| Return to opening page
for
further information and viewing conditions . |
||
Christianity v Islam20.09.2006
Below is a series of articles concerning the Pope's recent citation from Palaeologus -- much as it is appropriate to be politically correct and multi-faithed -- the bottom line is that both religions have an inbuilt contradiction about the other.
The Guardian 18.09.2006
Just as the scorching Australian sun dries out the bush to the point where the smallest spark can start an uncontrollable inferno, so the perception of a clash of civilisations evaporates good will between the faiths until incidents that might once have gone unnoticed can explode right around the world. The question now is whether the Pope's citation of an anti-Muslim Byzantine emperor is about to become a case in point. Without disowning any part of last week's speech, Benedict XVI yesterday expressed sorrow about "the reactions in some countries". By the time he spoke, however, Molotov cocktails had been thrown at churches in the West Bank, and moves were under way to increase his own security following death threats. His ability to douse the flames was further called into question when an Italian nun was shot in Somalia. Pessimists can make a powerful case. The aftermath of 9/11 left some westerners falling into the trap of interpreting world events through the prism of a single global struggle against radical Islam. And then Afghanistan, and more particularly Iraq, left many Muslims viewing the west as waging an imperialist crusade, leaving them angry and hyper-sensitive. The result is a global tinderbox whose capacity to ignite was seen clearly last year in protests after the publication of Danish caricatures of Muhammad, which after a slow start reached violent heights. A year - and the Lebanon war - have since passed, and today the offender is no mere cartoonist, but the head of the Catholic church. Worse still, there are plenty in the Muslim world with a desire to fan the flames, while the Pope is a known conservative with a maladroit touch, which was seen again yesterday when, almost unbelievably given the circumstances, he talked about the crucifixion in terms that some are construing as anti-semitic. With the Vatican claiming a billion Catholics worldwide, and an even larger number of Muslims, prolonged antagonism between between these faiths would be a global disaster. Yet for all the dangers, there are stronger grounds for hoping that this can be avoided. For one thing, any Islamist caricature linking the Vatican with George Bush's war on terror would not stand scrutiny. The Vatican took a principled and firm stand against the Iraq war, and regularly runs up against Washington on a host of other issues. Wiser heads in the Muslim world are well aware of this, and realise that they need to work with the Vatican, which is why, for example, Turkey was yesterday suggesting that it expects that the Pope can go ahead with his trip there and why the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt moved to accept the apology from the Vatican, in spite of its ambiguous nature. Doctrinal tensions, too, can be exaggerated. It is hardly surprising that Benedict believes Christianity is superior to other faiths - he would not be Pope if he did not. But that does not make him militantly anti-Muslim. After all, the offending papal speech aimed to highlight the wrongness of conversion by the sword - whether by Muslims, or whether, as in the Crusades, by the Christians. On the Muslim side, the need to distinguish the minority of Ismamist extremists from the far more numerous mainstream believers cannot be underlined heavily enough. Muhammad urged his followers to co-exist peacefully with those of other faiths, and Muslims can and do point to concepts in their faith relating to consultation and the rule of law that are not only compatible with, but supportive of liberal democracy. It would be in the interests of the Pope to display greater awareness of the sensitive political context into which remarks about other faiths are made. It is still more important that the Muslim majority avoid being taken hostage by the minority of extremists who wish to turn this sorry drama into a global crisis. John Hooper, September
19, 2006
Response
marks setback to 25 years of diplomacy
Morocco denies killing of Italian is linked to row Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday accused the Pope of committing the world's biggest Christian church to what he claimed was a "crusade" launched by President Bush against Islam. The Iranian leader's words represented a setback to more than 25 years of Vatican diplomacy aimed at distancing Roman Catholicism from the west many Muslims regard as hostile and decadent. In his first comment on remarks on Islam made by Pope Benedict last week, the Ayatollah said they formed "the latest link in the chain of a crusade against Islam started by America's Bush". The Iranian leader's remarks increased concern for the safety of Roman Catholics in the Middle East. As even moderate Muslims deplored the Pope's comments, tensions remained high across the Islamic world. In Morocco police sources denied that the death of an Italian EU official and his Belgian wife, found stabbed to death at their villa in Rabat, was religiously motivated. The sources were quoted as saying the two Europeans were killed during a burglary. Break-ins at the villas of foreigners in the Moroccan capital have increased recently, an Italian news agency report said. But this was the first time such a robbery had ended in death. The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organisation of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al-Qaida in Iraq, issued a statement on a web forum saying the pontiff and the west were "doomed". The message, the authenticity of which could not be immediately verified, said: "We shall continue our holy war and never stop until God enables us to chop your necks and raise the fluttering banner of monotheism when God's rule is established governing all people and nations." The Vatican launched a damage limitation exercise. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, its secretary of state, sought to quell protests with a statement on Saturday. He told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera: "We have instructed the nuncios [papal ambassadors] in Muslim countries to take my statement to the political and religious authorities and explain it to them." He said they had also been encouraged to make available the full text of the lecture by the Pope that prompted the row. Addressing a university audience, he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who said Muhammad's contribution had been "evil and inhuman". Cardinal Bertone said the nuncios were under orders to point out aspects that have so far been ignored, for example where the Holy Father describes the emperor's reference to Muhammad "as shockingly brusque". All the signs, however, were that they would run into a wall of scepticism. The King of Morocco, Mohammed VI - scarcely an ally of fundamentalism - was reported to have chided the Pope in a letter he sent on Saturday. It invited the pontiff to respect "Islam in the same way as he respects other religions". A representative of Jordan's signally moderate government said the Pope's expression of regret on Sunday was "a step forward", but "not sufficient". And in Egypt the veteran author Gamal al-Banna, who has received death threats for airing progressive views, said Benedict had "carried out a pre-meditated act. He detests Islam and has not made any apology." Almost the only glimmer of light came from Somalia, where an Islamist group accused of links to al-Qaida vowed to punish those responsible for the murder on Sunday of an Italian nun. Vatican-watchers expressed pessimism about the consequences of the affair. Marco Politi, of the daily La Repubblica, said the policy towards the Islamic world would need to be "rebuilt from scratch". Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, responded to the 1979 Iranian revolution and the rise of fundamentalism by trying to keep open channels to the Islamic world. His opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq also helped to convince many Muslims that the west's biggest church was not to be confused with the policies of its most powerful nation. Soumaya Ghannoushi,
September 19, 2006
By
drawing on medieval poison about Islam, the Pope has boosted Muslim
fears of a new crusade
The Pope's response to the anger his statements sparked in the Muslim world was more offensive than the statements themselves. He apologised not for what he said, but for Muslims' failure to grasp the intended meaning. That the Pope should have quoted from a Byzantine text on Islam is hardly surprising. The line of continuity between Emanuel Paleologos's conception of Islam - quoted in the papal speech - and Benedict's has never been severed. The massive body of terms, images and narratives on Islam which the church inherited from the middle ages survives intact. There, Islam is depicted as a false creed propagated through violence and promiscuity, with Muhammad as scoundrel, magician, heresiarch, and precursor of the anti-Christ. Though Constantinople's Latin enemies shed few tears over the loss of two-thirds of its territories to Muslims in the seventh century, they did much to ensure the survival of its literature on Islam. Between the 11th and 14th centuries, this was used by the church's propaganda machine as it strove to arouse crusading fervour across Christendom. The Reformation further developed this literary corpus and ensured its transmission into modern Europe. In a 17th-century Christian text, Muslims are described in the most chilling of terms. They are "poison, scabies, venomous snakes ... the dogs in the church". Even if this metaphorical language has retreated in favour of the profane language of reason and subjectivity, its structural foundations remain. Islam is still perceived as the other, the embodiment of evil. Only in this context can we make full sense of the Pope's statements, and indeed of much of what is said today on the subject of Islam. We must defend freedom of expression, but freedom of expression should not be used as a disguise for the incitement of hatred of other races and religions. It is ironic that the Pope, who stresses the unity of reason and faith, which he uses as proof of Christianity's superiority over Islam, has inherited this formula from Ibn Rushd, or Averroes, the Andalusian Muslim philosopher. It was on the basis of this Rushdian equation that the medieval church could reconcile itself with Benedict's beloved logos. The Pope speaks much of religious tolerance in his lecture. Unfortunately for him, the church's historical treatment of its religious others has been marked by violence and aggression, against pagans, Jews, heretics and infidels alike. Not a day goes by without calls to reform Islam being raised-a mission which Pope Benedict XVI has declared impossible. Perhaps it is time to make the same demand of Catholicism and its infallible head. It certainly needs to introduce dramatic reforms to its terrifying conception of Islam, its prophet and followers. Rather than apologising for the church's bloody legacy against Muslims in the dark years of the Crusades and Reconquista, the Pope has chosen to twist the knife in the old wound. He has driven the gulf between the two faiths even wider. He has again pitted the cross against the crescent. The Pope's statements have done much to convince Muslims from Tangier to Jakarta that an open war is being waged against them on three fronts: political, military and religious. The pontiff should not be surprised that his words generated such strong responses in a Muslim world seething with rage at being dragged back to the age of colonialism and civilising missions. Who is to convince Muslims now that the west is not waging a crusade against them, in an alliance between Bush and Benedict, between the powers of the temporal and the sacred? Soumaya Ghannoushi is a researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, specialising in medieval Christian literature on Islam soumayak@hotmail.com Madeleine Bunting
19.09.2006
Pope Benedict is being portrayed as a naive, shy scholar who has accidentally antagonised two major world faiths in a matter of months. In fact he is a shrewd and ruthless operator, argues Madeleine Bunting - and he's dangerous Only 18 months into his papacy and already Pope Benedict XVI has stirred up unprecedented controversy. As the explanations and apologies pour out of the Vatican - and thousands of Catholic churches around the world - the questions about what exactly this man intended by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's insult of the Prophet Mohammed have only multiplied. Some say this was a case of naivety, of a scholarly theologian stumbling into the glare of a global media storm, blinking with surprise at the outrage he had inadvertently triggered. The learned man's thoughtful reasoning, say some, has been misconstrued and distorted by troublemakers, and the context ignored. But such explanations are unconvincing. This is a man who has been at the heart of one of the world's multinational institutions for a very long time. He has been privy to how pontifical messages get distorted and magnified by a global media. Shy he may be, but no one has ever before accused this pope of being a remote theologian sitting in an ivory tower. On the contrary, he is a determined, shrewd operator whose track record indicates a man who is not remotely afraid of controversy. He has long been famous for his bruising, ruthless condemnation of those he disagrees with. Senior Catholic theologians such as the German Hans Kung are well familiar with the sharpness of his judgments. But in the 18 months since Benedict was elected, the wary critics who have always feared this man were lulled into believing that office might have softened his abrasive edges. His encyclical on love won widespread acclaim and the pronouncement on homosexuality being incompatible with the priesthood (and its inference that homosexuals were to blame for the child sex abuse problems in the church) were explained away as an inheritance from Pope John Paul II's reign. But while the Pope has tried to build a more appealing public image, what has become increasingly clear is that this is a man with little sympathy or imagination for other religious faiths. Famously, the then Cardinal Ratzinger once referred to Buddhism as a form of masturbation for the mind - a remark still repeated among deeply offended Buddhists more than a decade after he said it. Even his apology at the weekend managed to bring Jews into the row. In fact, Pope Benedict XVI's short papacy has marked a significant departure from the previous pope's stance on interreligious dialogue. John Paul II made some dramatic gestures to rally world religious leaders, the most famous being a gathering in Assisi of every world faith, even African animists, to pray for world peace. He felt keenly the terrible history of Catholic-Jewish relations, and having fought with the Polish resistance to save Jews in the second world war, John Paul II made unprecedented efforts to begin to heal centuries of hostility and indifference on the part of the Catholic church to Europe's Jews. John Paul II also addressed himself to the ancient enmity between Muslims and Catholics; he apologised for the Crusades and was the first Pope to visit a mosque during a visit to Syria in 2001. In contrast, Pope Benedict has managed to antagonise two major world faiths within a few months. The current anger of Muslims is comparable to the anger and disappointment felt by Jews after his visit to Auschwitz in May. He gave a long address at the site of the former concentration camp and failed to mention anti-semitism, and offered no apology - whether on behalf of his own country, Germany, or on behalf of the Catholic Church. He acknowledged he was a "son of the German people" ... "but not guilty on that account"; he then launched into a highly controversial claim that a "ring of criminals" were responsible for nazism and that the German people were as much their victims as anyone else. This is an argument that has long been discredited in Germany as utterly inadequate in explaining how millions supported the Nazis. Given his own involvement in the Hitler Youth movement as a boy, and his refusal to make a clean breast of the Vatican's acquiescence in the horrors of Nazism by opening its archives to historians, this was a shabby moment in Catholic history. Not for this pope those dramatic, epoch-defining gestures that made the last Pope such a significant global figure. Even worse, in his Auschwitz address, he managed to argue in a long theological exposition that the real victims of the Holocaust were God and Christianity. As one commentator put it, he managed to claim that Jews were the "themselves bit players - bystanders at their own extermination. The true victim was a metaphysical one." This theological treatise bears the same characteristics as last week's Regensburg lecture; put at its most charitable, they are too clever by half. More plainly speaking, they indicate a deep arrogance rooted in a blinkered Catholic triumphalism which is utterly out of place in the 21st century. But if his visit to Auschwitz disappointed many and failed to resolve outstanding resentments about the murky role of German Catholicism, this latest incident seems even worse. Quoting Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologos, he said: "Show me just what Muhammad 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." It was a gratuitous reawakening of the most entrenched and self-serving of western prejudices - that Muslims have a unique proclivity to violence, a claim that has no basis in history or in current world events (a fact that still eludes too many westerners). Even more bewildering is the fact that his choice of quotation from Manuel II Paleologos, the 14th-century Byzantine emperor, was so insulting of the Prophet. Even the most cursory knowledge of dialogue with Islam teaches - and as a Vatican Cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI would have learned this long ago - that reverence for the Prophet is a non-negotiable. What unites all Muslims is a passionate devotion and commitment to protecting the honour of Muhammad. Given the scale of the offence, the carefully worded apology, actually, gives little ground; he recognises that Muslims have been offended and that he was only quoting, but there is no regret at using such an inappropriate comment or the deep historic resonances it stirs up. By an uncanny coincidence the legendary Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci died last week. No one connected the two events, but the Pope had already run into controversy in Italy by inviting the rabid Islamophobe to a private audience just months ago. This is the journalist who published a bestseller in 2001 which amounted to a diatribe of invective against Islam. This is the woman who was only too happy to fling out comments such as "Muslims breed like rats" and "the increasing presence of Muslims in Italy and Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom." At the time of her papal audience, Fallaci's ranting against Islam had landed her in court and there was outrage at the Pope's insensitive invitation. The Pope refused to backtrack and insisted the meeting was purely "pastoral". Put last week's lecture in Bavaria and the Fallaci audience alongside his vocal opposition to Turkish membership of the EU, and the picture isn't pretty. On one of the biggest and most volatile issues of our day - the perceived clash between the west and the Muslim world - the Pope seems to have abdicated his papal role of arbitrator, and taken up the arms in a rerun of a medieval fantasy. An elderly Catholic nun has already been killed in Somalia, perhaps in retaliation for the Pope's remarks; churches have been attacked in the West Bank. How is this papal stupidity going to play out in countries such as Nigeria, where the tensions between Catholics and Muslims frequently flare into riots and death? Or other countries such as Pakistan, where tiny Catholic communities are already beleaguered? Or the Muslim minorities in Catholic countries such as the Philippines - how comfortable do they feel this week? Two lines of thought emerge from this mess. The first is that the Pope's personal authority has been irrevocably damaged; how now could he ever present himself as a figure of global moral authority and a peacemaker after this? At the weekend, a message was read out from Cardinal Murphy O'Connor at all masses in Catholic churches in England; he spoke of the regret at any offence caused and urged good relations between Catholics and Muslims. For a church that prides itself on taking centuries to respond, this was unprecedented crisis management. It cannot but damage the pope's authority with the faithful that such emergency measures were necessary, and it compromises not just this pope but the papal office itself. (This is a job, after all, that is supposed to be divinely guided and at all times beyond reproach: a claim that looks a bit threadbare after the past few days.) The second is a more disturbing possibility: namely, that the Catholic church could be failing - yet again - to deal with the challenge of modernity. In the 19th and 20th centuries, it struggled to adapt to an increasingly educated and questioning faithful; now, in the 21st century, it is in danger of failing the great challenge of how we forge new ways of accommodating difference in a crowded, mobile world. The Catholic church has to make a dramatic break with its triumphalist, bigoted past if it is to contribute in any constructive way to chart this new course. John Paul II made some dramatic steps in this direction; but the fear now is that Pope Benedict XVI has no intention of following suit, and that he has another direction altogether in mind. More from Pope Benedict
On homosexuality "Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living-out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not." On Buddhism "Auto-erotic spirituality." The ordination of women On the excommunication of seven women who called themselves priests: "... the penalty imposed is not only just, but also necessary, in order to protect true doctrine, to safeguard the communion and unity of the church, and to guide consciences of the faithful." On same-sex marriage "Call[s] into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and make[s] homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality." On rock music "[A] vehicle of anti-religion"; "the complete antithesis of the Christian faith in the redemption." On cloning "[A] more dangerous threat than weapons of mass destruction." Karen Armstrong
18.09.2006
The
Pope's remarks were dangerous,
and will convince many more Muslims that the west is incurably Islamophobic In the 12th century, Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, initiated a dialogue with the Islamic world. "I approach you not with arms, but with words," he wrote to the Muslims whom he imagined reading his book, "not with force, but with reason, not with hatred, but with love." Yet his treatise was entitled Summary of the Whole Heresy of the Diabolical Sect of the Saracens and segued repeatedly into spluttering intransigence. Words failed Peter when he contemplated the "bestial cruelty" of Islam, which, he claimed, had established itself by the sword. Was Muhammad a true prophet? "I shall be worse than a donkey if I agree," he expostulated, "worse than cattle if I assent!" Peter was writing at the time of the Crusades. Even when Christians were trying to be fair, their entrenched loathing of Islam made it impossible for them to approach it objectively. For Peter, Islam was so self-evidently evil that it did not seem to occur to him that the Muslims he approached with such "love" might be offended by his remarks. This medieval cast of mind is still alive and well. Last week, Pope Benedict XVI quoted, without qualification and with apparent approval, the words of the 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II: "Show me just what Muhammad 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 Vatican seemed bemused by the Muslim outrage occasioned by the Pope's words, claiming that the Holy Father had simply intended "to cultivate an attitude of respect and dialogue toward the other religions and cultures, and obviously also towards Islam". But the Pope's good intentions seem far from obvious. Hatred of Islam is so ubiquitous and so deeply rooted in western culture that it brings together people who are usually at daggers drawn. Neither the Danish cartoonists, who published the offensive caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad last February, nor the Christian fundamentalists who have called him a paedophile and a terrorist, would ordinarily make common cause with the Pope; yet on the subject of Islam they are in full agreement. Our Islamophobia dates back to the time of the Crusades, and is entwined with our chronic anti-semitism. Some of the first Crusaders began their journey to the Holy Land by massacring the Jewish communities along the Rhine valley; the Crusaders ended their campaign in 1099 by slaughtering some 30,000 Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem. It is always difficult to forgive people we know we have wronged. Thenceforth Jews and Muslims became the shadow-self of Christendom, the mirror image of everything that we hoped we were not - or feared that we were. The fearful fantasies created by Europeans at this time endured for centuries and reveal a buried anxiety about Christian identity and behaviour. When the popes called for a Crusade to the Holy Land, Christians often persecuted the local Jewish communities: why march 3,000 miles to Palestine to liberate the tomb of Christ, and leave unscathed the people who had - or so the Crusaders mistakenly assumed - actually killed Jesus. Jews were believed to kill little children and mix their blood with the leavened bread of Passover: this "blood libel" regularly inspired pogroms in Europe, and the image of the Jew as the child slayer laid bare an almost Oedipal terror of the parent faith. Jesus had told his followers to love their enemies, not to exterminate them. It was when the Christians of Europe were fighting brutal holy wars against Muslims in the Middle East that Islam first became known in the west as the religion of the sword. At this time, when the popes were trying to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy, Muhammad was portrayed by the scholar monks of Europe as a lecher, and Islam condemned - with ill-concealed envy - as a faith that encouraged Muslims to indulge their basest sexual instincts. At a time when European social order was deeply hierarchical, despite the egalitarian message of the gospel, Islam was condemned for giving too much respect to women and other menials. In a state of unhealthy denial, Christians were projecting subterranean disquiet about their activities on to the victims of the Crusades, creating fantastic enemies in their own image and likeness. This habit has persisted. The Muslims who have objected so vociferously to the Pope's denigration of Islam have accused him of "hypocrisy", pointing out that the Catholic church is ill-placed to condemn violent jihad when it has itself been guilty of unholy violence in crusades, persecutions and inquisitions and, under Pope Pius XII, tacitly condoned the Nazi Holocaust. Pope Benedict delivered his controversial speech in Germany the day after the fifth anniversary of September 11. It is difficult to believe that his reference to an inherently violent strain in Islam was entirely accidental. He has, most unfortunately, withdrawn from the interfaith initiatives inaugurated by his predecessor, John Paul II, at a time when they are more desperately needed than ever. Coming on the heels of the Danish cartoon crisis, his remarks were extremely dangerous. They will convince more Muslims that the west is incurably Islamophobic and engaged in a new crusade. We simply cannot afford this type of bigotry. The trouble is that too many people in the western world unconsciously share this prejudice, convinced that Islam and the Qur'an are addicted to violence. The 9/11 terrorists, who in fact violated essential Islamic principles, have confirmed this deep-rooted western perception and are seen as typical Muslims instead of the deviants they really were. With disturbing regularity, this medieval conviction surfaces every time there is trouble in the Middle East. Yet until the 20th century, Islam was a far more tolerant and peaceful faith than Christianity. The Qur'an strictly forbids any coercion in religion and regards all rightly guided religion as coming from God; and despite the western belief to the contrary, Muslims did not impose their faith by the sword. The early conquests in Persia and Byzantium after the Prophet's death were inspired by political rather than religious aspirations. Until the middle of the eighth century, Jews and Christians in the Muslim empire were actively discouraged from conversion to Islam, as, according to Qur'anic teaching, they had received authentic revelations of their own. The extremism and intolerance that have surfaced in the Muslim world in our own day are a response to intractable political problems - oil, Palestine, the occupation of Muslim lands, the prevelance of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, and the west's perceived "double standards" - and not to an ingrained religious imperative. But the old myth of Islam as a chronically violent faith persists, and surfaces at the most inappropriate moments. As one of the received ideas of the west, it seems well-nigh impossible to eradicate. Indeed, we may even be strengthening it by falling back into our old habits of projection. As we see the violence - in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon - for which we bear a measure of responsibility, there is a temptation, perhaps, to blame it all on "Islam". But if we are feeding our prejudice in this way, we do so at our peril. Karen
Armstrong is the author of Islam: A Short History
A seies of letters to the
Guardian 18.09.2006
The row over the Pope's quoting of the words of Manuel II Palaeologus has missed the context in which the emperor was speaking (Report, September 16). Manuel presided over the disintegration of the Byzantine domain, crushed between the competing powers of the mercantilist adventurism of the Catholic west and the equally expansionist ambitions of the Ottoman Turks who, through assumption of the caliphate, claimed the leadership of the Muslim world. Their sultans repeatedly justified the assault on Byzantium by quoting a (subsequently largely discredited) hadith (saying) attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, which predicted the conquest of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, by a jihadist army. Little wonder Manuel was so reticent about Islam, and yet he had little inclination to celebrate Catholicism either. Manuel's civilisation was almost unique in the 14th-century Mediterranean world in eschewing any concept of holy war - the Orthodox church refused communion to Byzantine soldiers who killed in battle - and it was this among other religious differences which led to the Catholic church preaching crusade not only against the Muslims, but against the Byzantines as well. If it was the Muslim Turks who finally ended the Byzantine empire by capturing Constantinople in 1453, its demise had been rendered largely inevitable by the earlier sack of the city and the dismemberment of its territories by the troops of the Catholic fourth Crusade in 1204. In this context, Manuel's criticism of the jihadists of his days was matched by similar Byzantine criticism of the Catholic church's commitment to impose its particular form of Christianity by force. The Ottomans, in contrast, were tolerant of their Christian subjects, although later waves of Islamist fundamentalism were to change this. The irony of the debate today is how Manuel's exasperation so resonantly echoes the sense of anger and futility felt by many of all faiths at those in both the Christian and Muslim communities who, while worshipping the same God, hijack both faiths by seeking to justify violence against each other in the name of that same God. One might have hoped, after five centuries, that the world might have moved on. Adrian
Cruden
Dewsbury If I were a Muslim I don't know what I'd find more surreal; being lectured on the "evil and inhuman" nature of my beliefs by an ex-member of the Hitler Youth, or the fact that when Manuel II Palaeologus wrote his infamous letter he was sitting in the ruins of an empire still shattered by the attentions of Pope Innocent III's fourth Crusade in 1204, a violent sack in which a large part of the population was massacred by their fellow Christians. This particular example of spreading the Christian faith so unimpressed the late John Paul II that he was moved to comment: "How can we not share, at a distance of eight centuries, the pain and disgust," in an address in which he also apologised to Muslims for the Crusades. If Muhammad did command the spreading of the faith by the sword, what was he doing if not following the Catholic example? Dr
Jon Cloke
School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University Islam, just like any other political movement, once it established itself as the dominant political and economic power in the region, sought expansion. Locals of newly subjugated countries were not forced to convert to Islam, but a special tax was levied on those who were neither Christians nor Jews. This not only confirms the essentially economic motives for the conquest, but exposes the Pope's address to be in defence of similar economic interests - in a sense, doing exactly what he accuses the Muslims of having done. One assumes that the Pope is fully aware of the implications of his surprising intervention - and in consequence, he wishes to join the struggle declared by some against Muslims. Sad and possibly tragic, but not new as it evokes memories of Pope Urban II, who too, seeking the riches of the region, plunged the Middle East into a 100-year war - the Crusades. The Pope's address is hardly a call to peace. Khaled
El-Bizri
Palo Alto, California, USA The reaction to the Pope's speech gives us all reason for concern. We cannot allow the debate over this issue to become so tightly policed that we dare not even utter the name of Islam, for fear of hysterical backlash, which, in this case, is not even based on a considered understanding of what was actually said. It's worth remembering that Islam is just another ideology, among a whole range of worldviews which people hold; and that we must be free to contrast, compare and debate all of these. To allow any particular theory a privileged position and an immunity from analysis and debate is an indefensible course of action. Matthew
Anderson
London Upon reading the Pope's speech, I was struck by an underlying theme with many of his other recent speeches: that only by reinstating theology to its rightful place at the centre of science and society can we recapture a true rationality and "thus become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today". Worryingly, his model for this appears to be a dialogue written by the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus between himself and "an educated Persian" discussing Islam and Christianity. It seems highly likely that, as is common in this format of "religious dialogue", the Persian never existed other than as a counterpoint to Manuel's argument. So what are we left with? A one-sided medieval presentation of Islam as a religion of violence and irrationality in contrast to a Christian belief modelled on rationality and self-sacrifice. Anders
Ingram
See alsoDurham The Pope is sorry Has this Pope got balls? PC - Political correctness Should we be 'nice' to radical Islamists? The New World Order, by conquest or consent? Pope takes on faith and terrorism The Pope did us a favour The Pope's Critics come out of the closet Islam, Christianity not above criticism Why Blame Islam? Will the West reject Islam? Islamic Understanding of Christianity by Soloman Nigosian |
||
| meditations |
top |
|