Pope launches scathing attack on Islam

Pope Benedict XVI and Islam

By Martin E. Marty, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School
Published September 19, 2006


Pope Benedict XVI has had a free ride so far. Back when there were still Protestant anti-Catholics, some would have found much fault with him, but most appreciated his encyclical on divine and human love and said so. Many Catholics and non-Catholics whose friends suffered under him as Cardinal Ratzinger now empathetically choose to help the wounded nurse their bruises. Some among the Catholic right even think he should be more of a hard-liner.

For all those reasons, it is regrettable that in the midst of a well-worked out (of course) formal speech at the University of Regensburg in Germany, his old academic turf, the pope lapsed for a moment and did what we tenured folk sometimes do--and remember, the pope has lifetime tenure--we come up with an allusion that gets us in trouble, let a side point take center stage or fail to count the cost of a remark. So it was that almost inexplicably the pope began his talk in Regensburg with inflaming words from an obscure Byzantine emperor from the 14th Century to show that jihad as holy war is bad. That emperor, through this pope, said that what the Prophet Muhammad brought to the world was "only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Like Christians often did? The pope did not mention that.

His Holiness must have underestimated how useful such words would be to extreme fight-picking Muslim clerics and right-wing American talk-show folk. He now says that he did not intend to offend Muslims, but his plea for "genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today" will be set back and outshouted by those clerics and rightists. What sounds at least half appropriate in a history and theology classroom sounds different when spread to a billion Christians and a billion Muslims, as words such as these will be. The only thing that will be remembered from the pope's new call for reason and dialogue is the unreasonable and monological citation that Muhammad contributed only "evil and inhuman" speech and action in human history.

I know I'll get hit for suggesting "equivalencies" here, though I am always clear in stating that there is no equivalency between today's radical and extreme Muslims and today's ordinary Christians. But it also must be said that Christians, from the 4th Century to the 18th Century, can match the Muslims one-for-one when it comes to having spread the faith with the sword. Read the history of the Christianization of Europe, and you have to go hunting for that minority of the faithful who spread the faith without the sword, merely by witness and works.

We live today not in the time of Christian Crusades and Inquisitions, but in a time when the pope is needed as a bridge-builder, a linkmaker. Having quoted claims seven centuries old that only "evil and inhuman" things were new in the program of the prophet and in the name of Islam, it will be harder for the pope to have dialogue with the Muslims who do good and human things. Some on the Muslim and American right seem to be craving a war of civilizations, a war about which we know only one thing: Both sides (or the many sides) would lose.

Rather than point to the "evil and inhuman" nature of Islam's, Judaism's, Christianity's, Hinduism's, Buddhism's and other holy wars, the pope will serve better if he can still find dialogue partners in search of the good and human.

All is not lost. Yet.

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Martin E. Marty is professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is an ordained Lutheran minister and the author of "When Faiths Collide." This column first appeared in Sightings, a publication at the divinity school.

When do we get to offend in peace?

By Paul M. Cobb, an associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Notre Dame and fellow of the Medieval Institute and the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
Published September 19, 2006


I confess I'm a little worried. Popes and professors like me like to quote medieval texts from time to time, and sometimes those words are not what we want to hear. And so the widespread ire roused among Muslims by Pope Benedict XVI's speech at the University of Regensburg last week has me, a historian of medieval Islam and the Crusades, giving second thoughts to what I write about and how I do it.

The furor left many people, no less than Benedict, completely overwhelmed. "Why are these Muslims so touchy?" I was asked. "What is this all about?" What the furor is about, underneath it all, is clearly not Benedict's words, or it shouldn't be. After all, the man was simply quoting a medieval emperor's assessment of the Prophet Muhammad and of jihad, and certainly not endorsing it.

Indeed, the pope very clearly (and correctly) states that the Koran also says "There is no compulsion in religion," and that Muslim holy war developed in response to specific historical circumstances. So while there are very good reasons for criticizing that emperor's knowledge about Islam in his medieval polemical dispute, to demand an apology from Benedict for quoting him in an entirely different context seems rather misplaced.

The furor also isn't about the Crusades, as some have suggested, or not literally so. With a pope assembled before a crowd of the faithful talking jihad and maligning the prophet (or so many thought), the parallels to similar speeches that launched medieval Christian armies to the East seem almost irresistible. But we do well to resist them. For Christendom has long since abandoned the idea of the crusade; indeed, some would say it has abandoned ever being a unifiable Christendom at all.

Benedict's speech was about the compatibility of faith and science in the modern university, intended for academics and theologians.

It was not a battle cry against Islam.

You might ask, "Then why all the anger?" In a healthy intellectual and religious climate, surely two faithful members of two different faiths can bear to hear an insult to their faith quoted to them, at least as part of a larger argument, no?

But there's the rub. For we do not have a healthy climate in which such a dialogue can unguardedly take place.

I am reminded here of the title of the late Ralph Wiley's observations on race relations in the United States, "Why Black People Tend to Shout." Like them, Muslims shout because, for so long, they have not been heard. If the Crusades aren't to blame for Muslim distrust of Western comments on Islam, then surely three centuries of direct and indirect imperialism cannot have helped.

The fact that the vast majority of the world's Muslims live without the privileges of income, education, literacy, human rights, statehood and health care that Benedict's audience takes for granted renders even an invitation to converse worthy of suspicion.

For what Benedict seems not to have realized is something his predecessor never would have forgotten: that any meaningful dialogue is a conversation spoken between equal partners at the same table, not hurled down ex cathedra.

To have equal partners in a conversation between Islam and the West, a great deal more work on our part must be done, and perhaps now will be done, to efface the inequities that serve as obstacles. In the awkward dialogue of civilizations that so many of us seek, social justice is a great ice-breaker. ----------

Paul M. Cobb is an associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Notre Dame and fellow of the Medieval Institute and the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

kickycan wrote:

Well, since you aren't clear on it, then let me explain it for you and any retarded people who might happen by...

On second thought, I don't feel like getting into it right now. I think my point was clear in both of those unrelated posts, whether you get it or not.

The long and short of it is that you came along and quoted them, as if that was supposed to mean something. The only conclusion I can come to is that you think you are pointing out some hypocrisy here. If that was your intent, you need to try again, because it isn't there.

I think you're just desperate to pick a fight with me. But don't worry, Snood, it's okay, I don't think any less of you for it.

Oh thank you Mr Kickycan, for deigning to stoop to explain your goofy nonsense. And since you did, let me try to point out the obvious hypocrisy that you will never "get", for the smart and sensitive posters who happen by. You think you can blithely refer to a population of over a billion people as "ignorant stupid goat-****" on the one hand, and then turn around and expect to be taken seriously when you feign incredulity at someone else's words. Your words paint you very clearly as the lowest kind of stupid racist ****, and I don't think any less of you for that, simply because it's not possible for me to think any less of you.

And just for the record, if you left this forum forever, I wouldn't miss you, your stupid, adolescent, misogynistic and racist "humor", or any opportunity to "pick a fight" with the likes of you. I simply stand up to your ignorance when you spew it.

And you're a funny guy, in your...oh wait, no, you aren't. You're just some guy with a big chip on his shoulder.

And you're a racist.

kickycan wrote:

And you're a funny guy, in your...oh wait, no, you aren't. You're just some guy with a big chip on his shoulder.

And you're a racist.

This post of mine contains nothing of substance. It is merely a transparent attempt to get the last word. It has no point, no saving grace. It is simply to one-up the previous post. so there. Nyah.

snood wrote:

kickycan wrote:

And you're a funny guy, in your...oh wait, no, you aren't. You're just some guy with a big chip on his shoulder.

And you're a racist.

This post of mine contains nothing of substance. It is merely a transparent attempt to get the last word. It has no point, no saving grace. It is simply to one-up the previous post. so there. Nyah.

Why should mine have a point, when yours obviously doesn't, except to make yourself feel like you're a big tough guy?

I responded to your charge of racism and you ignored it, because you obviously don't know what the f*ck you're talking about.

Nyah.

Amazing how right on the Pope was when he made his quote...

woiyo wrote:

Amazing how right on the Pope was when he made his quote...

The Pope pointed to a dialogue in around 1391 between the emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian about Christianity and Islam. He didn't make that quote but quoted from a book, written by one of his late professors.

It would be fair to read at least the text of the Pope's speech, even in the English translation, before making comments.

And obviously not only some radical Islamists are unable to do such.

Quote:

It would be fair to read at least the text of the Pope's speech, even in the English translation, before making comments.

And obviously not only some radical Islamists are unable to do such.

Why?

I doubt that's why.

woiyo wrote:

Quote:

It would be fair to read at least the text of the Pope's speech, even in the English translation, before making comments.

And obviously not only some radical Islamists are unable to do such.

Why?

I agree. That would involve more than average reading capabilities.

The English translation is quite sufficient to get the point.

woiyo wrote:

Quote:

It would be fair to read at least the text of the Pope's speech, even in the English translation, before making comments.

And obviously not only some radical Islamists are unable to do such.

Why?

I agree. That would involve more than average reading capibilties.