Extremism
You may have heard that the Pope gave a lecture at a university recently, and that there was a widespread reaction of anger in the Muslim world over what was said. For those of you who are curious, here is the Pope’s quote; if you’re not interested, skip just past this quote and I’ll paraphrase.
In the seventh conversation [text unclear] edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: “There is no compulsion in religion”.According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war.
Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels”, he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: “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 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. “God”, he says, “is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably … is contrary to God’s nature….”
In essence, the Pope brought up the concept of proselytizing through force, and quoted a 14th century dialogue in which a Byzantine emperor said that anything new that Mohammed brought was evil and inhuman, and proselytizing by force was one example. This is the quote that the media focuses on, especially the part with the words “evil” and “inhuman.” Interestingly, this is perhaps less offensive than other parts of the speech, at least in terms of what is the Pope’s voice and what is a quote that he may not personally agree with. The imperial quote was phrased so that the Pope’s own view of the matter was occluded, except that he found it “forceful”–which could leave the door open to him agreeing, but not willing to put it so strongly.
What seems somewhat more objectionable to me would be a subsequent paragraph:
But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.
This information is presented differently, as fact. The Pope is essentially saying that the Muslim faith has no reason or consistency, that God can be dishonest. Seems to me that this is the worse thing to say. Well, unless it’s true and Muslims have no problem with that.
Keep in mind, however, the points made: that Islam can be violent, irrational and contradictory.
So what was the reaction in the Muslim world? There were angry protests worldwide, Iraqis burned the Pope in effigy, and in Somalia, one of their number killed a nun and her bodyguard, shooting the nun in the back four times.
So, apparently, these individuals wanted to make the Pope’s argument for him.
It should be pointed out, however, that the objectionable acts were carried out by extremists. On the other hand, we don’t seem to see Muslim leaders pouring out to condemn these acts.
My question is, how deeply does religious extremism really run? What percentage of Muslims really do feel sympathetic to the people who committed these acts? I suspect it’s a lot less than the media makes it seem, but sometimes I wonder; there seems to be so much righteous anger in the world today, more than can be accounted for by a few extremists. Is it that the extremists are not actually so extreme at heart, but rather just in the actions they take?
And before you object to my singling out Muslims, I would point out that I feel exactly the same way about Christians. Watch this Jesus Camp trailer if you want an example. Sure, Christians might not react violently to political cartoons and speeches by Muslim leaders which attack Christianity (as many, especially Christians, take pains to point out), but that is far from saying that some Christians don’t react violently, or in threatening manners, about things that are just as important to them as the Prophet is to Muslims. Killing doctors who carry out abortions, bombing clinics, harassing and threatening women who go into these clinics–just a few examples in one specific area. Christians can react just as violently when it comes to something that offends them as much, and Christian leaders also often do not come out and condemn their actions.
Sometimes, religion scares the hell out of me. It allows for people to act immorally and believe that it is moral because it is in the name of God. It drives people to believe things that don’t make sense, to become apologists for absolute contradictions because to admit to anything else would threaten their world view.
And since their world view is often tied directly to their belief that they will live after death, any criticism against their belief in general can threaten that anchor they have chosen and cause them to react in irrational ways. (If you’re religious, not like this, and starting to object, then note my modifiers.)
The supreme irony appears in this other quote from the Pope’s speech:
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.
Now, that’s quite something to say. Religion is about faith, sometimes to the exclusion of reason–all too often, from what I can observe.
This entire episode, it seems to me, proves exactly that point.
Excellent post Luis. Thanks for posting the Popes speech. I will read it a little later. But I want to follow up on your comments.
You mention that people will do immoral acts under the cloak of religion.
How true. This is what I call the “rascalian pretext”. It comes from the idea that “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrals.” But I would add, religiousity too. And then I change scoundrals to rascals. The pretext is to use some lofty idea as a means to avoid accountabilit for ones actions. As M. Scott Peck M.D. (author of “the road less travelled”) wrote in “People of the lie: the hope for curing human evil, people are at their worst when they are least accountable for their actions. Shedding accountability is the fast track for immoral acts. The rascalian pretext then it to shed accountability for ones acts by hiding under the cover of a lofty ideal or concept. In Hitler’s War, the noted Hitler Appologist, Irving, tries to give Hitler moral wiggle room by quoting him saying “As for myself, I would never tell a lie, but for Germany, I would tell ten thousand lies.” Irving thinks he’s helping Hitler’s case, but in fact he’s condemining him by way of the rascalian pretext. And if only Hitler had stopped at 10,000.
I agree with the pope though in his assesment of Muslim views on the mind of God. The koran is filled with thousands of quotes where something to the affect is said: “Allah wills what Allah wills.” The koran often says that one cannot know the mind or will of Allah. He is all powerful and unaccountable for his actions. On the other hand, the Koran is filled with reference to God as the kind, the forgiving and the merciful – which would seem to say something of the mind of God.
However the Pope seems to be pulling the ol’switchola on the Muslims they same way the muslims pull the ol’switchola on everyone else. The Pope once to battle muslims using the battlefield of reason. But at the same time he criticises the west for relying to much on reason and science and not enough on faith. The muslims do this too, but in another way – they claim islam is a religion, even while its really a political ideology. So they play politics with islam but want the kind of protections and respect reserved for religions. The they play religion but want the benefits that come with being a political ideology. The best example of this is the cartoon fiascle. In editorial pages, the founders of religions rarely get lampooned, however, the founders of political movements, politicians in general do get lampooned. Mohammed was lampooned, not for being the founder of a religion, but for being a politician. So they are saying their politicians are above critique and lampooning becausee they are clerics and religious and such. That’s playing both sides of the street to constrain political discourse.
The larger context here is what bothers me the most. I see right wing extremism growing rapidly everywhere. I am begining to see the Neocon movement as a planned movment with big, big, big money behind it. And that money has invested heavily in infiltrating religious institutions and orthodoxies with right wing politicals. I think this has been going on a long time, since 1964. Ratzinger as the pope’s right hand man got american bishops to speak out for Bush and against Kerry. Ratzinger is now Pope. I think Ratzinger is a Neocon. I think the Neocons want a show down with Islamic society, I think that show down will be the means by which they turn the entire western world into a banana republic style social arrangment. I think that Bin Laden and the Neocons are cooperating to amplify extremism on both sides – this is predictable in Game Theory. It also occurs in Isreali Palesting struggle. Extemist on both sides cooperate to marginalize moderates – as when an Israeli jew shoots Rabin.
these guys are just getting started.
I read the text of the popes’ speach.
He’s quite clever and the description is very academic.
There’s a difference between religions. If God were a flower, it could be said that Islam attempt to look at the flower from its side, outside of it, seeing a well defined easy to explain shape, Christianity attempts to look at the flower from above and into the flower, where it sees enormous complexity – trinity, reason, faith, paradox, ‘logos’, etc…
Like the blind men describing and elephant, they could be describing the same thing, yet describing it entirely differently.
The difference between the two religions is that Christianity is fused with Greek logic, and Islam isn’t. The pope seems to be logic is an inherent part of God.
We are all just finite minds trying to explain the infinite. No one is completely right, and no one is completely wrong.
We ought to be able to just live with that. We have no joice.
What all religious fail to see, I think, is that if God is infinite, and all powerful and all knowing, it should be impossible to exist and not have first hand knowledge of God – that is unless he purposely conceals himself from us.
Thats the rub. Considering that its very hard for an infinite creature to conceal himself. We don’t have first hand knowledge of God, because he doesn’t want us to. Instead of trying to defy this condition, maybe we ought to embrace it and pounder what that concealment means to what God wants out of creation. It’s his creation after all. It must serve some point of his being.