"Show me just what Mohammed 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."
-- Manuel II Paleologus, as quoted by Pope Benedict XVI
The emperor 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 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... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death....
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: "For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.
As far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: In the beginning was the logos. This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts with logos.
'snip'
I read the entire speech earlier, and I dont see what all the crying is about, sheesh.
"Show me just what Mohammed 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." -Manuel II Paleologus
Marking.
"But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality"
The religion of Islam has at its center a God that is not bound to reason, morality or anything. The result is chaos and death, imposition of will as an end unto itself. Per Pope Benedict the problem begins in their conception of a God without reason.
This is a stupid thing to excerpt.
Read the whole thing... it has NOTHING to do with that small excerpt.
Here is the official transcript:
Faith, Reason and the University
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html
Here is what an official spokesman for the Vatican said:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1702933/posts
His address was to REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE, not theologians or reporters or politicians or "the common man" and it was extolling academics to stop marginalizing religion. It had nothing to do with Islam.
I read an article today where an egyptian scholar or somesuch said "This is worse than the cartoons". WTF. These people would be worth a Monty Python movie if they weren't so murderous and evil. I hope the Pope doesn't cave.
FYI
"Show me just what Mohammed 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."
-- Manuel II Paleologus, as quoted by Pope Benedict XVI
Bttt!
bump for later read
He seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasures … His teachings also contained precepts that were in conformity with [such] promises … the truths that he taught were mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity… he perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them fabrications of his own, as can be seen by anyone who examines his law. It was, therefore, a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity.
Aquinas knew well the Koran and points out Muslims are forbidden from reading the biblical books. They would reveal in fact that Mohammed was a false prophet who added and detracted to what is contained in the revealed Scriptures when he invented his own religion. The Pope knows that Islam is at odds with Western religion but is constrained for reasons of political correctness from stating so openly. Imagine the degree of Muslim rage had the Pope taken the time to quote as here, from Aquinas. Who incidentally is a Doctor Of The Church as well one of its saints.
"Show me just what Mohammed 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." -Manuel II Paleologus
bookmk ping-a-ling
The pope’s comments:
In quoting the 14th century emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, the Pope uses a particular quote in which the emperor asks the following rhetorical question to his interlocutor:
“Show me just what Mohammed 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.”
All around me I see my fellow Muslims getting upset at the assertion made over 600 years ago by a man long dead. In it, they perhaps see the Pope reviving the long discredited belief that Islam was largely spread by the sword, and more importantly that the prophet commanded the Muslims to forcibly convert non-believers. Without having to question the motives of the Pope, or for that matter, the motives of those who are demanding apologies from the Pope and all Christians in general, we should answer the basic question asked by the emperor: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new?” We should also examine the Pope’s larger point on use of reason in religion as well as the assertion that God cannot be capricious.
To answer the first point, one must remember that the teaching of the Quran claims to simply remind the people of the same message brought down by many prophets and messengers before Mohammed. Technically, there was nothing new in what he taught, that had not already been taught before. However, it would have been new to the inhabitants of that era through out the Arabian Peninsula as well as the Persian and Byzantine empires since the normative practice was not all that different from one region to the next. One must remember the time when Mohammed was alive and started preaching his message to inhabitants of Makah and later on to the inhabitants of Yatrib (Medina). The year was roughly 612 CE, and Makah was inhabited by the Quraish tribe. Among, the practices of the time included: burying young girls alive as they were seen more as a burden on their parents than bringing honor to them; the status of the person was determined by their linage rather than their deeds; debts of the father became the debts of the son; a weaker member of the tribe could be forcibly made to atone for the crime committed by a powerful member of the tribe; Women’s property could be taken from them by their husband; Property could be seized by the ruler with or without cause; the law permitted punishment even if the person committing the crime was acting under compulsion; usury made generation serve under the yoke of indentured servitude. While this is not an exhaustive list, it should convey the general conditions of the community in which Mohammed lived. In addition, these and other abhorrent practices were considered normative and proper not just in Makah, but also throughout the rest of Christian lands. Let’s not forget, that Women had no property rights, or the right to choose their husband, or the right to divorce anywhere in the Christian lands sanctioned by the Pope of that time.
Mohammed (conveying the word of God) forbade the killing of infants (girl or boys); He taught us that God judged us by our deeds and our piety and not who our forefathers were; All debts were retired when a person died through the sale of his property. He taught us that no person can atone for another’s sins; That men could not forcibly take the property of their wives as their own; the ruler could not seize the property of Muslims with or without cause, something Europe would not discover for another 1200 years; he taught us that there was no crime or sin when one was made to act under compulsion; he forbade usury as a means of forcing people to enter into one sided contracts. All these were new concepts to a people that had long forgotten the message taught by Abraham, Solomon, Moses, and Jesus to name just a few of the leaders of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
In the Quran, Mohammed taught many other concepts that we take for granted today. He taught us that we need no intermediary when praying to God. He also taught us that we could ask for forgiveness for our sins directly from God and needed none to intervene. It took Martin Luther some 1000 years to assert this right to Christians. I find nothing evil in these teachings. As for the forced conversions or spreading the faith by the sword, in all the years I have read the Quran or the Hadith (sayings of the Mohammed), I have not found much that can be directly attributed to him or the Quran that clearly asserts this notion. However, it would be disingenuous for Muslims to assert that Muslim rulers never created hostile conditions for those who did not convert. It would also be disingenuous to assert that these practices were not justified and gained normative power by interpreting the Quran to suite the needs of the rulers (Just as the bible was used in the United States to sanction Slavery). It was rare to carry out whole sale executions of conquered people. Only the Mongols, carried out such acts, and who later became Muslims. Their descendants did continue the practice of wholesale murder of a people who chose to resist the raiding party. The only exception made by the Mongol dynasties was for those who chose to convert. However, this practice occurs some 650 years after Mohammed’s death. Blaming this practice on Mohammed is like blaming Jesus for the atrocities committed by the Popes through the dark ages in Christian lands. Surly the Pope is not asserting that all Popes were sinless, and did not sanction similar acts. Remember the conquest of Jerusalem by the first crusades where ALL inhabitants were slaughtered, and the counter example of Saladin’s re-conquest of Jerusalem some 100 years later where every man, woman and child was given the option to leave with all that they could carry.
To the larger point the Pope makes the use of reason in religion, many prominent Muslim thinkers throughout history would agree with this notion, while some other Muslim thinkers denied the use of ANY reason in religion. Surly the Pope is familiar with the works of Ibn Sina (Avencia) and Ibn Rushud (Averros). Muslim thinkers were utilizing the works of the Greeks to delineate the large corpus of material attributed to Mohammed starting around 800 CE. They used reason to determine the veracity of quotes from Mohammed.
As for the notion whether God cannot be capricious, this argument was waged within the Muslim history for over 300 years. Many rationalists argued that God would not be whimsical. The technical point made by Ibn Hazm quoted by the Pope is taken out of context. In addition, the Pope does not point out the reason based argument that Ibn Hazm wages, but simply states the conclusion derived by Ibn Hazm. One might say that the Pope did not choose to argue through reason, but simply chooses to argue reasonably.
I would like to refute Ibn Hazm through a well reasoned argument. Ibn Hazm is asserting that God cannot be restrained by Human notions of right and wrong. There are two problems which he sees with notion that God must be consistent. First, in order for God to be restrained by Human notions of right and wrong, Humans would need to have a perfect understanding of what is right and what is wrong. Surly, even today we cannot make such an assertion. Second, God’s action cannot be bound by Human understanding, since that would limit the power of God to simply that of Human understanding. However, Ibn Hazm falls short if we look at the presupposition in both arguments. The first argument presupposes a temporal and totality nature of Humans. The assertion that no Human can know all that is right and all that is wrong at a particular moment in time does not preclude a collective notion of what is right and wrong over a long period of time. Ibn Hazm does not allow for this possibility. In the second argument, he presupposes that there exists some knowledge that only God can understand and further that such knowledge can NEVER be understood by Humans. Surly such an argument it self is limiting the power of God who is quite capable of making Humans understand any knowledge he chooses for us to understand.
I hope all those who read this find the kind of dialogue the Pope invites in his lecture. As a Muslim I welcome the opportunity to set the record straight. I would also ask my fellow Christians to not Judge the totality of Muslims by a small number of fanatics. Imagine being a European in the 1930 and being judged by what Hitler said. He was a head of the state, but did NOT represent all people of Europe. However, he did represent a significant plurality of people. We Muslims face similar challenges in our times and have the very hard task of defeating this ideology of Hatred.
