Controversy rages about Pope's comments on Islam

[Al-khiyal]

Situations like these reveals the Muslim minds more to the West, and the latter are getting more guarded and fearful of fanatics.

Did you actually read all the articles in this thread before coming to this conclusion, ya Theja, or is that just a throwaway comment containing an unqualified generalization? If the latter we can just throw it away but if that is what you actually believe based upon a thorough reading of the issue perhaps you might benefit from re-reading the thread again.

When the Chief Rabbi of Israel, editorial writers from the New York Times, Protestant clergymen, other Christian commenters, academics, Vatican analysts and seasoned Vatican journalists along with numerous other non-Muslim commenters are all condemning the Pope's speech as ill-considered, ill-timed, dangerous, provocative and something for which he should apologize your comment looks to have completely overlooked the sensitivity and the complexity of the issue. In your haste to say something negative about 'Muslim minds' you have abandoned any attempt to explain why it is that so many non-Muslims are in agreement with Muslims about the rashness of the Pope's remarks.

Being 'guarded and fearful' is not a very good substitute for being informed.

[Al-khiyal]

The London-based ash-Sharq al-Awsat said in a commentary Wednesday it was surprising that the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict, could be so "ignorant and tactless" to speak about Islam so negatively and insult more than one billion Muslims. The Saudi-owned daily added it was surprised the pope did not think of the repercussions of such statements and their effect on religious co-existence. His justifications and claiming that Muslims misunderstood his words cannot dilute what happened, it insisted. The paper, distributed in many Arab capitals, said the Catholic pope made a big mistake that he may not be able to correct unless he offers Muslims a formal apology and work towards "rebuilding the bridges" he destroyed between Muslims and Catholics. It also called on Muslims to express their anger in a civilized manner and not to resort to violence targeting Catholic clergy and to remember that their religion "advocates religious pluralism." It hoped that Muslims will not shift their attention from their real problems, "for they have no problem with Catholicism of followers of other religions," but to keep their focus on occupation of their countries. Pope Benedict's speech, it argued, feeds "the spirit of extremism and hostility among religions, adopted by al-Qaida, and therefore joins President (George) Bush who has done his share in pushing some youth to join al-Qaida."

Oman's al-Watan commented that Pope Benedict's statements on Islam is connected to a general escalating trend in the West since the beginning of the century that links Muslims with violence, terrorism, inhumanity and backwardness. The pro-government daily said the pope's comments were not a question of whether he's an extremist who made a mistake, or whether Christians or Catholics agree with him. "The question is simply that the Jews, who were accused of killing Jesus and brought evil to the world, have been now replaced with Muslims," the paper opined. It insisted the pope's comments, and before it the cartoons insulting Prophet Mohammad, are directly linked to comments by President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac and other Western leaders on Islam. "And all that is linked to Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia and then Iran," it said. The paper went on to add that while the general anti-Islamic trend started before the 9/11 attacks on the United States five years ago, the 9/11 events "launched the beginning of the Muslim holocaust." It is vital, it said, to confront the attacks on Islam through sticking to the true values of the religion in terms of its humanity and forgiveness towards those "who try to portray us as medieval monsters."

Algeria's al-Khabar said torching any symbol of culture, civilization or religion is uncivilized and unacceptable by any standard. The daily, which describes itself as independent, commented it was strange for Palestinians to attack churches in the aftermath of the pope's comments when Palestine is the hometown of Christian revolutionaries. "We believe people in the Arab world generally differentiate between eastern and Western Christianity" and realize that Arab Christians are more active than Muslims against the "Western plans of hegemony," it said. The paper insisted that Arab Christians played an "honorable role in every station of the struggle between the Arab rebels on the one hand and the Zionists and their Western allies on the other, since the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine." The mass-circulation said that Lebanon's Christian president, Emile Lahoud, stood by the Shiite Hezbollah guerilla group during its recent war with Israel, while Egypt's Muslim president, Hosni Mubarak, Jordan's King Abdullah II and Saudi King Abdullah did not. "So who burned Palestine's churches?" it asked.

Pope's remarks "ignorant and tactless"

[Al-khiyal]

During an interview decades ago in Beirut with Sir Zafrullah Khan, the eminent Pakistani jurist and onetime president of the International Court of the Justice at the Hague, he corrected my spelling, saying it is "Muslim" and not "Moslem" as I wrote in my notebook. The latter spelling, which has a "z" sound, is very much like an Arabic word that means "darkness", he pointed out.

That same evening, while I was reading the Associated Press ticker at my Beirut paper, I noticed that the uprising against French rule in Algeria, which then was considered part of France, was described as being waged by "Algerian Moslems", or Musulmans in French, a term that was not used in the Arab press. To be fair, it occurred to me, the French troops should then be identified as French Christian troops or we should drop the religious affiliation of either party. We settled on identifying them as Algerians as opposed to the colons, the term used to describe the French settlers. More often than not they were described as Algerian resistance fighters or Algerian nationalists.

I recall these two examples to cite continued western insensitivity to Muslims then and now as once again has been the regrettable and insulting incident precipitated by Pope Benedict XVI during his talk last week at Germany's University of Regensburg in which he quoted a medieval description of Islam as "evil and inhuman".

Without then disassociating himself from this view he quoted a Byzantine Christian emperor as telling a Persian scholar, "Show me just what [Prophet] Mohammad [PBUH] 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."

After the outcry that followed, particularly in the Muslim and Arab worlds, the pontiff said belatedly that he felt "deeply sorry" for the reactions over the quotations which he said do not "in any way express my personal thought".

In his talk, the Pope, who usually writes his own speeches, also discussed the Islamic concept of jihad, which he defined as "holy war", and said that violence in the name of religion was contrary to God's nature and to reason.

The Pope, a former theology professor and enforcer of Vatican dogma, had intended his speech to be "an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect", but he obviously failed since Muslims and many others saw it as insulting and disrespectful. One of its unprecedented consequences has been the surprising attacks on seven Christian churches in the Palestinian areas since relationships between Palestinian Christians and Muslims have always been considered exemplary.

What made the Pope's provocative remarks most intolerable was that they came on the heels of US President George W. Bush's criticism of what he called "Islamic Fascists", thus putting the Catholic leader on the side of the American president who is not very popular in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It also follows the ugly episode of the Danish cartoonists, who published offensive caricatures of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

As the Arabic saying goes, the Pope like the camel does not see the hump on his back.

"Our Islamophobia," writes Karen Armstrong, a much-respected Muslim scholar (A Short History of Islam), "dates back to the time of the crusades and is entwined with our chronic anti-Semitism."

She continues: "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 30,000 Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem."

There is no doubt that some Muslim extremists have given a bad name to Islam but it is wrong to place all Muslims in one basket, much as it is unfair to see all Christians through one lens. The rise of Islamic militancy followed the failure of Arab nationalism to unite all Arabs under one banner as the popular Egyptian leader Jamal Abdul Nasser had hoped.

"The extremism and intolerance that have surfaced in the Muslim world in our day," Armstrong, a one-time nun, writes perceptively, "are a response to intractable political problems oil, Palestine, the occupation of Muslim lands, the prevalence of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and the West's perceived "double standards" and not to an ingrained religious imperative."

Pope Benedict should not miss an upcoming opportunity to inject some much-needed rationality into any interfaith dialogue when he makes his scheduled trip to Turkey next month a trip that now may be hanging in balance after his inelegant statements and his earlier opposition to Turkey's membership in the European Union.

Living in an ivory tower

[Al-khiyal]

Vatican City, September 21, 2006 - - Pope Benedict XVI said yesterday he had "deep respect" for Islam and that he hoped remarks he made in Germany last week - which sparked angry reactions in much of the Muslim world - could lead to dialogue among religions.

The pope acknowledged his remarks were open to misinterpretation, but insisted he had not intended to endorse a negative view of Islam.

"I hope that in several occasions during the visit ... my deep respect for great religions, in particular for Muslims - who worship the one God and with whom we are engaged in defending and promoting together social justice, moral values, peace and freedom for all men - has emerged clearly," Benedict said during his weekly audience at the Vatican.

"I trust that after the initial reaction, my words at the university of Regensburg can constitute an impulse and encouragement toward positive, even self-critical dialogue both among religions and between modern reason and Christian faith," the pope told thousands of faithful in St Peter's Square.

Security in the square had been stepped up.

At the university of Regensburg, Benedict cited the words of a Byzantine emperor who characterised some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith."

"In no way did I wish to make my own the words of the Medieval emperor," the pope said. "I wished to explain that not religion and violence, but religion and reason go together."

On Sunday, Benedict said that he was "deeply sorry" over the reactions to his remarks and that they did not reflect his own opinions.

But not all in the Islamic world were satisfied by Benedict's statement of regret.

The pontiff's comments yesterday were part of a reflection over the September 9-14 trip to his native Bavaria.

Benedict said he wanted to share the "sentiments and feelings" he felt during his visit.

Pope expresses 'deep respect' for Islam

[Al-khiyal]

On a scale of 1 to 10, Pope Benedict's first attempt at apology was barely a 3. He said nothing, but on Saturday Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told the world, "The holy father is very sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers."

That didn't stop the protests that have been building in the Muslim world since the pope's Sept. 12 speech to an academic audience in Germany, so Sunday he tried again. From his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, he said: "I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims."

That won't stop the protests, because he really isn't sorry for what he said. He's sorry for "the reactions in some countries" to his remarks, but he implicitly stands by what he said. So is the pope really anti-Muslim?

After the 9/11 attacks five years ago, the Catholic leader then known as Cardinal Ratzinger told Vatican Radio that "it is important not to attribute simplistically what happened to Islam" - but then he added that "the history of Islam also contains a tendency to violence." True enough, but Christianity has its own history of violence: the Crusades, the Inquisition and several other detours from the path of peace and tolerance.

Just before he became pope last year, Benedict declared that Turkey should not be allowed into the European Union because its Islamic culture is incompatible with Europe's "Christian" culture. But the real case for the prosecution rests on his invitation to Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci to visit him last September.

Fallaci (who died last week) was an atheist, and her fame as a war correspondent and interviewer was decades behind her. But she carved out a second career as the most extreme anti-Muslim writer in Europe, producing two bestselling books since 2002 that vilified Muslims as dirty subhumans who multiply "like rats," and portraying Islam as an irrational religion that breeds hatred.

Her next-to-last book, which presumably inspired the pope's invitation, was "The Force of Reason," which argued that the West is rational and reasonable, whereas Muslims aren't. And there was Benedict in Germany last week, saying exactly the same thing. What a coincidence.

Benedict quoted from the 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who told a Persian visitor that "spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable ... God is not pleased by blood."

So far, so good - but then Manuel asked his Muslim visitor: "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." Benedict quoted that, too, without further comment. He ended his speech, 4½ pages later, by quoting the emperor again: " 'not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God,' said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God. ... It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures." In other words, you Muslims are unreasonable, but if you do it our way, then we'll finally get somewhere.

So now we know that the new pope is a parochial and intolerant man - but anybody who paid attention to Cardinal Ratzinger's previous career knew that already. Now he is in a position to do much more damage.

Pakistan's parliament has unanimously passed a resolution condemning the pope's speech. Seven Christian churches in the occupied Palestinian territories have been bombed, set ablaze or shot at. A Catholic nun has been shot to death in Somalia. Most Muslims are well aware that violence is an inappropriate way to protest accusations that Islam is a violent faith, but why do they even care what the pope says?

The real reason for the uproar is that so many Muslims feel under attack by the West. Two Muslim countries have been invaded by the United States and its allies since 9/11, and another, Lebanon, has been bombed to ruins by Israel with full U.S. and British support.

At least 20 times as many Muslims have died in these brutal wars as the number of Americans who died in the 9/11 attacks, and almost none of them had anything to do with that terrorist atrocity. So the suspicion grows among Muslims that all this is not really about 9/11 at all, and almost any minor insult to Islam from the West is enough to trigger outrage from Morocco to Indonesia.

We haven't achieved a full-scale "clash of civilizations" yet, but we're making progress.

Not really all that sorry

[Al-khiyal]

Pope Benedict XVI certainly knows a lot about Catholicism, but despite his reputation as a religious scholar, he evidently knows very little about Islam, and even less about establishing good relations between his Church and the ummah. The pope's recent performance in Regensburg did great damage to the work established by his predecessor, John Paul II:

Et tu, pontiff?

[Bent_Bladi]

20 September, 2006
SYRIA – VATICAN
Syria’s Grand Mufti says Pope’s explanation “more than enough”
by Jihad Issa

After meeting the Nuncio, the head of Sunni clerics called for respect for the personality of Benedict XVI and urged one and all to pursue the path of dialogue.

Damascus (AsiaNews) – “The clarifications supplied by the Pope are more than sufficient, although I would ask for, if possible, more explanation.” With these words, the Sunni Grand Mufti of the Arab republic of Syria, Ahmad Badr El Din El Hassoun summed up a meeting yesterday – Tuesday – with the Apostolic Nuncio of Syria, Mgr Giovanni Morandini. In a statement to AsiaNews, he added: “The disapproval of Pope Benedict XVI and his bitterness after the recent reactions are more than an ‘apology’ for us and a great sign of respect towards the Islamic world.” El Hassoun called on “all to respect this great personality, Pope Benedict XVI.”

The Grand Mufti also thanked the Apostolic Nuncio for bringing a message of brotherhood and peace and said the latest position of the Holy See – expressed by the Pope himself, by the Secretary of State, by the Vatican Press Office and by some religious leaders – should be viewed as an expression of the “good intentions reigning in the hearts of Christian brothers”.

The Arab Group for Inter-faith Dialogue, in a statement released to the public also yesterday, upheld “the necessity of pursuing the path of dialogue, the only way capable of purifying hearts and of designing a project for the future of the region.” The group asked differences in vision, which will not help Muslim-Christian coexistence in Syria, be dropped from debate, and thanked the government of Damascus for security measures taken “that avoided violence and hate.”

In Syria, there was practically no aggressive and violent reaction at all to the address of the Pope, although the odd person sought to take advantage of the situation to boost his position in the country.

LINK