THE FURIOUS Muslim reaction to Pope Benedict XVI’s address to the University of Regensburg this week is a disturbing sign of a world that no longer listens, that hears only what it wants and exchanges bitter recrimination in a pointless dialogue of the deaf.
The contentious comment was a quote from a dialogue in 1391 between the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a Persian interlocutor: “Show me,” the Emperor asks, “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.”
Had he adopted such an opinion as his own, the Pope’s remarks would indeed have been outrageous. But not only did he set out quite clearly that this was a quote in a very particular historical context, he pointed out that the Emperor would have been aware that the Koran also tells its followers that “there is no compulsion in religion”.
Had the subject of the lecture been religion and violence in Islam and Christianity, the appropriation of comments by a mediaeval ruler would have been misguided and inflammatory. But the lecture was neither about Islam nor about violence, it was about religion and reason. The dialogue went on to discuss how violence is incompatible with reason and therefore religion, because “not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature”. The Pope describes the Emperor as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, and uses the dialogue as a starting point for a very intellectual lecture that does not touch further on either the issue of violence or Islam.
Anyone who reads the lecture will see – as the Vatican has insisted – that there is no intention to offend Muslim sensibilities. Yet quoted out of context, it has sparked a reaction that is spreading like wildfire. And just as those that burned the Satanic Verses had never read Salman Rushdie’s novel, so those angrily demanding apologies are unlikely to have read, even less understood, the allegedly offensive speech.
Yet given how polarised our world has become, given how reductionist and simplistic a globalised media can be, was it not predictable that such remarks would be taken out of context? Surely, there was another example that could have been used to lead in to a reflection about faith and reason. Why choose this one in today’s world?
For not only is the Muslim world confirming its perception of a West imbued with crusader spirit, many in the West will only hear the sketchiest of sound bites, one line on the news saying the Pope had said Islam had brought nothing but evil. Some will look further and see he said nothing of the sort, but others will find succour for their blinkered misunderstanding of the Muslim world.
