The Pope’s
Speech
September
29, 2006
On the day
after the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the Pope,
leader of the 1.1 billion Catholic Christians
around the world, tossed fuel on the fire of Christian-Muslim
antagonism with a very poorly considered speech.
In his remarks at a German university, he deliberately
chose to quote a Byzantine emperor’s view
of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) without
stating his opposition to that view, implicitly
thereby supporting it. The Emperor claimed that
Muslims were commanded by Muhammad to spread Islam
by force, and that anything new in Islam is evil.
Needless to say, not exactly the most disarming
opening line if the goal is to start a dialogue
with Muslims.
When asked to explain what he was up to, the Pope
initially offered three ideas. First, he was trying
to point out that violence should never be perpetrated
in the name of religion. Second, that there was
a distinction between the important role of reason
in Christian faith as opposed to the lack of reason
in Islam, and finally he claimed to be only trying
to provoke discussion with the Islamic world on
these issues.
The Pope however simply got it all wrong. Both
in terms of history and in terms of theology.
The Pope’s version of history posits a liberal,
tolerant Christianity spread by persuasion, compared
with an Islam spread by forced conversion. The
Emperor that he quotes is trying to prevent the
further forcible spread of Islam. But the truth
is quite different. While Christianity in its
first two centuries was spread by persuasion,
it remained a minority faith in the larger Roman
Empire. What made Christianity the dominant faith
in Europe and North Africa was the conversion
of the Emperor Constantine, who then made it the
state religion, and forcibly spread the faith
to all corners of the Roman Empire. Further warfare,
such as Charlemagne’s campaigns in Germany
in the 8th century, helped spread Christianity
into regions that were never under Roman control.
The Catholic Church launched the Crusades in the
11th century, subsequently spread the religion
to the New World backed by Spanish arms. In the
great age of European imperialism, Christian armies
seized forcibly most of the Earth’s surface,
and missionaries justified and followed the armies.
In contrast, Islam was not spread by force. While
political borders were expanded by military actions,
and in this the Muslims behaved no differently
than anyone else in the pre-modern world, the
religion was not. Muslim rulers in fact discouraged
conversions, as they could not tax Muslims as
heavily. Historically, most regions conquered
by Muslim armies remained non-Muslims for centuries.
These include Egypt, Spain, India, and the Balkans.
Conversely, the largest Muslim communities in
Southeast Asia and in Sub-Saharan Africa were
the results of traders, not soldiers, as those
areas were never conquered by Muslim armies.
The Byzantine Emperor the Pope quoted was ruling
in the late 14th century. Within 50 years his
empire crumbled under the Ottoman assault, and
the Turks then carried forward into the Balkans
up to Vienna. On the other side of the Mediterranean,
Catholic armies overran the Muslim Spain by 1492.
Contrary to the Pope’s historical vision,
the consequences of these two victories were quite
different. The Ottomans created the most religiously
tolerant empire in Europe for the next 400 years,
and the vast majority of the inhabitants of the
Balkans remained Christians, while in Spain all
the Jews and Muslims were expelled or forced to
convert. The Spanish Inquisition was created to
ensure that new converts did not backslide in
secret. To add to the irony, the Ottomans welcomed
the expelled Jews of Spain, who were the origin
of the Sephardic communities of Jews in the Muslim
lands.
On a theological level, the Pope is also deeply
wrong. There is no more rational a religion than
Islam. Doctrinally, Islam believes that men can
find their way to God and the truth through their
own reason, and revelation is not necessary. Abraham
came to God without revelation. The Qur’an
describes itself as a “mercy”, not
a necessity. Our God-given reason is sufficient
to distinguish good from evil and to avoid idol-worship.
Qur’anic guidance is a mercy from God to
illuminate the path more clearly. Christianity
on the other hand rejects reason as a path to
the Trinity. One cannot imagine that without exposure
to Christian scripture, anyone could reason his
way to the intricacies of Christian, much less
Catholic, theology. But many people around the
world have reasoned their way to ethics and belief
in one God without exposure to the Qur’an.
Christians themselves accept that the Trinity
is not a rational concept, and must be taken on
faith alone. Even in the Middle Ages, what forced
Catholic scholars to try to integrate Greek rationalism
and Christian thought was their exposure to Arabic
texts and commentaries of Aristotle and Plato.
Catholicism also has a very poor history of association
with modern rational thought. Galileo was threatened
with torture for declaring that the Earth orbits
the Sun. In the 19th century, the Catholic church
rejected Darwin’s findings. And its current
view that a fertilized human egg in a petri dish
is a life is profoundly irrational.
The Pope’s remarks reflect a profound hostility
to Islam. His choice of quoting a medieval polemic
against Islam was deliberate. It was also ill-informed
and served only to heighten tensions between Muslims
and Christians, rather than reduce them. As the
Pope, he should choose his words more carefully,
and be better aware of the real history and doctrines
of Islam before he comments on them.
Comments can reach me at Nali@socal.rr.com
