From Regensburg to the Blue Mosque
by Fr. Dave Denny
December 1, 2006

From Regensburg to the Blue Mosque
If you are interested in Christian-Muslim relations, then you probably watched the pope’s visit to Turkey very closely. Ever since Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg speech on September 12, a presentation that enraged Muslims around the world, I have tried to learn more about the speech itself and the pope’s views on Islam.

What did the pope say?
The pope quoted a fourteenth century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, who, in a dialogue with a Muslim on faith and reason, observed that Christianity embraces reason, but claimed that the Prophet commanded Muslims “’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.” Although Pope Benedict does not agree with Emperor Manuel, who also claimed that the new contributions Muhammad made were “only evil and inhuman,” the Muslim reaction was swift, fiery, and global.

What was the context?
In Regensburg the pope spoke in many contexts, including theological, historical, philosophical, and political. A Muslim friend helped by sending me “Benedict XVI and Islam: the first year,” by Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad, a Cambridge Muslim who summarized first impressions of the pope some months before the Regensburg speech. If you want to learn about many Muslims’ responses to the pre-Regensburg pope, this is a great place to begin. Although Sheikh Murad voices a deep ambivalence toward the pope’s theology, which is “passionately critical of everything that fails to be ‘in communion with Rome,’” he also admires Benedict’s opposition to dogmatic, intolerant secularism. “For Ratzinger, as in classical Muslim thought, the religious scholar is not to be the ruler; but neither is the ruler to be immune from counsel by the scholar or from the ethics set forth in revelation.”

Sheikh Murad notes that religion in Europe is different from religion in America. Should European fears of Islam trigger a revitalized Christianity in Europe, “the continent’s ethico-political domination by the Vatican would probably enhance the sense of security of the majority population, and this can only be in the interests of Muslims, for whom the threat is not the Church, but the far-right movements which may claim Christian principles, but will, we may reasonably hope, always be kept at a firm distance by Curial institutions that can never decisively reject the rulings of Vatican II.” By this, Murad seems to acknowledge that in Europe at least, a Christian resurgence, should it occur, has a chance of avoiding right-wing backlash to rising Islam by adhering to the Catholic Church’s teachings in Nostra Aetate, the Vatican II document that proclaims, “The church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to humanity.” Sheikh Murad is suggesting that the Church, while making Christians feel secure, may do so not by encouraging anti-Muslimism, but rather dialogue, respect, civility, and justice.

Is the pope a politician?
Although Sheikh Murad asserts that Pope Benedict “is not primarily a politician,” George Friedman, writing for Strategic Forecasting Inc., makes another claim and takes a different tack. “The pope is not only a scholar,” writes Friedman, “but a politician—and a good one, or he wouldn’t have become the pope.” Friedman examines the pope’s inflammatory words closely and comes to the conclusion that “From an intellectual and political standpoint … Benedict’s statement was an elegant move.” To see how Friedman arrives at this surprising assessment, you may subscribe to Stratfor Premium or sign up for a free trial here.

What was the pope’s intent?
This is a tough question because the pope is a brilliant man, and unlike some other world leaders, he has a fine sense of nuance. My own understanding is that the pope believes that religion guided by reason offers hope to the world and Benedict challenges the Muslim community “to lift the religion out of the hands of radicals and extremist scholars,” according to Friedman, “by demonstrating that Muslims can adhere to reason” and condemn, on Muslim grounds, unjust violence against others.
But New York Times writer Ian Fisher says the opposite: “… the pope’s speech ... was at its heart a criticism of the West for being so beholden to reason that it had blocked out other values, like religion.” To some, this may simply sound contradictory, but my own impression is that these apparently contradictory interpretations point to the pope’s elegant and nuanced position.

What did the Pope fail to say?
According to Catholic theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, “The Pope might have opened with some generalities deploring the current state of war and violence in the world. Then he would remark that such tendencies to war are deeply aggravated when religion and the name of God are wrongly used to foment violence and hatred between peoples. God desires peace and love, not war, he might have said.” She also suggests that an apology for the Crusades would go a long way toward winning Muslims’ hearts.

What do Muslim scholars say about Regensburg in their Open Letter?
For a serious Muslim response to the pope, I found the “Open Letter to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI,” signed by Muslim scholars from around the world, a model of respect and intelligent criticism. You may find this document here.

In their Open Letter the Muslim scholars respond to Benedict by citing several Quranic verses forbidding forced conversion and explain that mainstream “Muslims through the ages have maintained a consonance between the truths of the Quranic revelation and the demands of human intelligence, without sacrificing one for the other.” They point out that Islam has rules of war similar to the West’s just war theory. Non-combatants are not “permitted or legitimate targets;” “Religious belief alone does not make anyone the object of attack;” and although “Muslims can and should live peacefully with their neighbors … self-defense and maintenance of sovereignty” are not excluded. The Letter goes on to “state that the murder on September 17th of an innocent Catholic nun in Somalia—and any other similar acts of wanton individual violence—‘in reaction to’ your lecture at the University of Regensburg, is completely un-Islamic, and we totally condemn such acts.”

The scholars also criticize the pope for relying on a “very marginal” Muslim theologian as a representative of the tradition, and for citing Catholic “experts” on Islam who have no standing within the Muslim community “as representing Muslims or their views.”

The Blue Mosque: a defining image?
In this tense atmosphere, Pope Benedict traveled to Turkey in late November as crowds of Turkish citizens protested his presence. He surprised many when Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan announced that Pope Benedict did not oppose Turkey’s possible entrance into the European Union. Before leaving Istanbul, he visited the Blue Mosque. Although he does not have the dramatic charisma of his predecessor, the pope gave what National Catholic Reporter columnist John Allen claims may be a “defining image, especially in the Muslim world”:

the shot of the pope and Istanbul's chief Islamic cleric, Imam Mustafa Cagrici, inside the city’s famed Blue Mosque, standing before the mihrab, a niche indicating the direction of Mecca, and praying side-by-side.

In an instant, that image projected a message of inter-faith fraternity that seemed in stark contrast to the specter of a “clash of civilizations” which followed Benedict’s Sept. 12 lecture at the University of Regensburg, which produced its own defining images of angry, and sometimes violent, protests across the Muslim world.

Later, Benedict said to his hosts, “This visit will help us to find together the means, the paths of peace for the good of humanity,” adding, “Thank you for this moment of prayer.” (http://ncrcafe.org/node/726)

We hope and pray that this encounter may help turn the tide of recent tensions between Christians and Muslims and encourage us all to seek a deeper respect and understanding for each other’s traditions.