Religion and Reason

The Pope gives a lecture in Germany. http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2006/09/pope_mohammed_e.html

It is a well-thought-out intellectual assessment of the role reason plays in religion. And suddenly all hell is let loose. Churches are attacked that are apparently not even Catholic.

Surely the Pope has proved his point (even though he has apologized).

The only error I found in his German address was his translation of God's words at the Burning Bush as 'I am that I am', rather than 'I will be that I will be'. For those interested, see Rashi's interpretation.

Critics of the Pope bring in irrelevancies such as how his words will affect interfaith relations.

For many, they have been affected already, and the Pope is certainly not the main culprit.

This excellent George Conger article in the Jerusalem Post with comments from former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, should put the record straight. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1157913641658. The article mentions the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, of which I am a Trustee.

And the Sunday Times Editorial is also relevant:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2361364,00.html

What a contrast with today's shiur on Rosh Hashanah and the sacrifice of Isaac. The commentary concluded that Abraham's mistake was to be willing to act on God's command too quickly, without questioning the rightness of the command to kill one's own child. After all, he had argued with God on behalf of strangers in Sodom.

And then the Selichot http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Selichot&meta= service at a truly beautiful shul in Denya.

Thanks to my friends for taking me there.

Comments

[Denis MacEoin]

Here's something I've just posted on Ruth Gledhill's site. I think Irene's analysis above is spot on, and much more cogent than the nonsense Ruth has written on this occasion.

I am astonished at this dispute, and saddened by the tenor of Ruth's remarks. There may have been slight errors of emphasis in the Pope's lecture, at least in the part concerning Islam, but the truth is he was not saying anything that was entirely untrue. Let's leave aside the emperor's remarks about evil and inhuman (which might better have been left out), it remains the case that the Qur'an does preach jihad and fighting in numerous verses, that the hadith or sayings of the Prophet contain a major chapter on jihad, and that the Prophet himself fought in numerous battles. Even before Muhammad's death in 632, Arab armies were already testing the ground further north, and within a few years they had conquered the Middle East and Iran and were going on to create new empires. Jihad remains an injunction. That there is a spiritual element to jihad is true; but it is only part of the truth. The rest involves violence in the service of the faith. Islam actually means 'submission' and, if one reads a seminal text by Bravmann, The Spiritual Background of Early Islam', the role of submission to the Prophet, then to the Caliph, and, more properly to the religion and its polity is central. The Pope took on an important topic, in a context of discussing violence within religion, and he was right to do so. If we cannot debate with Muslims about the significance of jihad both textually and historically, as well as in the modern Islamist context, then we will make no progress. Certainly, as long as the reaction of Muslims to the smallest perceived slight is to make death threats, burn churches and effigies, and plot violence against non-believers, there will never be a chance for dialogue. There is no point in entering into dialogue with our heads in the sand. The Pope did little to offend, yet he is being criticized while the fanatics who threaten or commit violence every time anyone says a word about their faith are ignored. Something about that seems unbalanced to me. Part of the problem is that very few people in the West (and certainly few in the churches) read Islamic languages like Arabic or Persian, and they tend to take their cue from what Muslim groups like the MCB, who have very large axes to grind, tell them. As a former lecturer in Islamic Studies within a Religious Studies context, I know that, whatever you do, you should never believe everything believers in any religion tell you about their faith. Any more than you would believe a politician implicitly about his/her party. Or a salesman about his product. Yet Westerners are doing this with Islam to an astonishing degree. The Pope was right to introduce the problem of Islamic violence, just as he was rigbht to make dialogue contingent on Muslims extending full rights to Christians (and, I might add, Jews, Baha'is, Ahmadi Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, and agnostics). There have been and are some remarkable Muslim thinkers who seek to carry out an exegesis of the Qur'an in a manner that will make it compatible with the modern world, people like the late Fazlur Rahman, the Indonesian Nurcholish Majid, or the Algerian Muhammad Talbi. When the Pope is forced to apologize for making not unreasonable remarks, it puts men and women like these in jeopardy and undermines the valuable work they do. The first condition for dialogue is truth, not wishful thinking. That applies to Muslims as much as to the rest of us.