Muslims mad at Pope speech
Muslims deplored on Friday remarks on Islam by Pope Benedict and many of them said the Catholic leader should apologize in person to dispel the impression that he had joined a campaign against their religion.”The Pope of the Vatican joins in the Zionist-American alliance against Islam,” said the leading Moroccan daily Attajdid, the main Islamist newspaper in the kingdom.
“We demand that he apologizes personally, and not through (Vatican) sources, to all Muslims for such a wrong interpretation,” said Beirut-based Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, one of the world’s top Shi’ite Muslim clerics.
In his speech in Germany on Tuesday, the Pope appeared to endorse a Christian view, contested by most Muslims, that the early Muslims spread their religion by violence.
He repeated criticism of the Prophet Mohammad by the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who is recorded as saying that everything Mohammad brought was evil “such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”.
Most of the Pope’s speech was about faith and reason but his historical references suggested that he shared the emperor’s view that the Islamic concept of jihad showed that Islam was irrational and incompatible with God’s nature.
You can read the Pope’s speech here, if you are inclined the actual argument being made is quite a bit more subtle, and more interesting that it is being reports. The news account above even got the Paleologus quote wrong (assuming the translastion I link to is correct):
“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”
There is quite a difference I think between ‘everything Mohammed brought was evil’ and ‘everything new Mohammed brought was evil.’ It is also interesting to note that the context of this quote was a set of conversations between the Emporer and a learned Persian.
I don’t feel qualified to pass final judgement on whether or not everything new that Mohammad brought was evil or not. I freely admit that I don’t know enough about Islam to make that determination. Certainly, from some perspectives, speading one’s religion with the sword wasn’t ‘new’ in any event.
I will say that I consider the speading of one’s religion to be evil. Many Muslims argue that Islam doesn’t preach (and even that it never practiced) speading religion by the sword, quoting ‘their is no compulsion in religion.’ Perhaps they are correct as to the theology, although I think that at the least the actual practice fell short (Islam is not alone there, all religions fall short of their ideal, Christianity as much as any.)
I do think though that Muslims have a lot of chutzpah for calling out the Pope on religious intolerance. Whether or not Islam was historically spread by the sword, it is patently obvious that in many places it is at the very least maintained and enforced by force of arms. I think that this is a tradgedy, and if there truly is no compulsion in religion than these Muslim leaders would be better served.
I would be much more inclined to believe that Islam, at least as it is practiced today, didn’t believe in compulsion if it didn’t seem like so many Muslims, even the more moderate ones, were not so quick to demand apologies toward offenses. They certainly seem to be try to compel people to me. If they truly believe this point, it seems that the proper response would be to agree with Pope Benedict and Emporer Palaeologus that using force to compel another’s belief was wrong. They would certainly be free to explain that the Pope, and the Emporer before him were mistaken in their belief that Islams supports such a notion.
In all fairness, it does seem that that is what some Muslims, and some Muslim leaders are doing. I applaud those, and hope that the Pope will be able to reach out in some way and make common cause with them. Unfortunately though it is the most fanatical voices that echo the loudest.
