Word: popes
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...himself from a 15th-century Byzantine emperor he quoted. Emperor Manuel II Paleologos's line that "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 Pope explained, does not "in any way express my personal thought." And he refers offended Muslims to a previous apology by the Vatican Secretary of State, who said that Benedict had meant only "to undertake... certain reflections on the theme of the relationships between religion and violence in general...
...Benedict's speech that deals with religious violence extends beyond Manuel's statement and is precisely a slap at Islam. The truly problematic text, in fact, is a mixture of quotes from the Byzantine emperor, his German translator Theodore Khoury, a medieval Muslim scholar named Ibn Hazm, and the Pope's own musings. In combination, they seem to suggest that Islam's idea of God is so oblivious to the virtue of reason that it tolerates unthinking violence in Allah's name...
...goes like this. Benedict quotes Khoury as saying that Islam understands God as "absolutely transcendent," so much so that the deity's "will is not bound up with any of our categories, even rationality." The Pope then quotes Khoury quoting "a noted French Islamist" paraphrasing Ibn Hazm, who lived in Cordoba during the 11th century, saying that "God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us." Got that? It's a lot of attribution, but I think that my colleague is correct when he concludes that "the risk...
...unstated understanding that if anyone tried to reason them out of their plans they would counter that logic had no role because this was the will of God. But that would be an assumption on his part. And that exposes the essential arbitrariness, at least for now, of the Pope's approach. If he wants to make an "essentialist" argument against Islam-that is, to suggest that there may be something in it that is intrinsically more friendly to fanaticism-then he needs to do it in some way other than the seemingly casual, off-the-cuff route...
...Pope's PR Machinery Broke Down If it was so easy to foresee that Benedict's remarks about Islam would set off a furor, why didn't the Vatican anticipate...