Pope: Manuel II's Views of Muhammad are not My Own
Muslim Brotherhood Optimistic about end of Crisis
Pope Benedict said on Sunday that the quote he had cited from Byzantine emperor Manuel II, which said that the Prophet Muhammd brought only evil and conversion by the sword, did not reflect his own views.
He said,
"I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims . . . These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought. I hope this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with mutual respect."
Although there were protests in Iran and some scattered acts of violence, mostly in already-violent areas, this statement seemed to mollify some Muslim leaders.
A Muslim Brotherhood official in Egypt initially said that the statement was a clear retraction and sufficient as an apology, but apparently under popular pressure, he backed off that stance slightly, saying that the Pope hadn't actually clearly apologized, though he had taken a good step toward an apology. But the Brotherhood clearly was looking for a way to defuse the crisis, and that it initially latched on to the Pope's relatively impenitent remarks so eagerly, shows that it is eager to see things calmed down. The Egyptian MB thought the controversy was now likely to subside, and I hope they are right about that.
Some Western observers think that this episode was the Pope's play for moral authority at a time of a clash between Islam and the West.
I think that is right. Benedict was trying to stake out a position that Western godless atheism is actually unreasonable, and that hard line coercive religion that disregards reason is wrong (he incorrectly identified this position as that of Muhammad and the Quran). Thus, the Catholic Church, with its reasoned faith, becomes the ideal, avoiding the errors of the two extremes (Western secularism and Islam). To accomplish this positioning, Benedict XVI had to reduce to cardboard figures all three traditions-- Western rationalism, Roman Catholicism, and Islam.
Christianity hasn't always stood for sweet reasonableness and the harmony of faith and science and the primacy of the individual conscience. One of the reasons we know so little about Mayan history is that Catholic authorities had Mayan papyrus rolls, which contained extensive hieroglyphic records, burned as works of the devil. It wasn't as if the Mayans were given a choice about remaining pagan or converting to Christianity. And there was the forcible conversion to Christianity of large numbers of Muslims and Jews in Spain after the Reconquista from 1492.
Nor have all Christian theological streams concluded that human reason can comprehend God's reason.
There have been times and places where Islam was more tolerant than Christianity. And significant Muslim theological traditions, though not the majority, have held a vision of God as in accord with human reason very similar to the one embraced by the Pope. Look at the Mu'tazili school, which has been extremely influential in Shiite Islam, and which has been favored by modernist reformers such as the Egyptian Muhammad `Abduh (d. 1905).
The problem with the Pope's Regensburg lecture is that it laid out three intellectual traditions as unchanging, undifferentiated essences and then contrasted them with one another, to the edification of his own position. There aren't any essences.
It is always better to put forward the virtues of your tradition on their own, without attempting invidious comparisons with, and put-downs, of others. If Christianity is superior, that can be perceived without it being necessary to brand Islam inferior.
Religious traditions are complex and multiple and often self-contradictory. Trying to play politics with them by putting down the founder of a religion with false accusations will always cause trouble, of course. But what is worse is that the allegation causing the trouble is simply inaccurate.
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/18/2006 12:24:00 AM
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Here's something which may shed some light on the Pope's attitude to Islam, and on what was he was hinting at in his controversial speech.
It's a transcript of a radio interview on Jan 5 this year with a Jesuit who attended some discussions on Islam with the Pope in summer 2005.
He says, in essence, that the Pope doesn't think that Islam is capable of reform, or of rationally interpreting the Koran to deal with the modern world.
This fits in well with what the Pope said in his recent speech about Christianity being rational and Islam not.
(For the record, I think that the Pope is quite mistaken about this.)
http://www.radioblogger.com/archives/january06.html
HH: Special hour now, as I'm joined by Father Joseph D. Fessio, who is the Provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, also the founder of the publisher Ignatius Press. He's a Jesuit. He's also a student and a friend of Benedict XVI, and a second time on the program. Father Fessio, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show.
...
HH: Father Fessio, before the break, you were telling us that after the presentation at Castel Gandolfo by two scholars of Islam this summer with Benedict in attendance, as well as his former students, for the first time in your memory, the Pope did not allow his students to first comment and reserve comment, but in fact, went first. Why, and what did he say?
JF: Well, the thesis that was proposed by this scholar was that Islam can enter into the modern world if the Koran is reinterpreted by taking the specific legislation, and going back to the principles, and then adapting it to our times, especially with the dignity that we ascribe to women, which has come through Christianity, of course. And immediately, the Holy Father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said well, there's a fundamental problem with that, because he said in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Mohammed, but it's an eternal word. It's not Mohammed's word. It's there for eternity the way it is. There's no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it, whereas in Christianity, and Judaism, the dynamism's completely different, that God has worked through His creatures. And so, it is not just the word of God, it's the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark. He's used His human creatures, and inspired them to speak His word to the world, and therefore by establishing a Church in which he gives authority to His followers to carry on the tradition and interpret it, there's an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations. I was...I mean, Hugh, I wish I could say it as clearly and as beautifully as he did, but that's why he's Pope and I'm not, okay? That's one of the reasons. One of others, but his seeing that distinction when the Koran, which is seen as something dropped out of Heaven, which cannot be adapted or applied, even, and the Bible, which is a word of God that comes through a human community, it was stunning.
HH: And so, is it fair to describe him as a pessimist about the prospect of modernity truly engaging Islam in the way modernity has engaged Christianity?
JF: Well, the other way around.
HH: Yes. I meant that.
JF: Yeah, that Christianity can engage modernity just like it did...the Jews did Egypt, or Christians did to Greece, because we can take what's good there, and we can elevate it through the revelation of Christ in the Bible. But Islam is stuck. It's stuck with a text that cannot be adapted, or even be interpreted properly.
HH: And so the Pope is a pessimist about that changing, because it would require a radical reinterpretation of what the Koran is?
JF: Yeah, which is it's impossible, because it's against the very nature of the Koran, as it's understood by Muslims.
HH: And so, even the dialectic that was the Reformation is not possible within Islam?
JF: No.
Faith, almost any faith, is the antithesis of reason.
In any case, the last Pope was a global figure for the whole humanity. This one has already reduced that to representing the Catholics only.
Prof. Cole, thank you for your insight on this subject. Breath of fresh air.
Beside the Pope thinking and the "political error" what is scary is the way the media are treating the subject – focusing on the (in)famous quote and never once analysing and commenting the overall Pope lecture.
For info recently in occupied Palestine the three main Christian churches and the Pope Envoy have issued a "Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism" which ties in with the main thrust of the Pope lecture discussed here. Needless to tune on CNN or Fox to have this commented by their usual panel of so-called experts.
BTW. The lecture is available on the Vatican site in several languages.
This speech by the pope may be part of the Republican strategy for the 2006 election.
Here is the title of a Sidney Blumenthal article in Salon saying the 2004 election outcome was determined by then Cardinal Ratzinger's mideval actions including forbidding communion to John Kerry. Here is the title of Blumental's article on April 21, 2005.
"Holy Warriors
Cardinal Ratzinger handed Bush the presidency by tipping the Catholic vote. Can American democracy survive their shared medieval vision?"
The article is rather long and I am unable to get by searching the Salon.com site (subscription required), but I do have it in a Word file. I would be glad to post it here, or if someone could get a link to it, maybe Juan Cole could put a link to it. I am going to send the file to Juan and let him decide what to do with it.
I live in Columbus Ohio and during the football game on Saturday, September 16, twice they ran a complete propoganda advertisement about the Islamo faschists and how the cut and run people will lead to attacks on our home soil by extremists who have been held at bay by out military response to 911. The ads were put on by some generic group and did not name political parties. This was straight out of the book 1984 by Orwell.
My point is that the Pope's remarks might be well part of the Republican attempt to continue control of the congress in the 2006 election.
We have already seen severe damage to the USA democracy and I do not think it can survive another 2 years of these attacks. My friend is a constutional historian who said that the founding fathers knew about, and warned about this kind of take over by a faction. It is happenign with the full support of the main stream media and there are only a few days until elections.
Christianity hasn't always stood for sweet reasonableness...
Who can forget (once they have been exposed to it) Father Bartoleme de Las Casas' documentation of the ferocious colonial enterprize of Catholic Spain in the "West Indies".
'Mr. Republican' At Vatican City? Golly!
The Rev. ROBERT TAFT, a specialist in Islamic affairs at Rome’s Pontifical Oriental Institute, said it was unlikely that the pope miscalculated how some Muslims would receive his speech. “The message he is sending is very, very clear,” Taft said. “Violence in the name of faith is never acceptable in any religion and that (the pope) considers it his duty to challenge Islam and anyone else on this.”
Presumably this is sheer coincidence rather than a menancing convergence, but still!
Be that as it may, Mr. Taft agrees with Prof. Cole in assuming that the speech in question was deliberately aimed urbi et orbi et contra Saracenorum doctores improbos, and I fear I think they are both mistaken. My theory is that the words of "Dr. Ratzinger" somehow mistakenly got attributed to Benedictus SixtusDecimus by a sort of glorified category mistake or confusion of realms. Mostly Ratzinger's own fault, that was, yet the poor man certainly doesn't deserve all the cruel and unusual punishment he's been getting.
God knows best. Happy days.
Professor Cole, Roman Catholicism has a history of conversion by force as you mentioned in your article. But we can really say that it's history. I mean, it's a long time ago and unthinkable in modern times.
"Christianity hasn't always stood for sweet reasonableness and the harmony of faith and science and the primacy of the individual conscience."
Are you suggesting that it does now? Based on what I've seen from Christians and Christian leaders over the past several years, Christianity stands for war, intolerance, hypocricy, arrogance and willful ignorance. (If I offended anyone, I'm not sorry).
Logos - as in "In the beginning was the Word," (John 1:1) - is also notably from The Sequel. Would the Pope be suggesting, by implication, that Jews—"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1, without appeal to Word or Reason) also have a central part of the religion as "always and intrinsically false," to borrow Andrew Sullivan's abominable phrase?
It is infuriating that the Pope shows himself to be an Orientalist. He has the power to be a peacemaker, but instead, promotes the same old coded (think violent, irrational, intolerant) monolithic ideas about Islam (and by extension Arabs) that play so well in the US. Uttering such a statement, even in an historical context, is unconscionable at this juncture. His choice of Islam as illustrative of his point also reinforces the claim by Bush that we have to fight “them over there” so we don’t have to fight “them here” as what “they” really want is to take over the world and convert us through violence, take away our freedoms, our way of life, etc. As if “they” had the means to do so! And what are we doing in the Middle East??? This is an effective ploy, as it hides the realities of a number of ill conceived exploits of which the Pope is undoubtedly aware (or maybe he watches Fox news) and if one were to actually use reason, one could conceivably make some action/reaction connection to current (and past) events. The Pope might do well to actually use reason; it is however much easier to pontificate…”Is the Pope a Republican?” After this incident and the ’04 election (as DonMidwest noted), that question seems as certain an answer as “Does the Pope wear a funny hat?”…
Sullivan likes to use complicated predicate clauses. Those clauses can get out of hand.
You state that the Pope called these three traditions: "three intellectual traditions as unchanging, undifferentiated essences".
I think you meant "unchanging, differentiated essences".
The Pope made no such claim. For if that were the case, the dialogue he seeks would be self-defeating.
This speech feels like Kant's writing. I'm still trying to figure it out.
"Roman Catholicism has a history of conversion by force as you mentioned in your article. But we can really say that it's history. I mean, it's a long time ago and unthinkable in modern times"
But Roman Catholics are attempting to coerce belief that life begins at conception by the force of law. From my perspective, this is as immoral as coercing me to convert to Catholicism.
Professor Cole said:
"Two armed Iraqi Sunni Arab groups threatened reprisals against Pope Benedict for his citation of a medieval Byzantine ruler's negative remarks about the Prophet Muhammad. Grandstanding."
I suspect the sentiment is felt widely throughout Iraq. It's a BIG problem, "grandstanding" or not.
"Jihad" vowed over Pope speech
Mon Sep 18, 6:40 AM ET
An Iraqi militant group led by al Qaeda vowed a war against the "worshippers of the cross" in response to a recent speech by Pope Benedict on Islam that sparked anger across the Muslim world.
"We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya," said an Internet statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group led by Iraq's branch of al Qaeda.
"We shall break the cross and spill the wine. ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome. ... God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen," said the statement.
It was posted on Sunday on an Internet site often used by al Qaeda and other militant groups.
[In Full]
DonMidwest said...
"We have already seen severe damage to the USA democracy and I do not think it can survive another 2 years of these attacks. My friend is a constutional historian who said that the founding fathers knew about, and warned about this kind of take over by a faction."
Pointer to a posting I left yesterday. Ben Franklin knew.
BENEDICT XVI REPUDIATES HIS NAMESAKE
The namesake of Pope Benedict XVI, Giacomo Della Chiesa, Benedict XV, served as Pope from 1914 to 1922. As a wartime Pontiff he followed a policy of strict neutrality. He did not condemn any countries engaged in World War I. Instead, he turned the Church’s attention to ministering to those innocents who suffered the wrath of war.
He tried to broker a peace; however, his attempts were frustrated by pro-Austrian sentiments held by many of members of the College of Cardinals. The entry of the United States and the Allies attitude that a peace could not be won until Germany had been defeated, thwarted Pope Benedict’s attempt to mediate a European peace.
By the end of WWI, the Papacy lacked the prestige of bygone eras; Benedict was excluded from peace negotiations. During the last years of his Pontificate he implemented the administrative modifications within the Church brought about by geopolitical changes of the Treaty of Versailles. During his Papacy official relations with France resumed, and a British representative to the Vatican was recognized, the first since the 17th Century.
Upon his succession to the Papacy, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger chose Benedict XV as his namesake. He aspires, through the example of his Papal role model, to dedicate his Pontificate to reconciliation.
Unfortunately, the current Pope Benedict, rather than being the Good Shepherd of Catholics, and moral guide for many others has squandered much of his spiritual influence.
His anti-Islam remarks last week at Regensburg University did not promote a spirit of reconciliation and religious tolerance. On the contrary, the quote of a 14th-century Byzantine emperor, “Show me just what Muhammad 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.” This, the Pope said, was contrary to God’s nature.
These remarks have been justly met with the religious uproar of the Islamic world and have ignited acts of violence aimed at Churches, caused the death of a nun and reports that the terrorist group al-Qaeda has vowed a war against “the worshippers of the cross.” This remark by Pope Benedict is the opposite message the Prelate delivered at a meeting of Christians and Muslims in Cologne soon after he assumed the Papacy. However, the Pontiff is wary of Islam as a global power and has encouraged moderates in their battle against radical Islam.
Moreover, Vatican insiders report six months into his Papacy and after his profession of moderation, the Pope called a two-day secret session on Islam. At this closed door meeting, the Pope told delegates that unlike Christianity, which distinguished (in Christ's words) between "that which is God's and that which is Caesar's", Islam sought to "integrate the laws of the Koran into all elements of social life".
Whereas Jesus and the Gospels offered a model to follow, the Koran was imposed rigidly with "no distinction between civil and religious law", he told the conference. Christianity could engage with Islam only as a "culture" and remind it to "respect human rights", including the rights of Christian minorities in Muslim countries.
Remarks made last week were more in keeping with the secret session than the meeting of reconciliation held in Cologne.
Undoubtedly, the Pontiff knew his words would cause uproar in light of the furor over unflattering cartoons appearing in European newspapers of the Prophet Mohammed. Here, rather than a frontal assault, the Pope’s thinly veiled remarks a recount of a conversation on the truths of Christianity and Islam that took place between a 14th-century Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II Speleologist, and a Persian scholar, seemed to stray from the theme of Pope’s address “Reason & Faith in the West.” Newspapers throughout the Arab world have been critical of the Pope’s remarks characterizing it as “Provocative” a rather diminutive description based upon other pejorative reactions.
In another sign of a tougher policy toward Islam, Benedict abolished the Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, creating a new body of outreach to Egypt and the Arab League.
This obviously obtuse remark delivered by a Prelate well schooled in doctrine, dogma and theology of the Church was no mere oversight. They were included in this Papal message to support a long held belief by this Pontiff. Benedict, as the former head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, in Dominus lesus supported orthodoxy and doctrine of the Catholic faith claiming that other religions “objectively speaking…are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation.” The document deeply offended other Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists and proved a setback to the ecumenism advocated by of the Second Vatican Council.
Similar Papal flaps may be unavoidable. The Pope’s newly appointed Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone was Benedict’s second in command at his former post. Bertone lacks diplomatic experience. He has explained his new role has helping to spread the spiritual mission of the Church which he says transcends politics and diplomacy. Some Vatican insiders see in Cardinal Bertone a man of action, but wonder if he will have enough patience to occupy himself with the nuances of international affairs
This “orthodox doctrine” of faith had caused a deep rift between western-Catholicism and Vatican conservatism on social issues. However, this return to pre-Vatican II orthodoxy demonstrates the Church’s modification of evangelical mission to a more Third World episcopate where convention and “superstition” are more readily acceptable. The role of this pre-Vatican II Catholicism has increased with the growth of the Opus Dei Movement. (For more see, Deserted Catholic.)
The Pope’s current remarks and past writing, wary of Islam rising to the level of a global power seem in keeping with a world view held by the Church since the late 11th Century with the Papacy of Urban II. While Pope Benedict’s remarks do not rise to the level of a Holy War against the “infidels” it does bear a resemblance to the cries of a millennium ago. Bellicose rhetoric aimed at the Islamic World, particularly among fundamentalist, is just another destructive step in a contemporary clash of civilizations.
Pope Benedict’s visit to Turkey in November may ignite another controversy since the Pontiff in 2004 opposed that country’s admission into the EU. A top leader in Turkey’s ruling Islamic party said the Pope was following in the footsteps of Hitler and Mussolini. These two horrific appellations and the ideologies of death they represent have been used to liberally in our contemporary discourse.
However, in keeping with the namesake of his Papacy, Pope Benedict XVI, should be a source of reconciliation not a cause of conflict. His remarks last week seriously endanger the Pontiff’s ability to be a source of neutrality and moral authority. By his actions he may be casting the Vatican into an insignificant role in world affairs at a time when Christ’s Sermon on the Mount teachings are sorely needed.
Based on the very useful information Wyvern has provided, we can say that the Pope's impression of Islam is that it is an unchanging view of the world.
That is, of course, an oversimplification of Islam. But, the Pope may not be the only one who views elements/movements within Islam in this way.
I recall a central issue in Reza Aslan's "No God But God" is the debate in Islamic theology over the nature of the Quran as God's words.
(Pg. 155) "Of course, when talking about the relationship between God's attributes and God's essence, both the Rationalists and the Traditionalists had one particularly significant attribute in mind: God's Speech; that is, the Quran".
Juan Cole's blog has for years been an excellent source for reliable news and intelligent commentary on the Middle East, particularly Iraq. However, I think his understanding of Benedict's lecture is a little off-base, perhaps skewed by the strong drift of the media coverage towards "clash of civilizations" gobbledygook. For example, from the 9/15 posting:
> He [Benedict] used Islam as a symbol of the
> coercive demand for unreasoned faith.
Actually, as far as I can tell, he didn't. He merely reported that Manuel II thought of Islam that way, six hundred years ago. I don't see (from reading both German and English versions) anything that suggests that Benedict thinks the same way, or that he recommends that line of thinking. In fact he goes out of his way (in the 6th full paragraph, using the divisions in the German version at kath.net) to point out that Manuel was writing during a time of war with Constantinople, and that he took the time to flesh out his own half of the published dialogue, thus giving himself an unfair advantage over the Persian scholar. Both observations distance Benedict from Manuel II's way of thinking.
Similarly, when he delivers Manuel's most potentially offensive line (paragraph 8), he goes out of his way to say that Manuel "wendet sich in erstaunlich schroffer Form... an seinen Gespraechspartner." This very emphatically distances him from Manuel. The Vatican's English translation of this, which reads "addresses his partner with startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that leaves us astounded," gets it roughly right, though "curtness" or "harshness" might have been better. It would take a rather perverse ear to hear this as a commendation of Manuel's line of thinking.
Still more to the point, though, is that Benedict simply nowhere says what Cole says he says. When he does contrast Islam with Christianity (paragraphs 10-11), it is on the quite different matter of the relation between God and reason. He takes from Theodore Khoury and Roger Arnaldez the idea that "for Muslim teaching God is absolutely transcendent," wholly unbounded by reason; and he uses that claim as a springboard to talk (for the 33 remaining paragraphs!) about the different relationship between reason and God, or the search for God, in Christianity, which is the real topic of the lecture.
If, as Cole says, Benedict has gone wrong in adopting the ideas of Khoury and Arnaldez, then that should certainly be pointed out. It would not be hard to believe that "for Muslim teaching God is absolutely transcendent" is a simplification; doubtless no functioning religious tradition is as simple as that. This is a matter on which we should hear from other scholars of Islam - and that would be a very good thing. Among other benefits, we would then be actually discussing something near the topic of Benedict's lecture, which would be a feat the media in general have not yet accomplished.
But it is unfair to take Benedict's assertion (whether right or wrong or simply oversimplified) that the God of Islam is absolutely transcendent of reason and understand it as an assertion that Islam therefore recommends forced conversions rather than reasoned ones, or as a general sense that Islam is somehow anti-reason. Benedict says neither thing, whatever his springboard ("Ausgangspunkt," paragraph 7) may have thought. These are three separate questions, and he is speaking only to the first, and that in passing.
In fact it would make absolutely no sense for Benedict to assert that Islam is somehow generally anti-reason, for some of the same reasons Cole points out. For one thing, Christian scholasticism owed a vast debt to Islamic scholars - for the preservation of Greek texts but for much more than that - and Benedict knows this well. Secondly, Cole is right that there have been plenty of Christian thinkers who assert God's unboundedness by reason: he picks Calvin and Tertullian. Benedict's lecture, of course, says the very same thing. I
suspect that his examples, John Duns Scotus and (presumably) the fourteenth-century British theologians writing in his wake (Ockham, Holcot, Wodeham), are more accurate than Cole's examples; but the point is that Benedict knows that this tendency exists - AND he must know that none of these Christian figures is in the least anti-reason. (Thumb through one of the volumes of Ockham's thousand-page "Summa Logicae," and you will get the idea that declaring God unbounded by reason in no way commits you to abandoning reason's use. Again, they are quite separate issues, and Cole seems to be confusing them in a way that Benedict did not.)
Get it? Cole's tagline, "the allegation causing the trouble is simply inaccurate," applies to his own writing in this case. The allegation that Benedict accused Islam of being a "hard line coercive religion that disregards reason" - this is indeed inaccurate. It stems from a confusion of issues. In reality there need be no connection, in Islam or in Christianity, between one's beliefs about God vis-a-vis reason and one's personal "disregard of reason" or tendency to take hard lines. It is Cole, not Benedict, who suggests the connection.
Well, that's it. None of this is to say that Benedict is incapable of having erred - and Cole does us a service by suggesting both an oversimplification of Islamic thinking and an outright error in the dates and contexts of the Surahs he cites. Both things deserve to be known, and assuming Cole is right (verification from Islamists?) these are certainly mistakes that shouldn't have been made, and correcting them is in the service of real peaceful dialogue between religions. But it will also be in the service of real peaceful dialogue to be very precise about what Benedict said and did not say. Otherwise offense will be taken unnecessarily - not because one shouldn't be offended by the harsh allegations Cole mentions, but because Benedict didn't make them.
John Virginia
P.S. Unfortunately many people, including a few leaving comments here, seem still not to have read Benedict's lecture. Here are sources for it online:
German: http://www.kath.net/detail.php?id=14655
English: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html
I don't find it plausible that Benedict was quoting random statements that had nothing to do with his argument and the validity of which he rejected.
On Benedict XVI’s lecture
Looking through Benedict XVI’s lecture, we find out that its beginning and end where emperor Manuel II is mentioned caused the international scandal. As for the main bulk of the text which discusses dehellenization of Christianity, it appears to be more or less politically neutral.
Frankly, I hardly understand how one can easily use language like "synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology". In fact, Plato, Descartes and technological progress belong to very different historical eras, it is really hard to imagine any meaningful discussion of all this within one short sentence! One guess is, this suggests that we are dealing more with popular rhetoric than with serious cultural historical discussion.
Now what about Manuel II? According to wiki, he was a late Byzantian ruler. Under Manuel II, Byzantium was in deep decline, it was under the heavy pressure from the Ottomans. In fact, Manuel II himself was kept hostage by the Ottomans for some time! Also, anti-Ottoman Crusade failed in 1396. Considering all this and knowing the general hardly tolerant atmosphere of the Middle Ages, it would be surprising if this not particularly successful politician would not find quite bitter words for Islam!
Which he did, and, quite unfortunately, Benedict XVI cites the clearly anti-Islamic rhetoric of the unlucky crusader without any description of historical context to which it belongs. But discussing seemingly abstract language of Manuel II about "violent and irrational" Islam without knowing the concrete historical situation is a lot like discussing the neoconservative texts without any knowledge of the ME conflict. For example, talking about "democratization of the Arab world" abstractly just does not make any sense - unless one shares the neoconservative position.
Also, "irrationality" of Islam is a generic Orientalist stereotype, Edward Said discussed this issue in length. Everybody familiar with Said-Lewis debate, will instantly recognize on whose side the proponent of "irrational" Islam must be, of course, he must share the Lewis-Pipes model of the Muslim world. This perfectly explains the fierce rejection of Pope's remarks by even the most moderate Muslims. Of course, they don't want to have anything in common with Lewis and Pipes!
To make things even worse, this unfortunate text does not include any explicit assessment of the Crusades, but Crusader rhetoric of Manuel II is reproduced as is. The problem is, this is exactly what hyper-radical Qutbist Islamists are talking about - "fighting the Crusaders" is well known to be their main ideological objective. So, the Pope gave both them and the hard neocons exactly what they wanted - confirmation that Catholic Church is not that far from direct endorsement of the neoconservative course in the ME.
Now we can remember the vicious anti-Catholic campaign that came from NYT and GU columnists in the end of John Paul II era, since 2003 - all the "pedophilia", "sexism" and "opposition to condoms" hype. Looking backwards, it is hard to avoid the sad conclusion that liberals acted as useful idiots for the neocons whose real goal was to bully Vatican into submission.
Considering the US electoral politics, the unfortunate Manuel II debate appears to be a perfect gift for the GOP, they desperately need something like second stage of Muhammad cartoons scandal to compensate the negative impact of disaster in Iraq on their poll numbers. Republicans never neglect symbolic moves this, that's their typical mode of operation.
Gurdian's Giles Fraser gives wonderfully clear description of Pope's position - that's Christian triumphalism. Sure, it is! Knowing actual situation of Manuel II, it makes sense to add that this triumphalism is 100% fake, so there is a deep irony in Pope's decision to use this particular example to make his point.
Aljazeera's cartoon says it all about the moderate Arab reaction. Sure, diplomatic doublespeak aside, unlike his predecessor, Benedict XVI is hostile towards the Muslim world.
On the Russian side, Igor Dzhadan agrees that basically Benedict XVI declares the cold war on the Muslims. As for his "clarifications", they don't make much sense. Unfortunately, his clear and balanced position is not really typical for the Russian media. For example, leading Russian columnist M.Sokolov is clearly on the side of those who believe that the Pope just "told the truth" about Islam. As for the Muslim reaction, he finds it inappropriate and "uncivilized".
It does not matter that Mr.Sokolov does not follow the ME developments in any details, he just knows who is right and who is wrong in this conflict. Of course, "uncivilized extremists" cannot be right by his logic.
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