Three citations follow, one from 2009, two from 2006, including a NY Times Editorial Board piece about Pope Benedict XVI's words in support of plight of Christian minorities in Muslim countries. Two of the three note resulting Muslim vioence and murders, one notes murder of a Somali nun. The third, the NY Times Editorial Board, said Pope Benedict should apologize to Muslims.
5/12/2009, "Opportunity is knocking at Israel's door," by Caroline B. Glick, Jerusalem Post, Jewish World Review
"UNDER POPE BENEDICT XVI, the possibility of winning the support of the Catholic Church for Israel's position that Jerusalem will never again be partitioned and will remain under perpetual Israeli sovereignty is greater than it was under his predecessors. Unlike his predecessors, Benedict has been outspoken in his concern for the plight of Christian minorities in Islamic countries. During his visit to Amman he made a point of speaking out for the protection of Iraqi Christians who are under attack from all quarters. Since he replaced Pope John Paul II, Benedict has made repeated calls for religious tolerance and freedom in Islamic countries - most notably in his 2006 speech at Regensberg where he quoted a Byzantine emperor from the Middle Ages criticizing Islam for seeking to spread its message by the sword.
After his words sparked murderous violence throughout the Islamic world, Benedict expressed his regret for the hurt his statement caused. But he never retracted it. Moreover, during his visit to the King Hussein Mosque in Amman on Saturday, Benedict indirectly reasserted his 2006 message. When he said, "It is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends, that is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society," Benedict was reinforcing - if cryptically - his basic criticism of Islam.
The pope's obvious recognition of the danger jihadist Islam constitutes for Christians puts the Vatican, under his leadership, in a position where it could be more interested than it was in the past in working with Israel to secure the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem by supporting Israeli control of the city.
The pope made this possibility even more apparent in his homily at Mount Nevo. Standing on the mountain where Moses gazed at the Land of Israel, Benedict spoke of "the inseparable bond between the Church and the Jewish people." As he put it, "From the beginning, the Church in these lands has commemorated in her liturgy the great figures of the patriarchs and prophets, as a sign of her profound appreciation of the unity of the two Testaments. May our encounter today inspire in us a renewed love for the canon of sacred Scripture and a desire to overcome all obstacles to the reconciliation of Christians and Jews in mutual respect and cooperation in the service of that peace to which the word of God calls us!"
In saying this, the pope made clear that he views the preservation of Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem as essential for Christian heritage. The Islamic Wakf, which would control the city's holy sites in the event of its partition, has already gone to great lengths to systematically destroy the ruins of the Temple Mount and the Jewish and Christian heritage of the holy basin through archeological theft, illegal building and digging."...
...............................
=================
.............................
Dec. 2006 Islam Daily article elaborates on the fact that Pope Benedict XVI's 2006 "words sparked murderous violence throughout the Islamic world" and outrage from the NY Times editorial board on 9/16/2006:
"His (Pope Benedict's) true targets understood, and responded with unrestrained animus - notably The New York Times editorialist on September 16 (2006)."...Subhead, "Trifkovic," (first of two Trifkovic subheads below)
...........................
12/3/2006, "Symposium: The Pope and Islam," islamdaily.org, Jamie Glazov
..........................
"The controversy over the Pope’s visit to Turkey, as we well know, has been ignited by the Muslim world’s violent reaction to the Pope’s statements several weeks ago. There were calls to kill the Pope, there was the burning of Christian Churches, there was the tragic murder of the nun in Somalia etc.
Let’s begin with this question: if members of a religion are offended at the implication of their religion being violent, what is the logic of reacting with violence?
And where are the “real” Muslims decrying the violent reactions that supposedly taint their "religion of peace"?
Haidon: Thank you Jamie.
The events that have unfolded since the Pope Benedict remarks have been nothing short of disturbing, albeit predictable given recent events and the jurisprudence Islam governing blasphemy. As a Muslim, while I found the Pope's remarks provocative I was far more disturbed by the collective reaction of the Ummah. This reaction has presented itself in violent and non-violent form. The subsequent murder of Christians and threats of death and destruction of Christian institutions and communities from Gaza to Bangladesh, coupled with non-violent, but disproportionately vitriolic reaction from many in the Muslim world is likely to only reinforce the Pope's statement on jihad and Islam.
In my view both levels of reaction are blatantly hypocritical. Seminal figureheads in Islam (including Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar in Cairo; Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi; Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini Sistani ) both Sunni and Shi'a have consistently made consistent efforts to publicly denigrate Christianity, Judaism and other faiths through a broad range of medium and fora. The imagery described in their writings and sermons is degrading and specifically designed to dehumanise members of other faiths. The Pope certainly did not engage in such virulent denigration of Islam. There is undoubtedly a double standard that Muslims must address.
I want to be very careful however to distinguish Muslims and organisations who have criticised the Pope but have not engaged in poisonous, disproportionate and unmeasured criticism. Muslims certainly have every right to be concerned over the Pope's remarks and to partake in legitimate legal protest to countenance those remarks. I am disturbed by dialogue from some non-Muslim circles which have condemned such protests, as if some Muslims somehow cease being moderate or liberal because they were offended by the remarks. However, the best was to countenance the remarks are to engage in meaningful interfaith dialogue, to which a current framework does not exist. The current model of interfaith dialogue which superficially focuses on general high level and common traits of faiths has failed. An effective meaningful framework for "safe" dialogue must be developed which also focuses on the "difficult" issues in Islam that Muslims have failed to address. Far too often, questions from Christians and Jews during interfaith dialogue sessions (particularly at the regional level) on aspects of the laws of the dhimma, or jihad are met with accusations of discrimination and vilification, thus rendering such dialogue completely ineffectual, and potentially misleading and destructive.
In my view, Muslims should not place a significant amount of scrutiny on the Pontiff's apparent "misrepresentation" of Islam, but instead should place that scrutiny inward. I am far less concerned about addressing or changing the Pope's apparent views on jihad, than I am about the views of Muslims, which have been clearly articulated by influential Muslim scholars. Instead of rioting and demonstrating against the Pope, I yearn for the day when I see widespread Muslim anger at the Islamists that monopolise our faith.
The Pontiff's remarks must be seen in the broader context of Islamic-Christian relations. Firstly, it is worth pointing out that the Pope is not naive when it comes to Islam (contrary to the views of the Iranian spiritual leader and others), and has evinced a fairly developed understanding of Islam. He certainly appears to be more attuned to the aspects of shari'ah and Islamic jurisprudence governing Muslim/non-Muslim relations. To reiterate, while viewed the Pope's remarks as provocative, I consider them to be a legitimate challenge to moderate Muslims to commence internal discussions on the problems of violence and intolerance within Islam that have emerged from a number of sources, including the legal prohibition on Muslim scholars in exercising independent and contextual reasoning in Islamic decision-making (itjihad). Will we rise to the challenge?
As to your final question with respect to the apparent silence of moderate Muslims, I am aware of a number of prominent Muslims and organisations which have condemned the violent reactions (albeit some have superficially), including some Muslims perceived as Islamists. However I would concur that it does not appear that there has not been a significant proportion of Muslims whom has specifically condemned the violent acts. I think there may be a number of reasons for this silence. Firstly, it is worth stating that unfortunately there is some precedence in Islamic history and jurisprudence which gives impetus to the violent reaction against the Pope. The laws of blasphemy under orthodox Islam are fairly well established, embedded and have generally remain unchanged over centuries. In most Muslim countries, moderate Muslims cannot speak on this issue out of fear of being accused of apostasy.
In 2005, Sheikh Al- Qaradawi issued a legal ruling on moderate Muslims who challenged the Islamist orthodoxy. His solution to this problem was to declare them "intellectual apostates", subject to death. Moderate Muslims are under siege in these countries. Several weeks ago, my friend and Sudanese reformer Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed Taha (editor of Al-Wikaf in Khartoum) was beheaded by Islamists sympathetic to Al Qaradawi for the crime of apostasy because he merely printed an article which dared question the Prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) ancestral lineage, despite the fact that he disagreed with the content of the article. This does not bode well for moderate Muslim voices. A second primary reason for the "silence" of moderate Muslims is the lack of a unified voice. There are many moderate Muslims in the West and in the Muslim world. However they often speak as lone voices. Moderate Muslims do not have a collective power base to be able to speak, in security, in a unified voice.
Trifkovic: The Pope's allegedly objectionable statements in his lecture at the University of Regensburg were taken out of context. He has said and done nothing that a reasonable person of any religious persuasion would find objectionable.
His comments were made in the course of a complex theological-philosophical treatise delivered to academics in an ancient institution of higher learning, not in a public homily to the faithful in a square or a cathedral. Had he intended to make a high-profile controversial statement, the chosen venue would have been singularly inappropriate.
His quote of Emperor Manuel II Paleologus was accompanied with an explicit disclaimer that it did not reflect his own views. That disclaimer was far more strongly emphasized in the German original - available to the curious - than in the English-language reportage and commentary.
The purpose of the quote was not to "defame" the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, and his religion, or even to make a comment about Islam per se, but to develop an argument about the relationship between faith and reason.
If there is anything potentially offensive to a Muslim ear in the address, it is not the verdict of a learned Byzantine emperor on Muhammad's contribution to the history of ideas - but Benedict XVI's conceivably implied view that Islam is, or may be, unreasonable.
If anyone should feel insulted, it is the blasé, deracinated, faithless, postmodern elite class of the Western world. It was to them that the Pope sent his warning to avoid the contempt for God and the cynicism that deems mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom. A reason which is deaf to the divine, and which relegates religion to the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures, said the Pope. His true targets understood, and responded with unrestrained animus - notably The New York Times editorialist on September 16.
As for the Muslims, the Pope's message came at the end of his address: "'Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God', said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures." It was an eminently conciliatory and generous message. It could be argued that it was unduly optimistic in tone and excessively conciliatory in its assumptions, in view of Islam's past record on "dialogue."
Even had the Pontiff repeated Emperor Manuel's words without the disclaimer, those words should have been judged by their veracity and not by their emotional effect on a supposedly aggrieved group. That Muhammad's major innovation was "his command to spread by the sword the faith that he preached" is not a value judgment, it is an "objective" truth. The sentence does not suggest that "Muhammad was evil and inhuman," as most rampaging Muslims seemed to believe, but rather that his original contribution to the edifice of Islam - as opposed to the many elements he had borrowed from Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastranism, pre-Islamic Arab paganism, etc. - was such.
The statement may be insulting or painful to some - so much so that they are prepared to kill elderly nuns and put churches to torch to make their point - but it is nonetheless TRUE. The doctrine of jihad - violence in the path of Allah with the objective of converting, killing, or else subjugating and taxing the "infidel" - was Muhammad's most significant original contribution to world history. It defined Islam in its earliest days, it has defined the relations between "the world of faith" and "the world of war" ever since, and - as we've seen from the reactions to Pope Benedict's lecture - it continues to define the mindset of Islam to this day....
Bat Ye’or:...Recent research (cf “Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters” by Robert C. Davis) examines the enslavement of Christians by Muslims from 1500 to 1800 in the Mediterranean, as perpetrated by the Maghrebian States. Jews were also victims of this slave-trade. Muslim slavery which can be called religious because it targeted only non-Muslims, was widespread throughout the Levant, the Mediterranean, Europe, Africa and Asia. This went together with the system of dhimmitude – also determined by religious discrimination. Invoking the victims’ survival to prove Islamic tolerance is like praising slavery because slaves survived until their emancipation.
And pretending that dhimmitude was fine by medieval standards is cynical. One can say that religious persecution existed everywhere, that it was wrong and inhuman, but not that it was fine.
Islamist terror -- today associated with global jihad, genocidal threats, and a poisonous literature of hate -- gives a sinister picture. Ordinary people -- who do not know al-Ashari theories but have to suffer in their everyday lives the constraints and fears of Islamist terror -- do associate Islam with violence. Muslims could correct this view by organizing mass demonstrations against jihad and terror in their 56 Muslim countries. But nothing is done. On the contrary we see a massive support for Ben Laden, Hamas and Hizbullah. I agree that religious violence unfolded in every society. However Western societies now have created political, social, and cultural institutions that control and neutralize violence. This does not guarantee that it will not erupt again suddenly; it only means that the sources of violence and its channels of transmission must be recognized and suppressed in order to establish peaceful relations between faiths.
Having read the Pope’s lecture, I think that its whole structure might have irritated the Islamists. All through his lecture, the Pope clearly links Christianity to the Bible. Muslim orthodoxy opposes this view because it claims that Islam is the primal religion and sole true revelation. Christianity as well as Judaism is a subsequent and falsified deviation from the Islamic trunk (here). The Pope mentioned the Christian effort to rationalize faith through Greek philosophy – an endeavor already undertaken by the Jewish school of Alexandria (III BCE) He also stated that Europe’s faith and culture originate from the Bible and the Greco-Roman civilization. Now many European leaders, intellectuals and Muslims reject this assertion. Chirac declared in 2003 that Europe’s roots are as much Muslim as Christian. Many affirm that European culture grew from the Islamic civilization. This debate (has Christianity developed from Judaism or from Islam?) is the theological version:– or the cultural aspect of what is in fact a political issue, which today turns around the refusal of Europe’s Judeo-Christian identity, the legitimization of Turkey’s entrance into Europe and of the introduction of shari’a law and Muslim customs within Europe....
Trifkovic:...The foremost Islamic scholar of all time, Ibn Khaldun, summed up the mainstream consensus - the consensus that is valid to this day - when he defined systemic violence as a religious duty based on the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert all men to Islam either by persuasion or by force. He readily concedes that "Islam is under obligation to gain power over all nations." For individual Muslims to say that they disagree with this position, or to reject the doctrine of abrogation, is simply irrelevant, because the consensus remains unshaken (and we've been through this many times before); but for them to claim that their heterodox disagreement implies the existence of a wide array of opinion in "mainstream" Islam is misleading."... ...
................................
___________________________
==========================
................................
2006 NY Times Editorial referenced in Islam Daily above:
NY Times Editorial Board 9/16/2006, says Pope Benedict "insulted Muslims" and should "offer a deep and persuasive apology." NY Times also objected that "in 2004 when he was still the Vatican’s top theologian, he spoke out against Turkey’s joining the European Union."
Sept. 16, 2006, "The Pope's Words," NY Times Editorial Board
"There is more than enough religious anger in the world. So it is particularly disturbing that Pope Benedict XVI has insulted Muslims, quoting a 14th-century description of Islam as “evil and inhuman.”
In the most provocative part of a speech this week on “faith and reason,” the pontiff recounted a conversation between an “erudite” Byzantine Christian emperor and a “learned” Muslim Persian circa 1391. The pope quoted the emperor saying, “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.”
Muslim leaders the world over have demanded apologies and threatened to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican, warning that the pope’s words dangerously reinforce a false and biased view of Islam. For many Muslims, holy war — jihad — is a spiritual struggle, and not a call to violence. And they denounce its perversion by extremists, who use jihad to justify murder and terrorism.
The Vatican issued a statement saying that Benedict meant no offense and in fact desired dialogue. But this is not the first time the pope has fomented discord between Christians and Muslims.
In 2004 when he was still the Vatican’s top theologian, he spoke out against Turkey’s joining the European Union, because Turkey, as a Muslim country was “in permanent contrast to Europe.” A doctrinal conservative, his greatest fear appears to be the loss of a uniform Catholic identity, not exactly the best jumping-off point for tolerance or interfaith dialogue.
The world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly. He needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology, demonstrating that words can also heal."
........................
===================
Muslims enslaved Christians from 1500-1800 in the Mediterranean. "Jews were also victims of this slave-trade. Muslim slavery which can be called religious because it targeted only non-Muslims, was widespread throughout the Levant, the Mediterranean, Europe, Africa and Asia."
............................
===================
..............................
"Francis calls for nothing less than the demotion of individualism..."so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”"... "What is the best way to respond to this threat of fundamentalist Muslims? Pope Francis: "The best way to respond is always meekness.""...1/15/15
The so-called Pope goes deaf at the cries of beheaded Christian children and their parents, won't use his global “bully pulpit” to prevent Christian genocide. It's not on Ruling Class agenda.
Image caption: "A distraught father in Syria holds the lifeless body of his decapitated daughter, executed by militants because she was of a Christian family. Allegedly, Christian children in Mosul are being systematically beheaded and their little heads placed on poles in a park as a warning to others who love their children." 8/8/2014, CatholicOnline
6/18/15, "Pope Francis: The Cry of the Earth," NY Review of Books, Bill McKibben
........................
........................
No comments:
Post a Comment