Benedict's speech

Finally, a transcript of Pope Benedict's so-called "Islam-bashing" speech! How very different the speech was from what you'd expect if you'd read an MSM account of the thing. There was the untoppably atrocious, biased and inaccurate headline atop the Agence France Presse account. The New York Times version of the story, for example, correctly notes that the pope's remarks about Islam were only a tiny part of the long address, which concerned itself with the divorce in the West of faith and reason. But a large amount of the Times' account deals with those Islam-related remarks, and what they might mean. The profound -- and profoundly important -- message Benedict had about the limits of reason got second billing.

The press writes about what it understands, and as some among us tirelessly and fruitfully point out, the press doesn't get religion. I recall that when John Paul would issue an encyclical, the press would tend to evaluate it on what it had to say about sex and women's rights. As if the concerns of a secular liberal journalist were the universal concerns of the wider world, and the religious community to whom the message was primarily intended.

The Islam part of Benedict's speech, however, was especially important, because in it, he indicates that the differences between Islamic and Christian concepts of God make dialogue difficult. Not impossible, but difficult, because the way we understand God's nature has everything to do with how we interpret reality and our own duty to Him. This is an important point, one often overlooked -- and indeed downplayed by Benedict's predecessor. Benedict is trying to take Islam's theological claims seriously, not gloss over them for the sake of false ecumenism. I think Benedict chose this example to telegraph that it will be more difficult than many in the West suppose to separate Islam from violence:

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by professor Theodore Khoury (Muenster) of part of the dialogue carried on -- perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara -- by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.

It was probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Koran, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship of the "three Laws": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran.

In the seventh conversation ("diálesis" -- controversy) edited by professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that sura 2:256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under [threat]. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Koran, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels," he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed 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 emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably ("syn logo") is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats.... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...."

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.