Pope makes mockery of engaging Muslims
by Anver M. Emon
This commentary was first published in the Toronto Star on September 22, 2006.
On Sept. 12, Pope Benedict XVI made a speech that has angered Muslims around the world. Speaking in Germany, the Pope referred to a 14th- century Byzantine emperor's comments to a Persian about the merits of Christianity and Islam. The emperor accused the Prophet Muhammad of bringing evil and inhumanity to the world by endorsing the spread of Islam by the sword.
The idea that faith could be forced upon someone challenged the emperor's belief that faith coexists with natural reason, and flies against the natural justice of God's will.
The Pope's reference to Muhammad's "evil teachings" has led to severe consequences in the Muslim world. Unfortunately, churches have been burned and a nun has been killed, although there is no conclusive evidence this was linked to the Pope's speech. The Pope has apologized for causing the insult, but not for the content of his speech.
The Pope's speech can be criticized on various grounds, most obviously that the Church has also advocated coercion to spread the Catholic faith, such as crusades in the Muslim world, and colonization of the "new world" and conversion of its aboriginal inhabitants.
For example, in 1096 Pope Urban II issued a Papal Bull (document) calling European Christians to crusade against the Muslim Turks who controlled the Holy Land in Jerusalem. Expressed in the rhetoric of piety and devotion, the Bull advocated a holy war fought for God and Christendom.
Aside from the obvious criticism, little has been said about the Pope's claim that Islam has little room for reasoning in matters of faith.
The Pope suggested that Islam has no place for reason, and that God is not bound by rational standards of justice and goodness. Referring to the French Islamic historian R. Arnaldez, the Pope writes that the 11th-century Muslim scholar, Ibn Hazm, believed God can justly command humanity to practise idolatry. Notably, Ibn Hazm was hardly a mainstream scholar, and his school of Islamic thought died out shortly after his passing.
But from the Pope's speech, no one would know that.
For instance, the 12th-century Muslim philosopher and scholar Averroes remarked famously that where your reasoned conclusions of law, for instance, conflict with your understanding of scripture, you must interpret scripture so that it conforms to your rational analysis. Oddly, professor Arnaldez wrote a biography on Averroes and his rationalist thought.
But from the Pope's speech, no one would know that.
The Pope's remarks were incomplete, highly selective, and frankly uninformed. Since the 10th century, Muslim scholars feverishly debated about the relationship between justice, reason, and faith. Most jurists held that if scripture is silent on a particular issue, humans can reason about God's law by reference to the natural world. The fundamental debate was not about the use of reason in determining religious truths. Rather, the debate was whether the religious truths had the force of God's will or not.
Certainly the Pope cannot be expected to know the intricate details about Islamic scholarly tradition. But surely he can recognize that a 14th-century Christian emperor may skew how he represents his discussion with a "Muslim infidel." The emperor had the power of the pen behind him.
Today's Pope does not have the same power to define and create the "other" as he sees fit. He operates in a world where his words and assumptions are subject to considerable scrutiny, especially given the advances in telecommunications.
Certainly, his speech suggests the Pope wants to engage Muslims the world over. But to do so with such carelessness, selectivity, and naÔvetÈ only makes a mockery of that effort.
