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A 'scholarly' papal address that wasn't
Read the article / show / issue that provoked me to write a letter and my response below that or go straight to my response
Date Posted on this Site
October 3, 2006
Publication
Toronto Star
Publication Date
September 24, 2006
Published Content
Benedict has only weakened himself, says Haroon Siddiqui
The Arab Street or Muslim Street - to use our derisive parlance for "them" - has spoken on Pope Benedict's remarks on Islam, just as it had on the Danish cartoon controversy.
In both cases, "the street" won, not for the reasons usually ascribed to it, namely, that Muslims are a violent people because their religion is, but rather because their widening public revolt has taken on a "we won't take it any more" quality.
This is reminiscent of the early stages of the discontent in Iran that led to the 1979 revolution.
For decades, Arab and Muslim peoples have been brutally suppressed by regimes posing as a buffer between the West and the "Islamist hordes." But these governments now know their own survival depends on identifying more closely with the masses.
The rise of Muslim anger is running parallel to the rise of right-wing, anti-Islamism in the West. One feeds the other. Both are keen on a confrontation.
This is the backdrop of the Pope's statements, about which there's much speculation
"He didn't mean to offend Muslims"; "Yes, he knew exactly what he was doing."
"He has apologized"; "No, he hasn't disowned a thing."
His Holiness did utter some rather unholy words. No amount of spin can erase that.
He said Christianity is "the profound encounter of faith and reason," and implied that Islam isn't, even though the Qur'an repeatedly emphasizes reason.
The Pope had a right to quote the anti-Islamic rant of a 14th-century Byzantine king. We have the right to question his judgment in doing so.
Manuel II was a Christian warrior entrenched in protracted warfare against the Muslim Ottomans. It's no surprise that he demonized the Prophet Muhammad. But why would the Pope recycle that hate tract?
Because he wanted to echo the emperor's belief that jihad - which the Pope translated as "holy war" - is "unreasonable."
But the Qur'an does not speak of war as holy, Islamic scholar Mahmoud Ayoub, formerly of Toronto and now professor at Temple University, said in a phone interview. Rather jihad is struggle, mostly spiritual, even if it has often been invoked militarily. Benedict, a theological scholar, "should know that."
John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, said the Pope was on shaky ground elsewhere as well.
Benedict quoted, without question, Manuel's complaint about Muhammad's "command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." But, Esposito told me, that "remark is simply inaccurate." The Qur'an and Muhammad recognized only "the right to defend Islam against those who threatened and attacked Muslims."
The Pope said that the Qur'anic line "There is no compulsion in religion" (2256) was revealed in the early years of Muhammad's prophethood in Mecca when he "was still powerless," but that, when he ruled Medina, the injunction was overtaken by others concerning holy war.
"Both these statements are incorrect," said Esposito. "2 256 is not an early verse but from a later period, and the interpretation of jihad was developed years after the Prophet's death."
In sum, the Pope's speech that's being defended as scholarly wasn't, as far as Islam is concerned. And both Muslims and the media have not misunderstood it, but rather understood it all too well.
In relying on populist cliches of Islam, the Pope treads on the same turf as Islamophobes. It is not surprising that they are the loudest in defending him.
"Hatred of Islam brings together people who are usually at daggers drawn," writes Karen Armstrong, noted British author and a former nun. "Neither the Danish cartoonists, who published the offensive caricatures of the Prophet nor the Christian fundamentalists who've called him a pedophile and a terrorist, would ordinarily make common cause with the Pope; yet, on Islam, they are in full agreement."
If the Pope sincerely believes, as did Manuel II, that Islam is a religion of the sword, what of his selective silence on the sword-wielding Christians of the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition? What of the church's complicity in the genocide of the aboriginal people of the Americas? And the Vatican's relations with Nazi Germany?
Either because he now knows that he has erred, or merely wants to tamp down the furor, the Holy Father has expressed his "profound respect for world religions and for Muslims."
We should accept his words of contrition and move on.
One legacy of this sad episode is that he has weakened himself immeasurably in his declared mission advancing interfaith dialogue and demanding greater freedom of religion for Christians in Muslim nations.
My Response Letter
Haroon Siddiqui writes that, with his Regensburg Address, Pope Benedict XVI "weakened himself immeasurably in...demanding greater freedom of religion for Christians in Muslim nations".
Let me get this right: the Pope quotes a historical exchange between two intellectuals as an example of why faith and reason are necessarily linked and as a result Benedict XVI has hurt his chances of aiding and assisting Christians in Muslim countries?
Anyone who reads the news with even a hint of regularity is well aware that previous enjoinders for greater freedom have done nothing to put an end to repression and murder of Christians in such notably Islamic countries as Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.
The response to the Pope's lecture - the burning of churches and the murder of a nun - is simply more violence.
The Pope did well in Germany when he stated the relationship between religion and reason. Christians and Muslims would do well to listen to the totality of his words: that one cannot be so sure of reason that he loses the fear of God or not so enveloped in faith as to discount reason, which is part of the true nature of God. There is no God in the ego of science or the violence of fanaticism.
The media would do well to report accurately the context and extent of the Pope's words.
Jason Gennaro
Was my response published?
No
Did I get a response?
No