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Pope on a rope
Monday, September 18th, 2006 08:19 pmIt is hardly surprising that Muslims were offended by Benedict XVI's remarks about Muhammed. It is equally unsurprising that many people - including Benedict himself - were surprised at the offense taken.
The case for the defence is that the pope was simply quoting "a medieval text", the subject of which was not so much an attack on Islam in particular, but on religious war in general (and the Pope's speech was actually about neither, but about the relation of reason to religion). This was the essence of Benedict's rather feeble apology.
It looks OK at first glance. After all, I quote many texts, and I would be contradicting myself all over the place if I agreed with all of them. Unfortunately, Benedict introduces this text as a conversation between "the erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both." Now if in class I were to introduce a quotation as coming from "the erudite German leader Adolf Hitler on the subject of the Aryan and Semitic races and their relative merits," my students might be forgiven for expecting me to start goose-stepping around the classroom. (Not, of course, that I wish to imply any similarity between these two historical figures - anyone with a name like Paleologus cant be all that bad.) So it's not surprising that Muslims around the world see this as yet another person bad-mouthing the Prophet for no good reason.
But why should anybody be surprised at a Pope expressing hostility toward Islam? Islam may preach tolerance of and even respect toward Christianity and Judaism, but the reverse does not necessarily apply. Muslims have got to be nice to (if someone aloof from) other monotheists because it's down there in black and white in the Koran (not to mention a number of hadiths).
There is nothing so authoritative on the Catholic side. Let's not forget that they only gave up burning Protestants a few hundred years ago. (Check out Fox's Book of Martyrs for some stirring stories.) The Spanish Inquisition was not officially abolished until 1813. though to be fair, they hadn't had a proper auto da fe since 1691, and the idea that an auto da fe involved torture and burning at the stake was pure slander. (The torture came before, the burning afterwards.) As far as I know, it wasn't until the Second Vatican Coucil in 1965 that Jews, Muslims (and maybe even Protestants) were not condemned automatically to eternal damnation. The Catholic Church is obviously rather new to the whole idea of religious tolerance, so maybe its representatives should be given a little leeway when they err, and a pat on the back when they apologise.
The case for the defence is that the pope was simply quoting "a medieval text", the subject of which was not so much an attack on Islam in particular, but on religious war in general (and the Pope's speech was actually about neither, but about the relation of reason to religion). This was the essence of Benedict's rather feeble apology.
It looks OK at first glance. After all, I quote many texts, and I would be contradicting myself all over the place if I agreed with all of them. Unfortunately, Benedict introduces this text as a conversation between "the erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both." Now if in class I were to introduce a quotation as coming from "the erudite German leader Adolf Hitler on the subject of the Aryan and Semitic races and their relative merits," my students might be forgiven for expecting me to start goose-stepping around the classroom. (Not, of course, that I wish to imply any similarity between these two historical figures - anyone with a name like Paleologus cant be all that bad.) So it's not surprising that Muslims around the world see this as yet another person bad-mouthing the Prophet for no good reason.
But why should anybody be surprised at a Pope expressing hostility toward Islam? Islam may preach tolerance of and even respect toward Christianity and Judaism, but the reverse does not necessarily apply. Muslims have got to be nice to (if someone aloof from) other monotheists because it's down there in black and white in the Koran (not to mention a number of hadiths).
There is nothing so authoritative on the Catholic side. Let's not forget that they only gave up burning Protestants a few hundred years ago. (Check out Fox's Book of Martyrs for some stirring stories.) The Spanish Inquisition was not officially abolished until 1813. though to be fair, they hadn't had a proper auto da fe since 1691, and the idea that an auto da fe involved torture and burning at the stake was pure slander. (The torture came before, the burning afterwards.) As far as I know, it wasn't until the Second Vatican Coucil in 1965 that Jews, Muslims (and maybe even Protestants) were not condemned automatically to eternal damnation. The Catholic Church is obviously rather new to the whole idea of religious tolerance, so maybe its representatives should be given a little leeway when they err, and a pat on the back when they apologise.
