Posted on 09/25/2006 11:33:53 AM PDT by SmithL
Pope Benedict XVI's reference to dark aspects in Islam's history also has opened up another type of backlash for his church: fresh examinations of its past as conqueror, inquisitor and patron of missionaries whose zeal sometimes led to conflict with other faiths.
Stark comparisons between Islam and Western Christianity — and deeds done in their name — are again on the rise even as the pontiff urged Muslim envoys Monday to look ahead rather than back.
Many Islamic leaders, in turn, have appealed for the West not to judge their faith's nearly 1,400-year history solely by modern calls for "holy war" and the Muslim rage over Benedict's Sept. 12 speech, which included a reference to a Byzantine emperor who characterized some teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman" such as spreading Islam "by the sword."
"There is this impression among Muslims that the pope was saying, `We are superior and we are without problems," said Ali El-Samman, president of the interfaith committee for Egypt's High Islamic Council. "The history books will tell you otherwise."
The Vatican in recent years has tried to clear away some historical baggage, including a 2001 apology by Pope John Paul II for the medieval Crusades, which are widely seen by Muslims and Orthodox Christians as Western invasions. During a visit the same year to Syria, John Paul also became the first pope to visit a mosque.
In a meeting Monday with Muslim diplomats from 21 nations and the Arab League, Benedict urged both Christians and Muslims to "guard against all forms of intolerance and to oppose all manifestations of violence." He did not, however, offer a direct apology for his earlier remarks as demanded by some Muslim leaders and clerics.
Benedict's speech found a sympathetic ear among many in the West.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
So because of what Evil Christians may have done 1000 years ago we should not condem evil done today by muslims. Got it.
"The Quran, Bible and other sacred books should come with a warning label," he said. "It should say, `These This books may contain contains passages that can be are interpreted for violence and intolerance.'"
What the article neglects to mention is that Christians who kill and conquer do it in SPITE of their source text, the Bible, in which Jesus says that He came to save men's lives, not to destroy them, that we are to treat one another as we would like to be treated, that those who hate are murderers in their hearts, and that Satan comes to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.
And mohammetans who kill and conquer do it BECAUSE of their source text, the Koran, in which their prophet Mohammet says to steal, and to kill and to destroy the infidels, to strike off their necks, to lie in wait for them, and to treat them as vermin and dogs.
But AP probably wants nothing to do with a good Comparative Religion course, which is probably what the Pope has in mind.
.
This was inevitable, and actually I don't see how any talks can proceed without getting it 'out of the way.' Once it's out of the way, then no one has to shuck and jive to defend that which you really can't, and more to the point shouldn't want to defend. In addition, it is a means of each side to remember the unspeakable suffering of those who met their untimely death at the hands of such perverted sadists. It remembers them, and it honors them as such. Honesty matters.
Then of course, the Moslems need to step up to the plate. Find a Churchill and a Bonhoeffer, if you can, to begin the extirpation. But, I really think that the same enervation of the masses, the same fear of the masses, that failed to put down Hitler are the same as they ever were. Leaders are needed, there is no doubt that, but what those on the ground can do, once they're prepared to pay the Cost of Discipleship is what can really make the difference. Soldiers have always proved they understand the Cost, but the general populace has only proved that in limited quantity.
Puhleeze. Same old same old.
First of all, Christians are not commanded either by their scriptures or tradition to commit violence.
Secondly, much of the "violence" is grossly exaggerated or is actually not linked to religion at all. The Crusades were defensive wars to retake the Holy Land and free Christians enslaved by Muslims - it is estimated that some 90,000 prisoners were freed. The sack of Constantinople that occurred in the later Crusade had nothing to do with religion, but was stemmed from the involvement of the Crusaders (who at that point were a very poorly disciplined lot) with some of the warring factions that governed Constantinople.
The Spanish Inquisition initially affected only Catholics and was an attempt to restore order to a church that was rife with heresy and disorder because of the many years Spain had spent under Islam and without bishops. Much of its initial phase was directed at clergy, particularly at rooting out immorality among them. Its later phase was highly political and the Inquisitors, in addition, had become politically powerful - and the Pope sent bulls attempting to stop it, which were ignored. So it was hardly a concerted policy of the Church in particular or Christianity in general.
As for the American Indians, the Church did not kill or harm them in any way; missionaries went with the soldiers, but then set out on their own to preach (unarmed) to the natives, which is why so many of them were martyred. Missionaries also did their best to ensure better treatment of the Indians, and the Spanish, in particular, were forbidden to enslave the Indians. Columbus was punished for having done so.
But these things matter little to those with an agenda.
Exactly. This Pope is brilliant beyond imagination at dealing with the thorniest problem of our time (and, no, I'm not Catholic).
If both religions are subjected to indepth rational inquiry, examination will find that Christianity's errors are all due to errant and often naive humans...but Jesus will stand heroic and untainted as always.
Any guess as to what will remain of islam? Whatever remains will be a reformed islam.
This Pope bowls me over will his incredible wisdom and strategic prowess.
I really don't think this is true, DS. Here's a bit from the History of Christianity by Paul Johnson, who really doesn't have an axe to grind. He was born in '28, he's a Roman Catholic, an Oxford Historian. He can of course be wrong, but so can those who argue with an opposing point of view. He had the guts to admit what needed to be admitted as regards the behaviour of the Church, and not that it was just a few bad apples.
"The idea of Catholic Christians exercising mass violence against the infidel hardly squared with scripture, nor did it make much sense in practical terms. The success of Islam sprang essentially from the failure of Christian theologians to solve the problem of the Trinity and Christ's nature. In Arab territories, Christianity had penetrated heathenism, but usually in Monophysite form - and neither easter nor western Catholicism could find a compromise with the Monophysites in the sixth and seventh centuries. The Arabs, driven by draught, would almost certainly have used force to expand anyway. As it was, Mohammed, a Monophysite, conflated the theological and economic problems to evolve a form of Monophysite religion which was simple, remarkably impervious to heresy, and included the doctrine of the sword to accommodate the Arab's practical needs. It appealed strongly to a huge element within the Christian community. The first big Islamic victory, at the River Yarmuk, in 636 was achieved because 12,000 Christian Arabs went over to the enemy. The Christian Monophysites - Copts, Jacobites and so forth - nearly always preferred Moslems to Catholics. Five centuries after the Islamic conquest, the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, Michael the Syrian, faithfully produced the tradition of his people when he wrote: 'The God of Vengeance who alone is the Almighty...raised from the south the children of Ishmael to deliver us from the hands of the Romans.' And, at the time a Nestorian chronicler wrote: 'The hearts of the Christians rejoiced at the domination of the Arabs - may God strengthen and prosper it.' The religious pattern froze: The Arab Moslems tolerated all Children of the Book, but would not allow their rivals to expand. Christians were in the majority only in Alexandria and certain Syrian cities. Generally they preferred Arab-Moslem to Greek-Christian rule, though there were periods of difficulty and persecution. There was never, at any stage, a mass-demand from the Christians under Moslem rule to 'liberate.'Three factors combined to produce the militant crusades. The first was the development of small-scale 'holy wars' against Moslems in the Spanish theatre. In 1063, Ramiro I, King of Aragon, was murdered by a Moslem; and Alexander II promised an indulgence for all who fought for the cross to revenge the atrocity; the idea was developed by Gregory VII who helped an international army to assemble for Spanish campaigning, guaranteeing canonically that any Christian knight could keep the lands he conquered, provided he acknowledged that the Spanish kingdom belonged to the see of St. Peter. Papal expansionism, linked to the colonial appetite for acquiring land, thus supplied strong political and economic motives. There was, secondly, a Frankish tradition, dating from around 800, that the Carolingian monarchs had a right and a duty to protect Holy Places in Jerusalem, and the western pilgrims who went there. This was acknowleged by the Moslem caliphs, who until the late eleventh century preferred Frankish interference to what they regarded as the far more dangerous penetration by Byzantium.
...The idea that Europe was a Christian entity, which had acquired certain inherent rights over the rest of the world by virtue of its faith, and its duty to spread it, married perfectly with the need to find some outlet both for its addiction to violence and its surplus population.
What really created the crusade, however, was the almost unconscious decision, at the end of the 11th century, to marry the Spanish idea of conquering the land from the infidel with the practice of mass, armed pilgrimages to the Holy Land. And this sprang from the third factor -the vast increase in western population in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the consequent land hunger. Cisterian pioneer-farming at he frontiers was one solution. Crusading was another - the first great wave of the European colonial migrations. It was, in fact, deeply rooted in Christian cosmology. The Ptolemaic conception of the circumambient ocean had been accepted by the Fathers, and reconciled with the bible in Isidore's encyclopedia. The three continents were allocated to the sons of Noah after the Flood - Shem stood for the Jews, Japhet for the Gentiles and Ham for the Africans or blacks. Alcuin's commentary on Genesis reads: "How was the world divided by the sons and grandsons of Noah?" "Shem is considered to have acquired Asia, Ham, Africa and Japhet, Europe." The passage then went on to prove from the scriptures that Japhet-Europe was by its name and nature divinely appointed to be expansionist. Within a generation of Alcuin, early in the ninth century we first hear of Christendom an entity judged to be co-extensive with Europe, but with special privileges and rights, including the right to expand. Phrases like the 'defense of Christendom' against the Saracens were used (ninth century) and in the eleventh century, Gregory VII referred to the 'boundaries of Christendom' and the Church being 'mistress of the whole of Christendom.' From the start, then, the crusades were marked by depredations and violence which were as much racial as religious in origin....The fall of Jerusalem was marked by a prolonged and hideous massacre of Moslems and Jews, men, women and children. This episode had a crucial effect in hardening Islamic attitudes to the crusaders."
In theory, the Pope doesn't have to do a thing, but the reality is that won't work because people remember. And, good faith is established through honesty. I'm not sure what that will mean to the Moslems in the end, because they are irrational, and in kind, their murderous sprees are also different, with suicide bombings and the like, so the comparison is tough. Add to that, there doesn't seem to be even a small portion of 'moderate' Moslems that are visible or audible, that's a big problem. But how is that different than Germany allowing Hitler to come to power and then sitting by as he commenced with his hideous plans? History does repeat itself. I'm not really judging the Germans. Who knows what I would do, if I had to choose between life and death due to such circumstances?
We're going to probably have to kill a lot of Moslems, including women and children. It's best that we think through it all, so that when our children look back on what we probably will have to do, they'll be able to say we tried to avoid so much death.
Of course, but His good name was indeed sullied.
It sprang from a lot of things - such as the power void in the area after the collapse of the Roman Empire, the weakness of the Church as a unifying force after the Arian and other heresies, etc. But Johnson is absolutely right about the fact that the feeble theological response was because of weak or confused thought on the Trinity and the two natures. Mad Mo thought he had the winning combination by dumping them both and simply creating a weird synthesis of easy-to-understand monotheism, bits of pagan cult and practices, and a touch of Jewish ritual law. And of course, that thing about the armed militias, which were his special personal contribution to the mix, being of bandit stock himself.
In any case, I think Johnson has some inaccuracies or generalizations that are a little too broad; the behavior of the Church has certainly never been beyond reproach, but it has never hit the profound doctrinal level. Also, don't forget that there were times when other Catholic groups (the French and the Spanish, specifically) sacked Rome and attacked the Pope over purely political things. But still, this had nothing to do with Christian doctrine.
On the other hand, with Islam, it has everything to do with doctrine, something of which the Pope (alone) seems to be clearly aware.
BTW, a little off-topic, is it only me, or is anybody else here really terrified about what would happen to women if Islam took over? When I wrote to the Pope, I mentioned that as one of my main concerns.
Hmmm
Christianity's reputation is regularly sullied by Christians even when they try their very best if only because being human is sullying to perfection and holiness.
Of course, Jesus himself is beyond the reach of humans.
Let me think about what you've said.
The Pope also said that there exists Islamic doctrine that eschews violence, didn't he?
I don't mean any offense by this, but I'm going to have to take Johnson's view over yours, as you should well take his or any historian of your choosing, over my mine, as Johnson had access to documents and info that you and I don't. Assuming of course, that you are not a historian of his caliber and CV.
What seemed obvious to me, and the point I was trying to get at was that once this mutual disclaimer is out of the way, a better climate is created for 'dialogue.' Though it is doubtful, absent the emergence of a Islamic Churchill or Bonhoeffer and the likes of the Churchmen that surrounded him, it will still come to naught.
And as far as your comment on women and Islam, to me that's where their disease lies. They absolutely hate women, and I don't quite understand why? A couple of years ago there was an article written about the stoning of an 'adulteress' that really made me nauseous.
No offense. He was simply generalizing his viewpoint, and there are other views from equally well-founded scholars. I think he overlooks the political, on-the-ground situation.
As for the Islamic doctrine, as the Pope pointed out, the no-compulsion doctrine was early (when Mo was weak) and was then superseded by the doctrine of conversion by force.
I agree that they are unlikely to be able to produce anyone who can seriously dialogue with the Pope, simply because - as he pointed out - Islam rejects reason and has virtually no foundation for its part of the dialogue, which requires two equal parties.
One of the interesting things that I have seen mentioned only once is that by the conclusion of the conversation of Paleologus with the Muslim scholar, the Muslim had begun to feel a burning within him, that is, a desire for truth, and the dialogue ends very ambiguously, with the impression that the sincere Muslim has been convinced of the truth and will go and seek it. This is an interesting point, because I do think that the Pope is also calling us to (a) know our own faith and (b) evangelize the Muslims.
It's going to be hard under the burka though! I think they hate women because Mohammed obviously had some problems in that area. Any man who would "marry" a 6 year old and congratulate himself on waiting until she was 9 to have full sexual intercourse with her clearly had problems. This was not even an accepted practice in his time, certainly not among Christians and Jews.
And the fact that Islam has rendered Muslim men class-bound, powerless in front of their imams or even older men, given them a distaste for labor (which is considered demeaning in Islamic cultures), and focuses mainly on their sexual pleasure, which is permitted with everything from small boys to barnyard animals to 20 minute "pleasure marriages" with prostitutes, indicates some of its shortcomings that the Pope was probably too polite to address!
The only thing that puzzles me is why feminist groups are so silent, or even come out cheering for Islam. Don't they know what their life would be like under Islam? But the whole problem with liberals is that they think they're so special that nothing will ever affect them.
First, let me say I respect Johnson's opinion and would most likely say his points make a good foundation from which to proceed...with one exception. Aside from history, Christians and Jews and Islamics believe there are spiritual forces at work behind and within the human activity that makes up history as we know it. Johnson has recited (and, well, if I say so) the human forces that make up the history of this period. If one goes back over that first millennium after Christ and lays the human activity over a surmised battle between Good and evil, everything takes on a different hue. One can see the push and pull of those forces over time like a cosmic chess match (the rules are quite clear also). But step aside from that point (you can see the general direction in which it takes us) and look at one final point...
From Rome forward to Agincourt (and beyond), violence was a civilized affair and was the sole means of employment for the nobles. Farming and merchandising were left to more menial peoples and serfs on the vassals'estates. All good men were men of arms. Why is that so? I don't know. I think it was part of the evolution of the concept of honor. Jesus introduces a new kind of honor...and for two thousand years men and women have sought it only to define it as something bound up in the times in which we lived.
Only now, and only in the west, has honor started to find new definition (I think our President is helping...and I think the Pope has just now thrown down the real gauntlet).
Honor as define by Jesus is voluntary obedience to God. That isn't violence but something else that in the end only God can define and man can only seek.
Bottom-line, I don't blame humans much for the earlier tendency toward the sword. The problem is letting go of the sword. Christianity can do it because Christianity can evolve with culture...islam cannot.
Islam's prohibition from rational, empirical examination of itself has trapped it in the 7th century. The Pope IMO is planning to say to the muslim world "none of us is innocent...let's look at the past and make amends."
This I believe will be the great challenge for islam. Some will examine it and see the truth and change islam or abandon it...others will refuse and will face the annihilation you suggest.
Whew!
Just to clarify...that's a compliment. I would love to spend a career studying this period. Talk about a meaty subject!!!
Ooops! I just realized that I meant to say "overemphasizes" the political, on the ground situation. This is because I think he doesn't grant that there actually was a tremendous amount of idealism and faith involved in the Crusades, and if you read the writings of people - who bankrupted themselves, if they did not even die - going off to rescue other Christians, you will realize that they saw that there was a difference between Christianity and Islam and they knew that they were undertaking a great work.
I walked the Camino de Santiago a couple of years ago, and, with the reading I did about the Camino and at places I passed through, I came away with a real respect for the depth of commitment that Christians had to the ideals and beliefs of Christianity at that time. Yes, there was a lot of politics and even superstition and bizarre stuff, but on the whole, they had a concept of human life that we would recognize.
I met a young German doctor who was going to do the three great pilgrimages (Santiago, Rome and Jerusalem). He was afraid he would be killed on the way to Jerusalem, but he felt that it was important to do this. And probably our medieval ancestors felt the same way; after all, why shouldn't they have been able to go to Jerusalem, where Our Lord had walked?
Ooops again! My above post was meant for you...
+
If you want on (or off) this Catholic and Pro-Life ping list, let me know!
Me too. Here's what Catholics have going for them, that Moslems don't, they have a sustained period of solid and good foundations laid that have survived the centuries, and Islam doesn't. Their lack of accomplishment must rankle, in the face of what they have to measure themselves against. It's a real pity that, en masse, it seems Moslems would sooner be annihilated than rehabilitated. And, that is probably what we will have to give them. One of the things I admire about President Bush is his understanding of this, and his unwillingness to whet the appetites of the red-fanged amongst us. You know, we never think of the Iraqi dead. We don't even know how many have died, do we?
I'm the child of WWII survivors who were kids themselves in Italy. My Mom was 11 and my Dad was 17. They were forced out of their homes so German soldiers could be garrisoned there. They lived on the lam (sp?) for one year, under the 24/7 surveillance of German troops. My Mom lost all her hair from the disease that ensued. My Mom and Dad both attest to the general fairness of how German soldiers treated them. My Grandmother cooked for them and my Grandfather chopped wood. My Mom also told me of a doctor who they suspected was Jewish who ended up in their midst. My Grandmother caught an infection in her lachrymal duct and the Jewish physician healed her with rose water and something else, though I can't remember what that is.
As I understand it, Italy preserved 80% of its Jewish population through their expertise of forging documents. It certainly was easier in Italy to preserve its Jewish population, because they looked no different than Gentile Italians.
One story my Mother relays of the German occupation always broke my heart. DS, these people had nothing. When the war was finally declared over and they were able to return to their homes, the German soldiers had burned all of their furniture to the ground. They came home to piles of ashes where their only table and chairs once were. I spent the entire summer of '68 in Italy. The ruins of the WWII were still evident. Hot running water was still not available. The maturation leap I made in that summer was unlike any maturation leap to follow.
What makes us different from radical Moslems is that we have a conscience. I'll never forget the beheading of Nick (can't remember his last name). It was one human against however many lower than quadrupeds were present. And their masks and the whole picture issued straight from hell.
Franklin Graham said it first and best: Allah had no son so he isn't Yahweh. Who are we to tell Muslims that their God had a son and they are confused?
Accept their words for fact. Allah had no son.
Stand up for Christ or die at the hands of a heathan God.
Jan III Sobieski, 1683, the Gates of Vienna.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.