Of course we must return to the original statements if we are going to find the truth about the furor. The Pope, in his comments which have given mobs of people looking for an excuse to rage…excuse to rage, said things which haven’t been widely published by the press and which are, no doubt, the real cause of the difficulty. While the press has zeroed in on The Pope quoting a Christian emperor under the stress of a Muslim siege of Constantinople, those words may actually be far less a difficulty to Islam than a larger idea which cannot be expressed in just a few words.
The idea which the Pope points out in his text is that, according to Islamist scholars, Allah is not bound by his word whereas the Christian understanding of God certainly is bound by His Word. Quoting from Muslim scholars the Pope clearly establishes that Muslim belief holds that Allah is above all things, even the very words of Allah himself. Anything that Allah may say, written or spoken, can, according to Muslim belief, be overturned by a later utterance. Further, Allah may choose, according to Islamic belief, to mislead man.
The Pope contrasts this with Christian belief which holds that anything God says or writes is something He will stand by no matter what. Christian belief holds that God chooses to be bound by His Word and is utterly faithful to his own statements with absolute perfection. Hence, reason may proceed from the statements of God where those statmeents are held as axioms. The Christian religion becomes testable and verifyable due to the reliability of things told to man.
The general idea working its way through the Pope’s argument is that coercive force and raging threats of violence are not necessary to convert someone to a religion which is presented in reason, with thoughtful attention to good supporting information. But it is noticeable that Islam, if it is as is represented by the quoted scholars, cannot be dealt with via rigorous reasoning capacity because the very statements of its doctrines, they being assumed to be from God, cannot be known to any certainty because the doctrines themselves insist that God can and does utterly change his word without telling you, or if desired, with telling you. And so there cannot be reasoned conclusions from axioms which are suddenly fungible. As a result the path to knowledge under Islamist thought cannot hold to a strict logic the way logical arguement is held in Christianity or Western thought.
The article of difficulty which makes the Pope’s speech perhaps so problematic to accept is that this presents a crisis to Islam and a potential explanation for the pervasive violence we see perpetrated in the name of that religion today. If an open and reasonable people cannot rationally calculate their way to Islam’s conclusions along the path of its axioms, due to the abrogation or changes in the doctrinal utterances which are institutional and frequent, then what methods remain open in order to win over converts? The inference is that many Islamists choose violence because their positions do not allow them to win over people by reason, by logic referencing doctrines, or by rhetorical practice in structured argument.
This would appear to the be the deep problem which cannot be mentioned. The reaction – open violence and threats thereof – would appear not to refute the point. The logic and the reaction place a burden on the thoughtful Muslim scholar to assemble a response which is both cogent and peaceful. But if the headlines are dominanted by riots, are we to expect a forthcoming thoughtful argument?
Dood! That was an excellent post.
God is not bound by his Word in that he cant choose to recant.But that presupposes that God is limited by time as the Mohammedans believe Allah to be. To God Time is not serial so if He says He will do something then He says it in and to past present and future. Allah, being bound by serial time can change his mind as he sees how things develop. That is much too limited a concept of the Deity for Christians.
The fact is that most Muslims cannot even begin to see the irony of their position, and when faced with the dichotomy they instinctively lash out in a violent manner. They refuse to see the truth out of utter ignorance stupidity, and stubborness<./P>
Genesis 16:12 And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence, of all his brethren.