The pope’s lecture was about reason and faith. His thesis was that Christianity is a religeon of reason while Islam is that of the sword. He quotes the Quran’s “There is no compulsion in religeon” and then dismisses it and quotes a 14th century (The time of the Crusades mind you!!!)Christian monarch to support his claim. Is that reasonable? How about the Crusades? Why did he fail to mention that? He mentions Ibn Hazm and quotes him “out of context” while choosing to ignore Ibn Rushd who was immortalised by Rafael on the walls of Cistin Chapel. It seems bigotry and double standards have become a chronic trait of Christendom and the West.

But still, i think the whole affair should not be taken out of proportion. It should be dismissed merely as a serious misunderstanding and treated as such. I think that this topic of debate is one which Muslims can easily win. Islam has an abundance of philosophers who treated this subject (Al Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Hazm). Moreover it has the legacy of preserving Greek philosophy. What Muslim leaders should do is to calmy call for a debate to refute all those allegations (of non-reasonablesness) and prove otherwise.

The emperor in question was not a Crusader. In fact the Byzantine Greek empire was at war at different times with the Crusaders.
The Byzantine empire controlled much of Syria, Palestine and Lebanon before Islamic armies moved in from the south in the 7th century

To AbdulKarim

NO APOLOGIES!!!

Do not attempt to defend your religion by ignoring the reality of the past and the present…and dont try your nonsense…THE CRUSADES WERE LONG OVER by the 14th Century!!!

Not all of the bloggers are stupid or do not know about islam…you talk about “no compulsion in religion”…Talk is cheap…say it as a fact that islam was not spread by the sword in all of what was once A CHRISTiAN MIDDLE EAST…say it as a fact that the “verse of the sword” does not exist (Sura 9.5) …say it as a fact that this sura does not abrogate all of the earlier suras about peace etc.

I wonder what wil lahppen next, the religion of peace will demand an apology or else there will be violence…:-) C’mon abdul do you still think you are making sense.

You need to accept critism and not cry about being a victim and how everyone quotes everything out of context when it comes to islam…yet we call osama and their type true beleivers!

keep talking…im listening

SHUNKLEASH

honestly, i dont think that the pope was taking cheap shots at islam. moreover, you HAVE to take his quoting of manuel II in historical context.
to be the foot stool of a warmongerer as bayezid I, it would be reasonable to assume that manuels understanding of mohammed and islam left something to be desired.
when you’ve become the trophy of a mans conquests(bayezid)and must part take in you own ‘peoples’ destruction one must question on who’s authority does bayezid have that right.
we see this even today in the middle east regularly. is this GODS law or mans? more times than not it is mans law that dictates the pretext of wars.
as for B XVI, i think he was merely stating the tip of the iceberg of the internal ‘jihad’ of men.

Shunkleash

How did Sub-Saharan Africa and North and South America become Christian?

Why did it take hundreds of years for Muslims to become a majority in what you call the “Christian Middle East”? Obviously those damn Eye-slamics weren’t very good with their swords!

Where does centuries of European Christian anti-semitism fit into things?

Lay off the cheese dude.

“The short answer is: not yet.”

The long answer is: not… yet

“As Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a respectable Lebanese Shiite cleric puts it: “We call on the pope to carry out a scientific and fastidious reading of Islam. We do not want him to succumb to the propaganda of the enemy”
“

Actually, the respectable Lebanese Shiite cleric said the propaganda of the jewish enemy, not the propaganda of the enemy.

Mustafa, I agre with you except that Fadlalhah, as mentioned by another specifically mentioned Jewish and imperialist enemy, not so secret code for Israel and the US. Plus if you read the whole speech a lot less controversial. Christianity was not spread by the sword, except in places like Spain pre and post 1492 where muslims and jews were not left much choice, and of course Latin America but not in the mediterranean basin, Egypt, syria and other former provinces of the Byzantine empire were largely christian, prior to the conquest by muslim armies. The choice then was either be a second class citizen or convert. given that Copts are only 5% of Egypt pop, looks like most converted. Of course most people in the end take the faith of their overlords, it is the safe thing to do… just look at Latin America’s embrace of catholocism by the indigenous populace.

Do you think the scholars and Governments got involved at this stage to ward off anger on the Muslim street?

They were slow to react with the Danish cartoons, and “popular” sentiment took over…

Look at the picture of the pope displayed on this blog,doesn’t he look like the devil,an evil person?May God rest the soul of the late pope Jhon Paul 2 he was more rational,more universal,more respectful.
It seems the world has chosen manny evil devils as leaders of manny countries and religions,this is the era,look at the evil:the pope,georges bush,tony blair,ahmadi najad,bashar assad,oussama bin laden,husni moubarak,saad hariri,emile lahoud,oussama bin laden.
Hope we can get rid of them as soon as possible,so the worls will be a better place.

Hope we get ridd of th

To annonymous,

I can see that you couldn’t be bothered to answer my question…instead you answered a question with a question. I will take it then that you have chosen not to answer my question in the context it was posed and leave the debate closed.

By the way shunkleash is good for you…you should take as much as you can get:-)

As for poster “Annonymous” above if you want to have your opinion on the Pope and write a lot of nonsense…that is your right. But remember this point when it comes to the discourse on “jihad” and why the Pope is CORRECT…the violent promotion of Christianity is itself in conflict with Christ’s teachings. The violent promotion of Islam is not in conflict with Mohammed’s teachings. If you are in doubt read the Q’uran and then the bible.

Shunkleash

Honestly I have no real idea where I stand in regards to what the Pope said. I have to defer to true theologins on this one.

My point is…..

In general I find Muslims identify very much with their religion, more so than their country. Here in the west it is the exact opposite.

With that in mind, I find it quite bewildering how Muslims react to things that they believe slander their religion.

Even the slightest insult is cause for mass demonstrations. And they demand immediate and unconditional appologies. Yet Muslims are more than eager to burn flags, call death to X (pick a country, though America is mighty popular) burn effigies, demand the removal of Israel from the world etc. Which in the reality of things is much more insulting.

They can throw punches with the best of them, but give them a pinch and they go balistic. And this is perhaps the most stupid thing that many Westerners percieve.

Islam feels that Westerners don’t respect them, but that is not the case at all. We do respect Islam. What we don’t respect is this false victimization.

We see right through that stuff, and that is what makes Islam look bad.

This whole thing has been taken out of proportion. If you read the Pope’s words carefully he didn’t say anything bad and had no intention of doing so. Either way, in my opinion, anyone has the right to intellectually critisize any religion, and Christianity has been through that process many times over.
Too bad for whoever doesn’t like it.

The fact is no religion has clean hands when it comes to spreading the faith by the sword (actually…anyone know of any Buddhist wars?!). For Manuel II, Islam was being promoted by conquest, as was Christianity two hundred years before.

I think that what Benedict’s speech lacked was to talk about this bigger picture, though I don’t think he tried to insult Islam. I mean, it’s now generally well known that the Islamic World is incredibly thin skinned with any perceived slight being seen as part of some kind of modern day war on Muslims.

On what happened in the Middle Ages in the Middle East: Yes, the Crusaders killed a lot of Muslims and Jews and massacred the population of Jerusalem in 1099.

But equally, the Christian population of Jerusalem was killed by the Muslims in 1244 and the remaining Christians were slaughtered following the siege of Acre in 1291.

However, on balance was it better to be a Muslim in Europe or a Christian in the Middle East?

An easy answer - with some exceptions, such as the Norman Kingdom of Sicily in the eleventh century - being a Muslim in Europe wasn’t actually possibly until fairly recent times.

By comparison, Christians in the Middle East might have been second class citizens but for the most part they were left alone. Christians were in fact still a majority in Jerusalem three hundred years after the Arab conquest in the seventh century and the very existence of a large Christian community in Mustapha’s Lebanon is evidence that a large degree of toleration was practiced that put Medieval Western Europe to shame.

As Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a respectable Lebanese Shiite cleric puts it: “We call on the pope to carry out a scientific and fastidious reading of Islam. We do not want him to succumb to the propaganda of the enemy

Who is this “enemy” this man speaks of?

He condemns the Pope for attacking Islam by attacking Judaism?

And I think he will be very uunhappy if the Pope or any other Christian does a serious study of the history of Islam. I’m sure that is not what he wants. The larger the number of non-muslims who learn about Islam, the larger the number of enemies Islam will have.

Actually, seeing how this is panning out, Mustapha’s original comment that the ordinary “hot headed Mohammed” still isn’t getting involved is no longer true.

I’ll bet a hundred quid / euros / dollars that things will go something like this:

Riots, a few bombs outside Churches here and there and attacks on Christians (I mean, what better way to prove the point, right?!), more “POPE HE IS NEW HITLER” type ranting, a kind of apology by the Pope, “not good enough” riots and slogans and so on…

I thought a comment on the Jordanian blog Black Iris (http://www.black-iris.com/the-pope-air-quotes/), got it 110% right:

“So is this gonna be our next “Cartoon Piñata” that we beat the hell out of coz we can’t beat anything else”

BTW, Mustapha, as the Maronite Church is nominally Roman Catholic, I’d be interested to know how this is playing out in Lebanon. Will the Maronite Patriarch and other Christian leaders in the Middle East come under attack if they are not seen to condemn the Pope’s supposed attack on Islam forcefully enough?

Why can’t we just hold hands and sing along:

The Inquistion (Let’s Begin)
The Inquisition (Look out sin)
We have a mission
To convert the Jew (Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew)
We’re gonna teach them (Wrong from right)
We’re gonna help them (See the light)
And make an offer that they can’t refuse.
(That the Jews just can’t refuse)

Confess…Don’t be boring
Say yes… Don’t be dull
A fact… You’re ignoring
It’s better to lose your skullcap than your skull (Or your gavalt)

The Inquisition (What a show)
The Inquisition (Here we go)
We know you’re wishing that we’d go away
But the inquisition’s here and it’s here to stay

The inquisition (Oh boy)
The inquisition (What joy)
The inquisition (Oi oi)

I was sitting in a chapel I was minding my own business
I was listening to a lovely Hebrew mass
Then these papus person’s plungered
And they throw me in a dungeon
And they shoved a red hot poker up my ass
Is that considerate?
Is that polite?
And not a tube of preparation H in sight.

I’m sittin’ flickin’ chickens
And was lookin’ thru the thickens
When suddenly these guys break down the walls
I didn’t even know them
And they grabbed me by the scrotum
And they started playing Ping Pong with my balls
Oy the agony
Oy the Shame
To make my privates public for a game

The Inquisition (What a show)
The Inquisition (Here we go)
We know you’re wishing that we’d go away
But the inquisition’s here and it’s here to…

Well, the first category is acting: In Basra, a bomb exploded at the Assyrian Catholic Church on Friday evening, causing damage but no injuries, according to a church leader who said the attack stemmed from the pope’s remarks.

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/15532817.htm

…in the neighbouring Palestinian territories, a homemade bomb exploded at the entrance to the Roman Orthodox Church in Gaza City causing damage but no injuries.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breakingnews.php?id=112932

Don’t know what is going to happen next. Maybe in Nigeria, where Christians were killed over the carricatures:

http://www.ikhwanweb.com/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&System=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=5275
I have read the popes speech in German, and don’t agree with its translation. After quoting the emperor, the pope says in the English version: after having expressed himself so forcefully. Translating what he said word by word, the pope commented the Emperer after having slammed (his interlocutor).

Would anyone seriously believe the pope takes a quote that he qualifies as slamming for his own attitude?

Why does the pope quote the Emperor? He says: The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.

Later on comes the surprise: In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world’s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.

So what did he do? He quoted an Emperor and qualified these words as ’slamming’ and ’startling brusqueness’. But not enough, the pope in his conclusion turns himself against the main point of the argument.

katrin,
either you don’t speak german or your german is really rusty. that is not at all the correct translation you put forth. and for the record the word “evil” IS NOT in the german text as he quoted.

dietmar,

sorry for my rusty German, I am always interested in learning more.

1. how would you translate ‘zuschlagen’?

2. Evil? Well, well, my German doesn’t seem to be that rusty ;) You do not agree with the translation neither. Evil is ‘übel’ in German, not ’schlechtes’. For ’schlechtes’ you could say ‘bad’.

Greetz from rusty Germany :)

I don’t usually agree with what the UK tabloid The Sun says, but today’s an exception:

MUSLIM leaders demand unquestioning respect for their religion.

Lord Carey, ex-Archbishop of Canterbury, says Muslims must not “cry foul” at every critical utterance. He’s absolutely right.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,31-2006430133,00.html

To us in the West, it looks like yet another example of thin skinned muslims, going “poor us” and ‘flying off the handle’ (as the Sun puts it) whenever the “M” word is mentioned.

To you in the Islamic World it looks like yet another example of Western prejudice, imperialism and racim.

And that’s the problem really, isn’t it. We’re practically speaking different languages.

Finally, hate to say it, but that half apology from the Pope I talked about earlier has happened. Now we only need to wait for various firebrands in the Middle East, Pakistan and Indonesia to declare it wasn’t contrite or fullsome enough, so that this sorry episode can carry on for a little bit longer.

Oh, sorry, there we are again. ‘Schlechtes’ can be translated into ‘evil’, you can check it both ways here:

http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=de&searchLoc=0&cmpType=relaxed&sectHdr=on&spellToler=on&search=evil&relink=on

Dirk,

we’ve recently had some train-bombers in Germany. The bombs didn’t work but surely were ment to.

The reason? Not the Lebanon crisis, but the caricatures. What did Germany do with those caricatures?

Al-Quaida declared war upon France. We don’t know yet, what France did.

Maybe we can rely upon the fact, that Germany this time will be spared. Because the Pope is German.
*shrug*

HI MUSTAPHA

LOOK FOLKS .. LETS GET TO THE SIMPLE TRUTH OF WHAT IS HAPPENING

THE VERY NOTION OF “HOLY WAR” IS RETARDED - LITTERALLY - RETARDED - IN WESTERN EYES IN THE 21ST CENTURY.

THE ISLAMIC WORLD IS SEEN AS RETARDED BECAUSE OF THIS.

THE VERY WORD “RETARDED” IS USED IN CONVERSATION BY MORE AMERICANS TO DESCRIBE THE JIHAD MENTALITY THAN ANY OTHER WORD

THE POPE IS TELLING THE ISLAMIC WORLD TO STOP ACTING LIKE RETARDS ALREADY.

YES - ANY PAPAL CONDEMNATION OF ANYTHING CAN BE CALLED HYPOCRASY TODAY BASED ON ITS HISTORY - HOWEVER, THE FACT STILL REMAINS

JIHAD MENTALITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY IS RETARDED - AND ALL YOU WILL DO IS STAY RETARDED IF YOU CONTINUE DOWN THIS ROAD

SO - JIHADIS - TAKE OFF THE HOCKEY HELMETS AND BIBS ALRADY…

hi Mustapha

It’s good to see that you back online again, with good posts and food for thought as usual. Too bad that you’re not in Lebanon any more but I will try to make up for that by going there myself sometime in the next months.

As for your post on the pope’s lecture, I am a little puzzled by all the upheaval and also by some of the things you wrote.
Having tried to read the pope’s actual speech without falling asleep (thanks for the link), I really wonder what it is that people are so angry about. His lecture is clearly a philosophical adress in which he is investigating the question how reason relates to faith. Yes, as a starting point for the discussion he uses a quote from a Byzantine emperor from the 14th century, but does quoting someone imply that you agree with him? The answer is of course: no. In order to grasp the intention of the pope you have to read the whole article. Then it becomes obvious that (1) Islam is not at all the topic of his lecture and (2) he shows a high respect for other religions, calling them “the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity” and that ignoring them would be “an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding”.

I wonder whether the people who are making such a fuss now have really read his lecture and know what he was saying.
For sure the angry mobs I saw in newspaper pictures haven’t read it.

I also haven’t seen the pope “suggest that Islam itself is at fault because it’s not based on reason” as you are paraphrasing him. That is not what he was saying.

Muslim violent reaction, once again. Proof is in the pudding.

An online publication said it best:

“Nothing brings out the killer in jihadis like accusing them of being killers.”

“I’m thinking truck bomb, St. Peter’s square.”

Muslim Clerics once again fanning the flames of violence.