Bloggers react to pope's 'insults'

There’s a reason I never think too hard about current events in politics and religion.

It makes my head hurt.

I still think it’s important to keep up with world news, because it’s always good to stay current on which psycho militant Islamic Middle Eastern ruler is planning to blow up the United States during any given week. You know, for personal safety and all.

So when Pope Benedict XVI made what some are calling “negative” remarks about Islam on Sept. 12, I glossed over the media coverage. At least the Vatican wasn’t going to acquire nuclear weapons or send suicide bombers into other countries. But what some offended Muslims have threatened in response to the pope’s words might just constitute a security issue.

I returned to the topic this week to find bloggers had very strong opinions about the incident, which happened something like this:

Benedict was giving a lecture titled, “Faith, Reason and the University” at the University of Regensburg in Germany, where he had formerly been a professor. Just like the title says, he was offering an argument that faith must always be rationalized through basic human reason. According to what I’ve read about the pope, he’s big into the assertion that faith in God, whatever your religious belief, should be reasonable, and he backs it up with scholarship.

For Benedict, that argument doesn’t carry over to the Islamic concept of Jihad, or Holy War. But boy did he pick the wrong “scholarship” to back up his comments — a quote by Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus in 1391:

“Show me just what Muhammed 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,” was the offending passage.

Benedict framed those “anti-Islamic” comments with something I think most people can agree on — that religion and violence are unreasonable and incompatible.

If only he had omitted the previous comment and gone with just this:

“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 is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats.’”

He was clearly speaking of Jihad, not the whole of the Islamic faith.

Blogcritics.org reprinted a column by blogger Greg Strange, who calls Islam the “Religion of Perpetual Outrage.”

Strange roll calls comments from Muslim leaders and finds this one from Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam the most ironic:

“Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence.”

I’m guessing Islamic militants have a thorough understanding of the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Blogger Douglas Farah opines about the many demonstrations that took place in majority-Islamic countries in which effigies of the pope were burned. He says that sort of readiness to fight is what is taught to so many young people in the Middle East:

“When crowds can form in seemingly spontaneous reaction to an obscure and lightly-reported papal speech, it is evidence of an organization that has pre-positioned its people to strike when the opportunity arises. It was the same in the Danish cartoon riots.”

With the Western idea of freedom of speech, non-Muslims rarely have the same reaction when the tables are turned, according to Farah:

“Should the non-Islamic world riot at each anti-Semetic remark from the president of Iran, the Saudi royalty and imams?

“We would have time for nothing else.”

And though his intent was clouded by his quotation, I think that’s what the pope meant. A college professor of mine once said that nothing will change on the terror front until ideas change; until words cease to inspire violence.

I’m not someone who thinks democracy is a one-size-fits-all proposition, but dialogue is at the heart of diplomacy. But why talk if anything you say can be taken out of context to make the situation worse?

The pope, like most of the world, just wants an end to senseless terrorism. Tragically, his words backfired.