo Van Gogh, the false flushed Koran story, the forced change of “Operation Infinite Justice” to “Enduring Freedom”, the constant charges of “Islamaphobia”, and a horde of other false grievances that so shook the West, traumatized in fear of having its skyscrapers, planes, trains, buses, nightclubs, and synagogues blown apart or its oil cut off.

    So, yes, we know the asymmetrical rules: a state run-paper in Cairo or the West Bank, a lunatic Iranian mullah, a grand mufti from this or that mosque, can all rail about infidels, “pigs and apes”, in language reminiscent of the Third Reich—and meet with approval in the Middle East and silence in the West. But for a Westerner, a Tony Blair, George Bush, or Pope Benedict to even hint that something has gone terribly wrong with modern Islam, is to endure immediate furor and worse. In short, no modern ideology, no religious sect of the present age demands so much of others, so little of itself.

    I see no point in kowtowing to radical Muslim sensibilities. Everything about us offends them. Caving in on a given demand is interpreted as weakness that leads to more demands. To hell with them.

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