[Dean's World] Aziz P: apology accepted, but the damage is done

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Aziz P:
apology accepted, but the damage is done
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1158596924.shtml


   As is well-known, Pope Benedict made a [1]tremendous speech about
   secularism and human reason. He spoke of Logos and faith. It was
   really an erudite, reasoned, and intellectual piece about secularism
   that any believer in God would do well to take note of, and
   appreciate.

   However, the Pope also threw in a gratuitous swipe at Islam, which was
   mostly tangential to the main thrust of the argument and (as the
   Pope's own defenders [2]concede), could have been readily omitted
   without undermining the speech as a whole.

   The Pope has since [3]apologized, saying that the views of Emperor
   Manuel II towards Islam do not reflect his own, and that he sincerely
   regrets the offense he caused. I accept this apology unreservedly.

   I also remind fellow muslims that we take great exception to the
   moving goalpost syndrome that [4]our own condemnations of terror
   invariably [5]attract, and so we must as a matter of principle take
   the Pope at his word.

   But we should also be very realistic about the probable intent of the
   Pope's original remarks, and the true consequences.

   The riots and tragic murders that the Pope's remarks set off are
   tragic, foolish, and yet more evidence of the profound vacuum that
   exists at the center of the muslim world's discourse. But riots and
   murder in the name of insult to religion are [6]hardly limited to
   Islam. My aim is not to engage in [7]tu quoque but rather to
   illustrate that violence in the third world is worthless as a metric.
   Such violence is the product of [8]professional thugs who exploit the
   lack of civil order in their societies, and seek any pretext upon
   which to wage chaos. Their efforts are barbaric, and they are
   transient, and they are ultimately futile.

   The violence is a red herring; far deeper damage has been done.

   First, the needless propaganda gift to our enemies - the enemies of
   all civilization, Islamic, Western, whatever label you choose. Marc
   Lynch illustrates in detail why the Pope's comments amounted to a gift
   for bin Laden - he minces no words in describing the comments as
   "[9]strategically dumb." He summarizes:

     To put it another way: It is just really dumb to "fight radical
     Islam" by handing it rhetorical weapons and then doing everything
     you can to drive ordinary Muslims - the vast majority of which have
     no truck with al-Qaeda's ideology - in their direction. The point
     should be to drive al-Qaeda farther away from the Muslim
     mainstream, not to try to force them together. The sorts of
     confrontational statements that some folks seem to consider to be
     courage or moral clarity or whatever aren't.. they're just
     strategically dumb. They actively help al-Qaeda and hurt al-Qaeda's
     opponents, whatever the intent behind them.

   But the damage is far worse than just a PR gift to al-Qaeda. The
   Pope's comments also were disastrously timed with respect to the
   critical struggle for [10]women's rights in Pakistan, the face of whom
   is [11]Mukhtar Mai. True reform has been proceeding in [12]minimalist,
   incremental fashion. And now, the fate of reform hinges upon [13]the
   judgment of Pervez Musharraf.

   However, Musharraf is in a delicate balance between the wealthy elite
   and the Islamists. And now with the outrage over the Pope's needless
   highlighting of thousand-year-old insults to Islam, the pressure on
   him from the Islamists will be tremendous. Think of the opportunity
   that has been lost. Pope Benedict could have lent moral support to
   Musharraf. The bully pulpit of the Papacy, coupled with the eloquent
   appeal to Logos, would have given great power to the reformers in the
   muslim world - and the Christians who abide therein.

   Why would the Pope, noted for his mastery of language, have sought to
   open an old wound of rivalry between the faiths at such a critical
   time? Victory in the war on Terror requires that we give the
   reformists succor, not undermine them. One possible answer is that the
   Pope's speech was aimed at multiple targets, Catholicism's "[14]chief
   competitors for souls" - Islam, Protestants, and secularists alike. I
   think however that a better answer lies in this [15]rather fair-minded
   article in the Telegraph ([16]via Bill Cork), that goes into some
   detail about Benedict's perceptions of Islam:

     no pope in history has made a deeper study of Islam. Having
     explored every verse of the Koran, and engaged in long debates with
     Muslim scholars, he rejects the simplistic notion held by
     fundamentalist Christians, and by the Roman Catholic Church until
     the middle of the 20th century, that Islam is evil. Yet he is
     convinced that some of its doctrines are morally indefensible.

     In Benedict's view, a profound ambiguity about violence lies at the
     heart of Islam, arising from the Prophet's belief that faith can be
     spread by the sword. Mohammed, after all, was a general whose
     troops beheaded hundreds of enemy captives.

     Asked recently whether he considered Islam to be a religion of
     peace, the Pope replied: "Islam contains elements that are in
     favour of peace, just as it contains other elements." Christianity,
     by contrast, he sees as a religion of pure peace which is why he
     adopts a near-pacifist approach to conflict in the Middle East.

   (with regards to that last sentence, [17]Razib points out that
   Benedict's view of Christianity benefits from the unique and different
   geopolitical landscapes into which Christianity and Islam expanded
   into. Razib [18]summarizes, "In short, the fact that Islam has bloody
   borders is a natural consequence of its expansion into cultures which
   need no civilizing and have religious ideologies which are naturally
   resistant to marginalization and offer compelling narratives to
   elites.")

   The article continues, drawing an important difference between
   Benedict and his predecessor:

     John Paul II hoped that prayer could bring Christians and Muslims
     closer together, and famously prayed alongside Islamic leaders at
     Assisi in 1986. He also reassured Muslims that "we believe in the
     same God".

     Benedict would emphasise that the Islamic understanding of God is
     radically different from that of Christians.

   In a sense, JPII saw muslims as brothers in Abrahamic faith, whereas
   Benedict sees them as truly Alien. Note that the default understanding
   of Christianity for a muslim is that we are indeed heirs to the same
   tradition. In that sense, John Paul's passing and Benedict's ascension
   represented an easily-foreseeable souring of Christian-muslim
   relations.

   The Telegraph article continues,

     "The Koran is a total religious law," he wrote in 1996, "which
     regulates the whole of political and social life." Therefore, a
     devout Muslim living in the West must aspire to live under sharia
     law. A multi-faith society "is not consistent with Islam's inner
     nature".

     In other words, the Pope subscribes to a version of the "clash of
     civilisations" theory, which sees a fundamental incompatibility
     between Western and Islamic cultures. In his opinion, the primary
     aim of Christian-Muslim discussion is to avoid conflict.

   (emphasis mine). That the Pope subscribes to the "clash" thesis - and
   rejects the idea that both Islam and Christianity have anything in
   common or have any common cause (against secularism, for example), is
   hardly surprising. The former Cardinal Ratzenberger was known for his
   hardline stances. He is a religious partisan first and a spiritual
   leader second; the previous Pope (partly due to his role in
   articulating the universality of Enlightenment values against
   Communism during the Cold War) was the exact opposite.

   But then why provoke that clash?

     How could a man who is so notoriously careful with words have
     committed what, in the eyes of liberal society, is a diplomatic
     blunder? The answer may be that underlying Benedict's nuanced world
     view is a deep-seated fear of Islam, which crops up in the daily
     conversation of Italian Catholics and stretches as far north as his
     Bavarian homeland.

     He does not believe that the Koran condones terrorism; he bears no
     animosity towards peace-loving Muslims; but he is worried that the
     aggressive ethos of authentic Islam may provoke a crisis in Western
     society. And if the price of making that point is a "diplomatic
     blunder", then so be it.

   And here I think we have the true answer. Fear of Islam - literally,
   "Islam phobia". Rather than a race for souls, he fears that Islam will
   destroy all of them. The Pope sounded an alarm against secularism in
   the short run, but Islam is the threat on the horizon. Perhaps his
   words were even deliberately intended to provoke, to better prove the
   point.

   What is truly tragic about Benedict's world view is that the fear he
   holds towards Islam could be largely mitigated if he followed the
   footsteps of John Paul II, and helped use his influence to bring
   Enlightenment values to the Islamic world. Helping Musharraf rather
   than hindering him would have been a truly momentous start. It is the
   liberalization of the muslim world, a liberalization that was not even
   fully completed in the West [19]until August 26, 1920. [20]It is not
   too late for women's rights in Pakistan. We must stop talking about
   the Pope and start talking about [21]this instead. There is only so
   much media oxygen and the Pope affair has consumed almost all of it
   until now. Muslim bloggers are relatively powerless in this regard,
   however - what is needed is the alliance of non muslims to bring
   pressure upon the mass media, to shine a spotlight on Pakistan and to
   speak the language of human rights and tolerance rather than
   demonization and fear. Muslims and Christians together must [22]join
   forces and pressure Musharraf for true reform of the hudood laws.

References

   1. http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=83303&eng=y
   2. http://www.redstate.com/blogs/trevino/2006/sep/17/the_benedictine_rule
   3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5351988.stm
   4. http://www.cair-net.org/downloads/fatwa-english.txt
   5. http:///
   6. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/118/32.0.html
   7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
   8. http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1158508460.shtml
   9. http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2006/09/pope_happy_birt.html
  10. http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2006/09/09/what-is-happening-to-womens-protection-bill/
  11. http://cityofbrass.blogspot.com/2005/06/mukhtar-mais-jihad.html
  12. http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2006/09/12/minimalist-victory-in-pak-hudood-bill/
  13. http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2006/09/16/urgent-time-to-pressure-musharraf/
  14. http://www.aqoul.com/archives/2006/09/potpourri_bened_1.php#more
  15. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/16/wpope116.xml
  16. http://billcork.blogspot.com/archives/2006_09_10_billcork_archive.html#115836532595580353
  17. http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2006/09/spread_by_the_sword.php
  18. http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/09/gods-of-sword.php
  19. http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawstime.html
  20. http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2006/09/16/urgent-time-to-pressure-musharraf/
  21. http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2006/09/16/urgent-time-to-pressure-musharraf/
  22. http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2006/09/16/urgent-time-to-pressure-musharraf/