The story about Muslim reaction to the Pope’s comments is getting bigger and bigger, and since my response to Maria’s comments was getting longer and longer, I thought I’d post it for all to see. You may want to read her comments first.
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Hi Maria,
Thanks for your comments and the links. I’d been looking for a copy of the Pope’s speech.
After reading the entire speech, I can see where you’re coming from. The lecture’s point was a theological and philosophical one, and there wasn’t too much in it that related directly to Islam or Muhammad. And, yes, the Pope was clearly quoting the Byzantine emperor.
I get all of that, but I still understand why this is blowing up and why Bardakoglu responded the way he did.
That quotation
To me, the main issue is the Pope’s choice to use the quotation from Manuel II Paleologus. Of course the Pope was just citing a source (just like Larry Summers was citing research studies on male-female differences in intelligence), but the fact that he felt the need to include that quotation sends off signals to Muslims who already feel embattled.
Reread the paragraph in which that quote appears and you’ll see that the Pope merely uses the emperor’s words to set up his discussion of reason, violence, and God’s nature. I can see no purpose in actually including the sentence about Muhammad.
ESPECIALLY if you’re inviting Muslims to interfaith dialogue! Why would you go anywhere near that kind of statement? Are there no other anecdotes in the history of Christendom or philosophy that could have been used to set up this discussion?
So when your partner in interfaith dialogue finds it necessary and appropriate to dust off one of the most insulting things that could be said about Muhammad and, by extension, Islam, and include it in a speech, it seems reasonable to find that “unfortunate” and even request an apology. Not because the Pope necessarily believes what the emperor said is true, but because he lacked the sensitivity and better judgment just to leave the quote out.
I know you are, but what am I?
But I don’t think this is just about the quotation. The speech itself has great potential to come across as condescending and hypocritical to Muslim ears. The Pope concludes by saying, “It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures.”
He’s not saying we’ll meet you at the table, he’s saying we’ve been there all along and you can join us when you get your act together. If Muslims would embrace reason (and a concept of God based in Greek philosophy that would have God constrained by reason), then putting an end to religious violence would be that much easier.
This line of thinking is probably why Bardakoglu and other Muslim leaders have told the Catholic Church to take a good look in the mirror, because it implies that Islam has a fundamental conceptual weakness that makes it especially prone to violence whereas Christianity escapes this fate.
To which anyone who has heard of the Crusades, the Inquisition, or the Thirty Years’ War might scoff, and rightly so.
Regardless of whether the Pope meant any harm by his comments, it doesn’t seem outrageous to suggest there would have been better ways to promote interfaith dialogue and denounce religious violence. Unfortunately, this looks like a giant step in the wrong direction.
5 comments ↓
good post. it reflects the need to ‘be sensitive’ in how to approach others.
Hi Jim,
now Bardakoglu admitted he did not know or read the entire speech. He based his reaction on press releases of news agencies.
(there is a commentary from Mehmet Yilmaz in Hürriyet)
another excellent analysis of the pope’s intention:
“The Pope’s message of greater dialogue achieves the opposite” by Melanie McDonagh
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opi.....inion.html
You wrote:
“If Muslims would embrace reason … then putting an end to religious violence would be that much easier.”
And I am afraid I have to agree with you (or did you just quote someone? ;-P).
Maybe then Bardakoglu wouldn’t accuse someone without hearing or reading his speech.
Maybe then the perceived defamation of “violent Islam” wouldn’t lead to the burning of a Church in Gaza.
Some muslims are making a caricature out of Islam…
@center: Thanks!
@Maria: You know, I’m not surprised that Bardakoglu didn’t read the whole speech, but I do think it’s unfortunate. He really should have read it before making his comments.
I’m afraid too many media outlets jumped on this eager to exploit it rather than get to the bottom of it. And if there are any newspapers that like to have big, splashy, controversial headlines, they’re Turkish ones.
That said, I still think a full reading of the speech turns up a message that doesn’t really advance dialogue.
On “If Muslims would embrace reason…”, of course I was saying that’s what the Pope meant. Personally I could never make a statement that suggest over a billion people lack reason. A small minority of extremists? Perhaps.
Btw, I’m not sure just exactly what kind of reason they should embrace. The one that leads to pre-emptive war? Violated Geneva Convention codes? If you want to catalogue all the ways Christians have made a caricature out of Christianity, you’d have your work cut out for you.
I think the Pope would agree: http://www.cjd.org/paper/benedict.html
And Bardakoglu agrees with ME !
Muslims have to learn to react with reason, to think and act rationally.
(my translation)
“Die Muslime müssen lernen, ihre Reaktionen vernünftig auszudrücken, rational zu denken und zu handeln.”
in an interview in Spiegel ( http://www.spiegel.de/politik/.....96,00.html ) by the turkish journalist Dilek Zaptcioglu ( http://www.taz.de/blogs/istanbulblog/ ).
Reading the whole interview, Bardakoglu is actually a very smart, likable man, one that will admit to his faults. He does not even blame everything on the evil mass media
And no more quoting without context (translation below):
Bardakoglu: Der Glaube an einen einzigen transzendentalen Gott legitimiert in der islamischen Religion niemals die Unterdrückung der Vernunft und des freien Willens. Ganz im Gegenteil, das rationale Denken und die Freiheit des Individuums werden im Islam gefördert, und die islamische Geschichte hat diesbezüglich durchaus eine eigene Tradition.
Der Papst kritisierte das Verhältnis zwischen Gott und Ratio im Islam, aber er hätte sich auch und unbedingt auf die Tradition des rationalen Denkens in meinem Glauben berufen müssen. Ein Religionsführer hatte hier eine einseitige und anklagende philosophische Sichtweise zur Grundlage der Kritik an der Theologie und den Heiligtümern einer Religion gemacht. Deswegen sagte ich, dass er sich entschuldigen und sagen sollte: Es tut mir leid, wenn ich die religiösen Gefühle der Muslime verletzt haben sollte. Wenn das heute geschehen ist, freue ich mich darüber.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Was ist für Sie inakzeptabel an der Kritik des Joseph Ratzinger?
Bardakoglu: Er zog ein Zitat zur Untermauerung seiner Argumentation heran, das den Propheten und unser heiliges Buch angreift. Anstatt zum Beispiel über aktuelle Probleme muslimischer Praxis zu sprechen, klagte er somit direkt die theologischen Grundlagen des Islam an.
Wir sagen nicht, dass wir unantastbar oder unfehlbar sind. Alle Muslime sind fehlbare Menschen. Aber jede Religion hat ihr Heiliges. Das trifft im Osten für den Hinduismus oder Schintoismus genauso zu wie im Westen für das Judentum, Christentum oder den Islam. Ich mache Sie darauf aufmerksam: Wir haben bis heute niemals die heiligen Fundamente einer anderen Religion, eines anderen Glaubens kritisiert. Das setzt der Respekt vor dem Menschen voraus. Wir sprechen über Fehler, die von Christen begangen werden. Aber wir reden niemals abfällig über die Bibel oder über Jesus, der auch unser Prophet ist.
(Bardakoglu: The faith in only one transzendentalen God never legitimizes the suppression of reason and free will in the Islamic religion. Completely in the opposite, rational thinking and the liberty of the individual are promoted in Islam, and Islamic history has in this connection quite its own tradition.
The Pope criticized the relationship between God and Ratio in Islam, but he should have pointed at the tradition of rational thinking in my faith as well. A religion leader had made a one-sided and accusing philosophical aspect here the basis of the criticism at theology and the sacred of a religion. Therefore I said that he should apologize and say: It am sorry, if I should have hurt the religious feelings of the Muslims. If that happened today, I am pleased about it.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Which criticism by Joseph Ratzinger is not acceptable for you?
Bardakoglu: He founded his argumentation on a quote which attacks the prophet and our holy book. Instead of speaking for example about current problems of Muslim practice, he thus attacked directly the theological bases of Islam.
We do not say that we are infallible. All Muslims are fallible humans. But each religion has its holy. That is valid in the east for the Hinduismus or Schintoismus exactly the same as in the west for Judaism, Christianity or Islam. I draw the attention of you to it: We never criticized the holy foundations of another religion or another faith to this day. That presupposes the respect for humans. We speak about errors, which are committed by Christians. But we never adversely talk about the Bible or about Jesus, which is also our prophet.)(translation largely by babelfish)
But only a few days ago Bardakoglu attacked and distorted the christian concept of Trinity:
“After quoting this , the pope then quoted an academic, Theodore Khoury, who edited the original dialogue, as saying, ‘In Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.’
Bardakoglu was particularly incensed with the latter quotation.
‘They used to believe in three Gods,’ Bardakoglu said. ‘They say Jesus is the son of God. Where is the rationality in that?’ ”
(© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur)
So Bardakoglu critizised mainly the quote from Khoury. While I think Khoury is right, i wished Bardakoglu was.
BTW, regarding “what kind of reason”:
In theology, reason, as distinguished from faith, is the human critical faculty exercised upon religious truth whether by way of discovery or by way of explanation. Some commentators have claimed that Western civilization can be almost defined by its serious testing of the limits of tension between “unaided” reason and faith in “revealed” truths - figuratively summarised as Jerusalem and Athens. Leo Strauss spoke of a “Greater West” which included all areas under the influence of the tension between Greek rationalism and Abrahamic revelation, including the Muslim lands. He was particularly influenced by the great Muslim philosopher Al-Farabi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.....t.E2.80.9D
Benedict used Manuel II’s argument in order to draw a distinction between the Christian view, as expressed by Manuel II, that “not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature”, and the Islamic view, as explained by Khoury, that God transcends concepts such as rationality, and His will, as Ibn Hazn stated, is not constrained by any principle, including rationality.
As part of his explication of this distinction, Benedict referred to the specific aspect of Islam that Manuel II considered irrational, namely the practice of forced conversion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.....ontroversy
But there is a difference between what Bardakoglu said about Muslims needing to be reasonable and what the Pope suggested.
Bardakoglu said Muslims need to be reasonable and rational in response to a question about churches being firebombed. He didn’t agree with the Pope that Islam, at its theological core, lacks reason and therefore has a special proclivity for violence. There’s clearly a difference between the more common usage of the word “reason” and the theological or philosophical one, which you pointed out yourself by quoting the Wikipedia entry.
Overall I think you’re right about Bardakoglu being a smart man who can admit faults. I don’t think I’ve gone so far as to say the media is evil, but they can muck things up, in some cases making Bardakoglu out to be a crazy reactionary (as in this story I found on Thursday, apparently from the AFP, that mistranslates Bardakoglu so it seems like he said the Pope has hatred in his heart: http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1052947 ).
Thanks for all your comments!
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