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COMMENTARY
August 24, 2005
Benedict to Muslims
The press, especially in Europe, characterized Pope Benedict’s Saturday address to Muslim leaders in Germany, as blunt. By recent Vatican standards, it perhaps was; but by any worldly standards, or even those of the Papacy in, say, the 15th century, it was quite understated. One thinks of the remarks made by Pius II (the great humanist), shortly after ascending the throne of St. Peter, in 1458. In particular, the bull, in which he announced a new Crusade, to check the advance on Europe of ye Infidel Turk. Now, that was blunt.The question today is whether we have achieved any advance in relations between Muslim East and (formerly) Christian West, in the intervening centuries. Have the Muslims given up on their project of conquering Europe, or the Christians on reconquering the territories they lost to the Arabs in the 7th century of our era? It is always worth looking at things on an historical scale larger than the one that can be fit on a newspaper’s front page. One of the advantages of having a Pope, is that we can expect him to think not only of the moment, the way conventional power politicians must think. Though of course, he must also think of the moment, as Pope Benedict was undoubtedly doing in Germany -- a country which, when he left it some years ago for Rome, did not yet have 3.5 million Muslims living in it. I found his speech an important development from his predecessor's remarks on "Christian-Islamic relations". Most obviously, the implied "apology for the Crusades" has been rephrased. It now includes an accusation as well as a mea culpa. It politely reminds a Muslim reader that Christians were not alone in committing atrocities, in the Holy Land or anywhere, in past centuries. I think it tells the Catholic reader, as subtly, that we have done with making gratuitous apologies for distant historical events. Trying to read it as if I were an intelligent and educated Muslim, I would note several things. First, that the Pope is well informed about Islam, and about its historical consciousness, yet rejects its central theses. But there are some very clever moments. When he speaks of the "new barbarism", for instance, he is using a phrase that will ring bells among Muslims, as a companionable allusion to the Mongol hordes who descended on mediaeval Baghdad. Having listed attributes of God acknowledged in common by Christianity and Islam, he declares, "How many pages of history record battles and even wars that have been waged, with both sides invoking the name of God, as if fighting and killing the enemy could be pleasing to him." Since no one is unaware of Muslim teachings on Jihad, he is subtly asking, "What does this word mean to you today?" His invocations of "the sacredness of every human life", of "the dignity of the person", of "the clear voice of conscience", push very Christian interpretations of ideas which are presented differently in Islam; yet he is sounding common themes. And again, there is an implied question: “Does Islam today embrace the inestimable value of the individual, and therefore can it be a champion of individual freedom?” The closest I find to real bluntness, is mildly worded towards the end of the short talk. Pope Benedict tells Muslim leaders they are responsible for the education of their children in peace, and specifically mentions the power of words in the education of the mind. The implication is, that not only Christians will pay, if a generation of Muslims is raised to hate their neighbours. Is civilized dialogue possible? The Pope thinks so, and says so. But he implies that a genuine dialogue requires truth from both parties, not the concealment of what we really believe. Now, if the reader will permit me to entertain a position held by Osama bin Laden, one of the catastrophes that afflicts the Muslim world today is the absence of a Caliph. This unfortunate state of affairs, from their view, was brought about when Kemal Ataturk, founder of secular modern Turkey, deposed the last universal, Sunni Islamic Caliph, who had ruled the Ottoman Empire both temporally and spiritually, in 1924. Osama and other Islamists demand the “recreation” of a single Muslim caliphate, “from Andalusia to the Philippines”. The geography is an aggressive aside, but let us consider his principal point. The Pope serves, at least in Catholic theory, as the final living arbiter of Christian doctrine -- a court of last resort. Who speaks for Islam? In the absence of such a living institution as the caliphate, this is unclear. There is, in the end, no one to whom the obedient Muslim may turn, to get a formal answer to such a question as, “What is meant by Jihad?” There is none, for instance, to declare, definitively, that “Osama does not speak for Islam; I do.” This is a problem. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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