Regensburg, Islam, and the Church's response

This is from a Forum post I did at http://3dff.com/php/index.php?sid=1547ea0a104af78324e85d9b84540fc8

From now on if I want to post something on here from there or anywhere else I will most likely just link to it. But for now here you are with it in its entirty except for the intro for the forum specificly.

I first and formost wish to discuss the popes address to the University of Regensburg. I looked all over for the transcript and interestingly enough I found it in english, on a Lebenese website. I have the website below, and the transcript itself in italics just incase they eventually take it down because I have found that links tend to die, and information desired can not be attained because of this.

Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) 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 presumably 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 those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this 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 Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "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, after having expressed himself so forcefully, 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", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (F×<>

First and formost the Pope's message was about Faith and Reason, and for the requirement of reason to be apart of faith. The quote that has had certain portions of the Islamic world in an uproar was taken from an EMPEROR in his discussion with a persian intillectual on that very subject. Not only that, but it was written down during a siege that the Emperor was withstanding on the city of Constantinople. Reasonably as a people that all share one religion try and take over and destroy your city are you going to have nice pretty words to describe them much less their faith's founder? I think not. That is just something to mull over in regards to Mr. Paleologus's situation and thoughts at the time of transcription. What the pope said has been taken out of context by those who reacted with violence just as much as those in the west that have agreed with the statement. Both are ignorant reactions and both should be conemend, and are condemend by reason. In fact his point is highlighted, and unfortunatley proved by both reactions. His point being that we as as society must,


". . . [broaden] our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons."

If one goes back to the Sweedish cartoon that caused turmoil, we see the same reaction. I will not go on to speak of that, but I bring it up to show that this is a pattern, and will be unless what the Pope wants is attained and what Kester wrote in his blog quoted here http://3dff.com/php/viewtopic.php?t=2848&sid=14b6a76e1014107690d57ba7ba5fb749
that, ". . . more than ever that leadership needs to be round the table."

But what has brought us to this point? How have we been brought to this terrible place? Is it really what some leaders have stated that they "hate" our freedoms, and everything that "democracy" stands for? Is it a clash of cultures or as some have also said another "crusade"?

What I think we are seeing is a backlash two hundred years in the making. That is, as the west rose to power in quite a dramatic and quick fashion the Middle East, and with that the Islamic people were left at a stand still a the hands of this progress. Then due to this Nationalism arose within Islamic countries. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the partitioning of the Middle East after WWI, a sense of bitterness towards the west appeared, and the Arabs who were also Muslims felt they were not ruling themselves and this because of their nationalism is what they wanted. I am esscentially in this last paragraph summing up a few chapters from a book on the iddle east by Arthur Godlshmidt Jr. called A Concise History of the Middle East. It is a good fairly easy read on Islam and the middle east from just before Mohammad, to the Gulf War I in Iraq. I advise anyone that wants a better idea of Islam in history to read this book.

The other part of this dissent in Islam I don' even think can be placed on the shoulders of the West, and it is more accuratley the west getting in the way. This dissent is best seen in Iraq today. Shia and Sunni muslims waring it out for Baghdad. The issue here I think is best explained by an Iranian-American named Reza Aslan in his book No God but God the origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.Here he makes the point that in his eyes Islam is going through a reformation of their own as Christianity did. This being between moderate Muslims and the more violent and hardline "extremist" Muslim factions. You can find his website here http://www.rezaaslan.com/ where there is info about him, and links to interviews with him including him on the Daily show with Jon Stewart.

So, what do we do? Firstly it is evident that at least to a point Chrstianity and America are in some Middle Eastern minds synonymous. It is important to make it clear that an American does not a Christian make. Nor does a Christian an American make. Kierkegaard was it who reminded us that a nation can not be "Christian" because there are multitudes who proclaim a relgion that do not practice a faith. It was also John who said in his letter that God is love and if you do not love others you do not know God. Thus if Christians do not love others, they do not know God. It is evident that there are many people that go to local congregations and proclaim the "religion" of Christianity that do not in their actions, in who they are, proclaim their relationship with God. That is not new. Unfortunatley also, there are high profile men that merely proclaim the "religion" of Christianity, and state terrible things that I truely belive break God's heart. This unfortunatley is another part of what the outside wordl sees and even more equates those of the faith with the State, and the idea of hostility to Islam and its practitioners. I think the Pope is on the right track when speaks of wanting to create a dialogue between cultures and faiths. We need this dialogue. But more than that we need God to teach us how to be good and to love because our good is not God's good, and our love is not God's love. And too many of us are reacting when we should be responding to what God is doing.