The Pope and the Prophet: Islam and the Violent Repudiation of Violence (3 parts)

Boston Catholic Journal ^ | September 2006

[NYer]

The Pope and the Prophet:

Islam and the Violent Repudiation of Violence

Part I.

Pope Benedict the XVI, attempting to emphasize the incompatibility between violence and religion, triggered the spring for a trap long set. Quoting an obscure text from an equally obscure 14th century Byzantine Emperor --- "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." --- was the long awaited and carefully set trigger.

Not surprisingly, the Pope's detractors carefully and selectively quote the Pope quoting the Emperor who was quoting the Q'uran --- so we provide the citation in its entirety below, but for the moment focus on the deliberately distorted quotation  --- in the context in which it was stated:

"In the seventh conversation [text unclear] edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme
of the holy war. The emperor must have known that Sura 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in
religion".

According to the experts, this is one of the Suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless
and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in
the Qur'an, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book"
and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question
about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "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".

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... 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 [according to Pope Benedict]  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."

So ... according to to Islamicists ... Pope Benedict, in quoting Paleologus, was in agreement with him. Since he also invokes Plato (who ascribes to the transmigration of the soul), Descartes (and his discredited, "Discourse on Method") and the French Biologist and Nobel Laureate Jacques Monod, presumably with them as well. Since he also quotes from the Q'uran, he must, eo ipso, be a Muslim, too. Reductio ad Absurdam.

To prove how wrong the Pope was, in their interpreting the intent of his citation of an ancient text, Muslims have gone on a general rampage, pillaging and burning Churches, and threatening violence if the Pope does not retract their misinterpretation --- in which he is held to have denounced Islam as a religion of violence and intolerance --- and they do so by acts of violence and intolerance.

Right ...

"How dare you say that we are violent and intolerant! We will have your head for that!"

Muslim reaction worldwide served to validate, even instantiate, what it claimed to repudiate: by threatening  ... and subsequently enacting, widespread violence ... Muslims denounced that Islam is fraught with violence ...

Islam, in its "two and seventy jarring sects", is not and never has been a religion of reason. Indeed, it is far more forthright and consistent in repudiating reason than violence.

It worked over a thousand years ago --- in the tens of thousands --- against the Hindus and then the Buddhists; it even worked less than a hundred years ago in the murder of more than a million Christians in the notoriously ignored Armenian Genocide by Muslim Turks in 1915, the same year in which it proved equally effective with the 100,000 Maronite Christians methodically starved in Lebanon and Syria: violence. It is, after all, one of the defining articles of Islam:

• "Kill, kill the unbelievers wherever you find them." (Q'uran 9.29.)

• "Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah. Those who follow him are merciful to one another, but ruthless to unbelievers." (Sura 48.29)

The question in the anger is always the same: The Prophet or the Sword? Choose!

We can trivialize Western correctitude, and the factitious Muslim denunciation of the violence inherent in Islam, but we cannot ignore history. Actions, frightfully violent actions, speak louder than words ... even frightfully violent words. In fact the former ineluctably follows from the latter. It always has. It always will.

Is Islam violent?

Yes and no. How dear such evasiveness is to our effete and cherished correctitude. Let us then agree:

Yes if it can be. No if it cannot yet be.

This is not our opinion. It is Muhammad's. Look into the Q'uran ... and then open tomorrow's paper.

---

Part 2.      We just did: see: http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060917-111439-3197r
 

The Christian Response ... and Example

"I forgive ... I forgive ..."
The last words of a dying Nun

NewsTrack - Top News
Nun killed in Somalia may be tied to pope

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Gunmen killed an elderly Italian nun outside a children's hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia Sunday, police said.

The attack raised immediate speculation it was tied to Pope Benedict XVI's recent remarks about Islam, which drew strong criticism in Somalia from a radical Muslim cleric, the BBC reported.

Sister Leonella Sgorbati of the Missionaries of the Consolation order, based in Nepi, Italy, near Rome, died in an operating room after being hit with three or four bullets in the chest, stomach and back, doctors said.

Her bodyguard was also killed in the attack.

A Vatican spokesman called the killing "a horrible act," which he hoped would remain isolated, the BBC reported.

Police said two people had been arrested.

Hardline Somali cleric Sheikh Abubakar Hassan Malin told worshippers at his mosque Friday to hunt down and kill whoever offended the Prophet Mohammed, founder of Islam.

The Italian government said the nun had been repeatedly advised to leave Somalia, which was once ruled by Italy.

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• Sister Leonella died as Jesus died --- forgiving her killers.

 

---

Part 3.

A Religion of Tolerance and Brotherly Love ...

"MP Hussein Al-Mutairi said “Islam’s greatness lies in the fact that it respects other Prophets and religions. Islam is all about love, forgiveness, respect and coexisting in harmony.”                     19 September 2006
                                                                      http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/kuwait/Viewdet.asp?ID=8836&cat=a

Pope being burned in effigy

---

“Whoever offends our Prophet Muhammad should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim,”

Muslim Cleric Sheikh Abubakar Hassan Malin
16 September 2006

"You [the Pope] and the West are doomed ... We will break up the Cross, spill the liquor, and impose the 'jizya tax [on the Christian Infidel], then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or (being Killed by the sword." You infidels and despots, we will continue our jihad and never stop until God avails us to chop your necks, and raise the fluttering banner of monotheism, when God's rule is established, governing all people and nations. God will [help] Muslims to conquer Rome, [may] God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen."

Mujahedeen Shura Council
18 September 2006

Despite their Western apologists --- the nominally Christian, the "correctly" Christian, and those who abhor Christianity because it infringes on their moral license --- the hallmark of the classical bully remains indelibly stamped on the collective consciousness of Islam, especially radical Islam (if, indeed, the two are distinguishable ... a question that becomes increasingly attenuate): "If I cannot beat you up, I will beat up your little brother." If I cannot kill the Pope, I will kill his little sister, an elderly Italian Nun."

It is, ultimately, criminal mentality, the mentality of the Mafia, the mentality of the Gang, the mentality, apparently, of the Mullah.

And no one wants to say it, for the same reason that people avoid offending Gangs --- offend them, and you will pay for it with your life, and if they cannot reach you, they will reach for your children. So you stay quiet, say nothing --- out of fear, fear of violence. Islam understands this. It has learned the effectiveness of not simply the threat of violence, but carrying it out for the least provocation ... real, fabricated, or imagined. It is the opportunity to flex the arm of Islam, and the sword wielded at the end of it. Violence and vengeance, vengeance through violence is, with every passing day, the growing evangel of Islam.

All our "correctitude" will not amend history, nor expunge the obits of the offenders --- and the children of the offenders --- that grow with each passing day in the very newspapers which decry our insensitivity toward the sword of the Prophet --- which hangs over our heads by the proverbial horse's hair, even as we refuse to look up at it.

Islam's calculated misinterpretation of the Pope did not reveal the "real" Pope --- it revealed the "real" Islam.

 

Recommended on-line reading: The Spirit of Islam by By Dr. Labib Mikhail: http://www.thespiritofislam.com/nyattack01.html

---

[NYer]

So much has been written on this topic but the Boston Catholic Journal gives an excellent assessment; one worth sharing.

[stm]

Outstanding article. I know Boston has a pretty healty Catholic population, though I don't know how many are Church going. Since Boston is one of the most liberal cities in the country, surely a lot of these Catholics are Democrats. I wonder how they rationalize the dim's views on abortion, homosexuality and gay "marriage" with their Faith.

I have yet to get a straight answer on these topics from any Catholic Democrats I know. Pretty much all I get is a dodge. Granted, I am pro-death penalty, a view not shared by most of the Catholic leadership. But there is a huge difference in executing a murder and killing an unborn child.

[Convert from ECUSA]

""MP Hussein Al-Mutairi said “Islam’s greatness lies in the fact that it respects other Prophets and religions. Islam is all about love, forgiveness, respect and coexisting in harmony.”

Uh-huh. And the sun rises in the west, sets in the east, the moon is made of green cheese, and Santa's sled is pulled by six purple hippos while Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood drop Easter Eggs down the chimney!

[bornacatholic]

Bush has repeatedly referred to Islam as a religion of Peace. The Pope never has. Never will. He was asked to do so the other day. He refused to say Islam is a religion of peace

[bornacatholic]

When he was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger authored this...

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

[bornacatholic]

Actually, understtod in their mind, he is right. The "religion of peace" is peaceful WHEN it is the predominant religion of the country ruled by Sharia Law. Then, exercising Islamic suzerainity, they will permit dhimmis to pay the Jizya and live..and wear funny clothing etc

[trisham]

Wow. Excellent article.

[AliVeritas]

Peace. Most excellent post.