The Pope's non-Apology
The Pope stopped short of an apology on Saturday. He did say he was sorry that Muslims took offense to his quotation of a medieval authority who alleged that the Prophet Muhammad had brought only evil.
Morocco withdrew its ambassador to the Vatican as a result of the speech. The Iraqi government, with its half a million strong Chaldean population, uniate Catholics, asked for clarifications.
The pope will say something on the issue later today. Will blog it.
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/17/2006 12:24:00 AM
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3 Comments:
Dear Dr. Cole:
You titled your section for the Muslim response to the Pope, "The Pope's Non-Apology." Yet the statement released by the Vatican followed your advice exactly -- it quoted from Nostra Aetate on Islam. Your blog also gives no evidence of a primary reading of the lecture itself, nor the Vatican statement itself, but instead, refers to the AP summary -- a summary that does not get at the gist of what is really said -- it can be found at Zenit.org/english. The Pope's lecture is on the Vatican website.
Thank you for your excellent work.
Sincerely,
Dr. John W. Wright
Point Loma Nazarene University
The Pope is an intelligent man, by all accounts. His point about violence not having a place in religion could easily have been made without the offensive quote, and, indeed, could have been both with respect to events of recent years as well as to a long history of people professing every faith who practiced violence. If he had articulated his point in this manner, everyone would have known that he was prompted to speak by recent world events involving those of claim to be acting in accordance with Islam and yet no Muslim would have found reason for offense.
Add on top of that his refusal to apologize and one has to conclude that he meant exactly what he said with exactly the effect that it produced.
I fear this will be one of many times when I will find myself missing John Paul II.
I loved today's "apology" in which the Pope apologizes for the "reactions" to his talk--which is no apology at all. BTW on my blog I posted about Sylvia Poggioli's strong report on this issue.
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