Pope launches scathing attack on Islam
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Regensburg (Germany), Sept 13: Pope Benedict XVI hit out at Islam and its concept of holy war during one of the last public appearances of his six-day visit to his Bavarian homeland.

The thinly-veiled attack on extremist Islam's justification for terrorism came in a complex theological lecture to staff and students at the University of Regensburg, where the former Joseph Ratzinger taught theology in the 1970s.

Using the words, "Jihad" and "holy war" in his lecture, the Pope quoted criticisms of the Prophet Mohammed by a 14th century Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II.

"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," Benedict quoted him as saying in a contemporary debate with a learned Persian.

"The Emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable," said Benedict, during his 32-minute lecture yesterday on the relationship between faith and reason.

"Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul," he added.

Reiterating his concerns about a modern world "deaf" to God, he warned that other religious cultures saw the west's exclusion of God "as an attack on their most profound convictions".

"A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures," he said.

Bureau Report

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/5346480.stm

Pope's speech stirs Muslim anger

Muslim religious leaders have accused Pope Benedict XVI of quoting anti-Islamic remarks during a speech at a German university this week.

Questioning the concept of holy war, he quoted a 14th-Century Christian emperor who said Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things.

A senior Pakistani Islamic scholar, Javed Ahmed Gamdi, said jihad was not about spreading Islam with the sword.

Turkey's top religious official asked for an apology for the "hostile" words.

In Indian-administered Kashmir, police seized copies of newspapers which reported the Pope's comments to prevent any tension.

A Vatican spokesman, Father Frederico Lombardi, said he did not believe the Pope's comments were meant as a harsh criticism of Islam.

'Abhorrent'

In his speech at Regensburg University, the German-born pontiff explored the historical and philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity and the relationship between violence and faith.

Stressing that they were not his own words, he quoted Emperor Manual II Paleologos of Byzantine, the Orthodox Christian empire which had its capital in what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul.

The emperors words were, he said: "Show me just what Muhammad 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."

Benedict said "I quote" twice to stress the words were not his and added that violence was "incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

The Pope is due to visit Turkey in November and the Turkish response was swift and strong, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford reports from Istanbul.

Religious leader Ali Badda Kolu said the Pope's comments represented what he called an "abhorrent, hostile and prejudiced point of view".

Whilst Muslims might express their criticism of Islam and of Christianity, he argued, they would never defame the Holy Bible or Jesus Christ.

He said he hoped the Pope's speech did not reflect "hatred in his heart" against Islam.

Many Turks see Benedict as a Turkophobe and commentators call his words just before the holy month of Ramadan "ill-timed and ill-conceived", our correspondent adds.

Just what we need to stir the fear in the Islamic world of a new "Crusade"

The Pope out-Bushed Bush

DID Muhammad call for spreading the faith by the sword?

Probably not.

But they did.

Did Jesus call for the Crusades?

Probably not.

But they did.

I wouldn't want to hazzard any assertion about what Muhammad personally called for or didn't call for without researching the topic. The spread of Christianity and Islam are both closely associated with the spread of empires, with conquest and colonization etc. But it's was a long and very complex process. Christianity certainly allied itself with "the sword" when it was adopted by Emperor Constantine and become the official fighting faith of the Roman Empire.

Regarding the creation of an Arab Imperium and the diffusion of Islam, here are some quotations from "A History of Islamic Societies" by Ira M. Lapidus (Cambridge University Press). An excellent book I just fininished, but haven't fully digested and absorbed. (Sorry for the typographical errors).

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THE ARAB CONQUESTS AND THE SOCIO ECONOMIC BASES OF EMPIRE

P.37 The Arab-Muslim community did not long remain confined to the peninsula but within decades conquered much of the Middle East. Thereby it created the arena for the construction of a new form of Islamic civilization — not only in the peripheral region of Arabia but in the core areas of already developed Middle Eastern civilization. The conquests began the long historical process that culminated in the absorption of both the Sasanian empire and the eastern regions of the Byzantine empire into an Islamic empire, and the eventual conversion of the majority of Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian peoples to Islam. In the first instance the conquest led to the formation of a new regime, to the migration and settlement of large numbers of Arabians in the cities and towns of the Middle East, and to extensive urbanization and economic development. Arab settlement also promoted social change and the progressive, but partial, integration of Arab and non-Arab populations into new cosmopolitan communities. Urbanization, economic change, and the formation of new communities in turn made available resources for the organization of a new and powerful empire and the new elites of city and empire gave birth to new forms of Islamic religious and imperial culture. Islamic civilization, then, was the cultural expression of the elites thrown up by the forces of economic and social change generated by the Arab conquests.

CONQUEST AND EMPIRE
The Arab conquests are popularly understood to have been motivated by a lust for booty or by a religious passion to subdue and convert the world to Islam. Whatever the motives involved, they were in part the outcome of deliberate state policy and in part accidental. Upon Muhammad’s death in 632 the whole of his life work was threatened. In the absence of an agreement in regard to a successor, the Muslim community, a conglomeration of diverse elements, threatened to break up. The Khazraj of Medina decided to elect their own chief. Other Muslims, especially exiled Meccans, weaker Medinan clans, and many individuals who had abandoned their clans to join Muhammad, saw that this would lead to the resumption of feuding. They tried to head off the Khazraj, and in the course of an all-night debate the idea of a succession was born, and Abu Bakr, one of Muhammad’s closest associates and his father-in- law, was elected to be Caliph. He was successor to the Prophet, but not himself a Prophet. He was rather to be a shaykh or chief, who led the collectivity, arbitrated disputes, and followed the precedents set by Muhammad. Selected by a minority with no special competence, Abu Bakr had his nomination ratified the following day by the community as a whole. In the mosque Abu Bakr said simply that he would obey the sunna (precedent) of the Prophet and that people should obey him as long as he obeyed it.

Having preserved its existence, the Muslim community asserted its authority in the rest of Arabia. At Muhammad’s death many of the Arabian tribes that had been forced into his confederation sought to regain their independence; some of them put forth prophets and religions of their own. The claim of Islam to be the Arabs’ only true religion was in jeopardy. Abu Bakr thus refused any concessions to the demand for relief from taxes, waged war on recalcitrant tribes, forced them into subjection, and even expanded the sphere of Muslim power beyond what it had been in Muhammad’s time. At the battle of al-Aqraba (633) the Muslims defeated a rival tribal confederation and extended their power over eastern Arabia.

The immediate outcome of the Muslim victories was turmoil in Arabia. Medina’s victories led allied tribes to attack the non-aligned to compensate for their own losses. The pressure drove tribes as far as Hadhramaut and Yemen in the south, Bahrain and Oman in the east, and then across the imperial frontiers. The Bakr tribe, which had defeated a Persian detachment in 6o6, joined forces with the Muslims and led them on a raid in southern Iraq to Ubulla and al-Hira, the former Lakhm capital. A similar spilling over of tribal raiding occurred on the Syrian frontiers. Abu Bakr encouraged these movements, for they no doubt corresponded to Muhammad’s intentions 20d helped recruit bedouins for campaigns in the north.

At first the small tribal groups were searching for booty but Arab raids forced the Byzantines to send a major expedition into southern Palestine. The raiding parties had to concentrate their forces east of Gaza, and there, under the leadership of Khalid ibn al-Walid, sent by Abu Bakr from Iraq to take the generalship of the Arab clans, they defeated a Byzantine army at the battle of Ajnadayn (634). This was the first battle in which the Arabs acted as an army rather than as separate raiding parties. With this victory their ambitions became boundless; they were no longer raiders on the soil of Syria seeking booty, but contenders for control of the settled empires. What began as large- scale intertribal skirmishing to consolidate a political confederation in Arabia ended as a full-scale war against the two empires.

In the wake of the battle of Ajnadayn, the Arabs moved against the Byzantine province of Syria. They took Damascus in 636. Baalbek, Horns and Hama soon surrendered. The rest of the province, however, continued to resist. Only in 638 was Jerusalem taken. Caesarea fell in 640. Finally, in 645, the Arabs took the northern Syrian and Mesopotamian towns of Harran, Edessa, and Nasibin. The conquest of Syria took so long because victories over Byzantine armies did not necessarily bring about the surrender of fortified towns, which had to be reduced one by one.
The next Byzantine province to fall to the Arabs was Egypt. Egypt’s attractions were her position as the granary of Constantinople, her proximity to the Hijaz, important naval yards, and a strategic location for further conquests in Africa. The Arab general, CAmr b. al_CAs, on his own initiative, began the conquest of the province in 641. Within the year he had taken Heliopolis and Babylon, and the whole of the country, except Alexandria, which capitulated in 643, was in his hands. Because Egypt was politically centralized and scarcely urbanized, the conquest was virtually instantaneous. The next Arab objective was North Africa. Tripoli was taken in 643, but the subjugation of all of North Africa took another 75 years. Instead of sudden, dramatic victories, painfully prolonged wars were waged to establish Arab Suzerainty. Within a decade the Arabs had captured Syria and Egypt, but the Byzantine empire retained its richest and most populous provinces, Anatolia and the Balkans, and would engage in almost continuous border warfare on land and On Sea, always threatening to retake territories that had for 6oo years been part of the Roman and for 300 years part of the Christian world. Their victories Over Byzantium left the Arabs with a contested and dangerous frontier and a Permanent barrier to their expansion.

The Sasanian empire, by contrast, was utterly destroyed. The Arabs defeated the Persians at the battle of Qadisiya (637), seized the capital of the empire, Cteslphon and forced the last emperor, Yazdagird, to flee to the protection of Turkish princes in Inner Asia. All Iraq fell into Arab hands. With the collapse of the empire, the Arabs were faced in Iran with a number of small and weak but inaccessible principalities, protected by mountains and deserts. The problem in conquering Iran was not a strong resisting state, but the large number of remote areas that had to be invaded, absorbed, and occupied. It took decades to subdue all the quasiindependent principalities that had comprised the Sasanian empire. From the garrison base of Kufa the Arabs moved north, occupying Mosul in 641. Nihawand, Hamadhan, Rayy, Isfahan, and all the main cities of western Iran fell by 644. Aaarbayjan, to the west of the Caspian Sea, was captured about the same time. Other forces operating from Basra captured Ahwaz (Khuzistan) in 640, but it took until 649 to complete the conquest of Fars. Only then did the conquest of more outlying regions, such as Armenia and Khurasan, begin. Khurasan was conquered in 654.

This first wave of conquests was followed several decades later by new campaigns on a world scale. To the west, North Africa was conquered between 643 and ri’; Spain was invaded and absorbed by the Arabs between 711 and 759. In the north, the Arabs attacked Anatolia and launched three great but failed expeditions in 66o, 668, and 717 to capture Constantinople. They fought against the Khazars in the Caucasus. The capitals of Transoxania, Bukhara, and Samarqand fell in 712 and 713. The Arabs conquered for the first time in history the whole of the Middle East, and incorporated North Africa, Spain, and Transoxanja into their empire as well. Thus they established the geographical arena for the eventual diffusion of a common culture and a common sociopolitical identity in the name of Islam.

The reasons for the relatively rapid success of the Arab-Muslim conquests are not hard to find. The Byzantine and Sasanian empires were both militarily exhausted by several decades of warfare prior to their collapse in the face of the Arab-Muslim invasions. Their Christian populations were strongly disaffected from imperial rule and withheld support. The Copts in Egypt, the Monophysites in Syria, and the Nestorians in Iraq all had long histories of troubled relations with their Byzantine and Sasanian overlords. Their disaffection was important in the cases where Christian-Arab border tribes and military auxiliaries joined the conquerors and where fortified cities capitulated. The Conquests, then, were due to military triumphs over militarily weakened Powers, and were consolidated in the first decades of Arab rule because local Populations were content to accept the new regime.

The conquests were further secured by a large migration of Arabian peoples into the empire regions. With the defeat of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, a frontier between Populations broke down, leading to a movement of peoples from Arabia into the lands of the Middle East. These migrations were the culmination of a centuries—long infiltration of peoples from Arabia into the settled lands. When they drifted in slowly, bedouins were either assimilated piesemeal or formed border kingdoms, such as the Nabatean, the Ghassaaid, and the Lakhmid. The scale and speed of the seventh-century migrations, however, made the piecemeal assimilation of masses of migrants impossible.

Responsibility for controlling the Arabian migrants, and for governing and exploiting the conquered sedentary peoples, fell to the new Caliphs and the aristocracy of Meccan and Medinan merchants and soldiers who were the mainstay of the Muslim regime. From the outset, the chiefs of the Islamic community in Medina sought to channel the bedouin migrations for both their own and the common advantage. Medinans decided on the two basic principles of the post—conquest government: that the bedouins would be prevented from damaging the agricultural society and that the new elite would cooperate with the chiefs and notables of the conquered population. The necessary arrangements between conqueror and conquered were implemented in the reign of the second Caliph, 'Umar (634—44).

The first principle of 'Umar’s settlement entailed the transformation of the Arab conquerors into an elite military caste who carried on further conquests and garrisoned the subdued areas. They were not to take up any of the labors or professions of the subject population, either as landowners or as peasants. To prevent the bedouins from raiding indiscriminately, forestall the destruction of the productive agricultural lands, and to segregate the Arabs from the conquered peoples, the bedouins were settled in garrison cities (sing. misr, pl. amsar). The three most important were new cities founded in Iraq and Egypt. Basra, founded at the head of the Persian Gulf, was strategically located for easy communication with Medina and for Arab expeditions into southern Iran. Kufa, founded on the Euphrates River to the north of the marshes near alHira, became the administrative capital of northern Iraq, Mesopotamia, and northern and eastern Iran. Fustat, the new capital of Egypt, was located just below the delta of the Nile, and served as the base for Arab expansion into North Africa until Qayrawan (Tunisia) was founded in 670. In other provinces the Arabs did not usually found new cities, but settled in towns, suburbs, and villages on the outskirts of existing towns. Important Arab bases in Iran were Hamadhan, Isfahan, and Rayy. A new eastern garrison was established at Marw in 670.

The amsar served not only to house the bedouin migrants and organize the armies, but to distribute the spoils of victory. As conquerors, the Arabs were entitled to a stipend paid out of the taxes collected from peasants and the tribute paid by townspeoples, ncip1enoArsoldiersorl to seize landed property as their own. Conquered property (/y) was considered the permanent Possession of the community; the revenues, but not the land, could be distributed to the conquerors These arrangements both protected the cultivated areas from pillaging and distributed the spoils of victory more equitably, In the formation of the great garrisons, Islam was a crucial factor, not because it motivated people to conquer, but because the faith made strangers willing to cooperate in a common cause. Islam facilitated acceptance of the Caliphate and justified its authority.

QUOTE

The second principle of Umar’s settlement was that the conquered populations should be as little disturbed as possible. This meant that the Arab- Muslims did not, contrary to reputation, attempt to convert people to Islam. Muhammad had set the precedent of permitting Jews and Christians in Arabia to keep their religions, if they paid tribute; the Caliphate extended the same privilege to Middle Eastern Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians whom they considered “Peoples of the Book,” the adherents of earlier written revelations. At the time of the conquest, Islam was meant to be a religion of the Arabs, a mark of caste unity and superiority. The Arabs had little missionary zeal. When conversions did occur, they were an embarrassment because they created status problems and led to claims for financial privileges.

Just as the Arabs had no interest in changing the religious situation, they had no desire to disturb the social and administrative order, The Caliphate sent governors to oversee the collection of tributes and taxes, supervise the distribution of tax revenues as salary to the troops, and lead the Arabs in war and in prayer, but otherwise, local situations were left in local hands. The old elites and the administrative machinery of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires were incorporated into the new regime. Iranian, Aramean Coptic, and Greek scribes and accountants worked for their new masters as they had for the old. The old landowners, chiefs, and headmen kept their authority in the villages and assisted in collecting taxes. The whole of the former social and religious order Was left intact.

In practice, the relationship established between the Arabs and local elites varied from region to region, depending on the circumstances of the Arab Conquests and on the available social and administrative machinery. Many provinces gained complete autonomy. Places that had stubbornly resisted Arab incursions forced the invaders to concede favorable terms in return for local Compliance Hosts of formal treaties were made by the Arabs with their Subjects the notables of towns or the chiefs and princes of small provinces, promising to leave the old elites in power, allow them autonomy in local administration, and respect their property and their religion, in return for the payment of a tribute, usually a fixed sum, which the notables could continue to collect from their subjects. In these cases, the Arabs simply collected taxes from sub-rulers who were their vassals. In most of Khurasan, in the citied areas of upper Mesopotamia and Syria, and elsewhere, the Arabs were remote suzerains.

However, the arrangements made in the wake of the conquests were not permanent. As the Arabs consolidated their power, they sought to increase their control over local affairs. Arab administration varied from province to province. In Mesopotamia and Syria, uniform administration superseded special treaties as the Arabs refused to renegotiate tributes and insisted on payment of taxes in direct proportion to the populations and resources of the areas. In this region Arab government separated town and rural administration, and gave the coup de grace to the ancient city-states. Since classical antiquity the Mediterranean region had been divided into autonomous, self-governing city- states. The Roman empire evolved a form of administration in which the cities remained autonomous in local matters while Rome monopolized military power. Though the municipalities eventually became cogs in the machine of the Roman bureaucracy, the city-state with its surrounding rural area continued to be a basic element in Roman administration. Rome and Byzantium had begun the transformation of free city-states into units of imperial administration; now the Arabs completed the work of destroying the city-state as a political form and placed Syria and Mesopotamia under a regular territorial bureaucracy.

In Iraq and Egypt, which were administered by centralized bureaucracies, the Arabs simply set the bureaucratic machinery of the old regimes to work for the new. In Iraq the Caliph Umar confiscated the land that once had belonged to the Sasanian crown, along with the estates of notables who fled with the defeated Sasanian emperor, and made them part of the Caliphal domains. In Egypt the Arabs simplified the administrative system by abolishing the fiscally independent estates (autopragia) and municipalities as separate units of administration. In Khurasan and other parts of Iran, however, only the loosest suzerainty and tributes were imposed, and virtually complete autonomy was conceded to local peoples.

In each province the Arabs adopted the system of taxes already in use. In Iraq they adopted the Sasanian system of collecting both a land tax (kharaj) and a poll tax (/izjia). The land was measured and a tax was fixed for every jarib or 2,400 square meters. The actual rate of taxation per jarib varied with the quality of land, the crop, the expected productivity, and the estimated valueof the produce. The rates varied also with distance from market, availability of water, type of irrigation, transportation, and so on. In addition everyone was expected to pay a poii tax in gold coins. In Syria and Mesopotamia, land taxes were levied on the basis of the iugum, or the amount of land that could be worked by one man and a team of animals in a day. A special poil tax was levied on urban, non-farming populations. In Egypt too there were both land and poll taxes but the poil tax was assessed on the whole village population and then divided up internally by the villagers. For provinces such as Khurasan, where there was no centralized administration, and taxation and tribute payments were left in the hands of local notables, we have no conclusive information about the nature of the tax system.

Everywhere the economic repercussions of taxation were considerable. Taxes on peasants often reached 50 percent of the value of their produce, and at such levels the incidence of taxation determined whether life for the mass of the people would be tolerable. Taxation affected the attention given to the soil and the level of investment to maintain productivity. It influenced the choice of crops. It determined whether or not the peasants would stay in the villages and work the land, or flee, leaving their homes and lands to decay. Furthermore, taxation defined social structure. Taxes were duties levied on some classes of the population for the support of others. Peasants, workers, and merchants paid taxes. Landowners, administrators, clergymen, soldiers, and emperors collected them. To pay taxes was not only an economic burden — it was a sign of social inferiority.

The Arab conquests thus followed a pattern familiar from bedouin or nomadic conquests of settled regions. The conquering peoples were the dominant military elite, and the settled societies were exploited to support them. The governing arrangements were a compromise between the elites of the conquering peoples and those of the conquered or settled peoples, in which the interests of the former in military power and adequate revenues were assured in exchange for permitting the latter to retain their local political, religious, and financial autonomy. Both groups, of course, leaned on the taxpaying peasantry.

(Continued, from "A History of Islamic Societies", Ira M. Lapidus)

p.51
Social change took cultural expression through conversions to Islam and acceptance of Arabic or Persian as shared languages. Conversion, however, was a very slow process. Though the original assumption of Muslim and Western writers was that the Middle East was quickly and massively converted to Islam, nowhere in the Arab sources is there explicit information about the conversion of large numbers of people, and certainly not of whole villages, towns, and regions. The available evidence points, rather, to a slow and uneven process of social and religious adjustment.

The earliest converts to Islam were those Christian-Bedouin tribes living on the margin of the fertile crescent who were swept up in the great migrations. Later in the first century of Arab rule other Mesopotamian Arab tribes also accepted Islam, but many such tribes remained Christian. Once the Arab conquests were secure, elites of the former Sasanian empire — soldiers, officials, and landowners made common cause with the conquerors and accepted Islam. Insofar as it was Arab policy to reestablish the old administration, officials and landowners accepted the new religion. Conversions implied the ratification of old privileges and paved the way for entry into the dominant elite. In these cases, conversions seemed to involve mobile individuals and not classes or whole communities. Converts were made among client soldiers and scribes serving the Arab elite, and among other strata of the population attracted to the Arab garrisons.

From the very beginning of the Islamic era, the Arab-Muslim elite assumed that they would form a dual society in which the conquerors would constitute an aristocracy and the conquered peoples a subject population, the former Muslim, the latter not. The early Muslim regime was not only tolerant of the non-Muslim populations but actually helped reorganize Christian churches. The Nestorjan church in Iraq resumed its important role in the educational, Judicial, and even political administration of the Christian population. In Fgypt, the Muslim authorities took a paternalistic attitude toward the Coptic church. Christian scribes served in the administration of both Iraq and Egypt.

For the sake of political inclusiveness and effective administration, the empire collaborated with non-Muslim elites, permitted them partial access to power, and protected them against disruptive social and economic changes.

Only after a century was this attitude reversed. By then widespread Arab assimilation into the general population had led many Arabs to accept the equality of Arabs and non-Arabs, and to value Muslim as well as Arab jdentifications. Thus Umar 11(717 zo) changed the standing policy of the Caliphate and sought to put the empire on a Muslim, rather than a strictly Arab, basis. He accepted the fundamental equality of all Muslims, Arab and non-Arab, and promulgated new laws giving fiscal equality to Muslims regardless of origin. The wars in Transoxania reinforced this reversal of attitude. Protracted struggles against local princes and against Turkish rivals for control of the region prompted the Caliphate to offer fiscal benefits to converts. Though this policy was eventually abandoned as politically unfeasible, the sporadic attempts at encouraging conversion to Islam marked a turning point in the Arab conception of the relation of the Arabs to conquered peoples. In general, by the middle of the eighth century, there was a steady progress of convçrsions in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Khurasan, and Transoxania. Significant numbers of converts were to be found in and around the Muslim garrison centers. However, outside the garrison towns the mass of Middle Eastern people remained non-Muslims.

Along with conversion to Islam common languages emerged in the new communities. In general, Arabic became the language of written communication in administration, literature, and religion. Arabic also became the predominant spoken dialect in the western parts of the Middle East — Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iraq — where languages close to Arabic, such as Aramaic, were already spoken. The spread of Arabic was faster than the diffusion of Islam, but this is not to say that the process was rapid or complete. For example, Coptic was still spoken in Fustat in the eighth century. In Syria and Iraq there continued to be Aramaic-speaking populations.

In Iran the situation varied. In western Iran Arab settlers were absorbed into the local populations and became bilingual. In Khurasan, where the Arabs were assimilated to Persian manners, mores and dress, they used local Persian dialects. Not only did Arabs learn Persian, but the Arab-Muslim conquest became the vehicle for the introduction of Persian as the lingua franca of the peoples east of the Oxus. In Transoxania, Persian, the spoken language of Arabs in eastern Iran, replaced Soghdian as the common language for Arabs, Persians, and Soghdians.

Thus within a century of the Arab-Muslim conquests, the basic principles on which the empire was organized were no longer valid. The conquerors had assumed that Arabs and non-Arabs, Muslims and non-Muslims, would be segregated from each other, and that Arab Muslims would rule over conquered and “protected” peoples. In the first nomadic kingdom organized by the Caliph cUmar, Arabian peoples were to constitute a “nation in arms,” settled in garrison centers, segregated from the subject peoples, restricted to military activities, and barred from commerce and agriculture. Membership in Islam was their prerogative. Non-Arab peoples were to keep their communal ties and religions and continue to work in the productive occupations which enabled them to support the ruling elite.

Nonetheless, in the course of the first Muslim century, the Arabs were changed from a clan or tribal people into an “urban” people, mingled with non-Arab peoples, abandoned military affairs, took on civilian occupations, and lost their monopoly on Islam. Correspondingly, non-Arab peoples entered the military and government services, converted to Islam, adopted the Arabic language, and claimed a place in the government of the empire in which they were initially subjects. Economic and social change in the garrison centers, conversions, and shared languages paved the way for the formation of new communities and for the society of the future, no longer divided between Arab conqueror and conquered peoples, but united on the basis of their integration, committed to Islam, sharing an Arabic and/or Persian linguistic identity. This mutual assimilation of peoples and the emergence of Islamic Middle Eastern communities took place, however, only in a restricted number of garrison centers.
The rest of the Middle Eastern population remained outside the influence of the new societies, still bound to their more ancient heritage. Though the mass of the population remained outside these currents of change, the cosmopolitan communities set the tone of Middle Eastern politics and culture for centuries to come. These economic and social changes were the forces which made the Arab empire possible. They generated the economic and human resources which would sustain the new imperium. However, they also generated the social conflicts between Arabs and mawali, tribal and administrative chiefs, religious and political elites, peasants and landowners, which would bedevil the Muslim imperium and eventually destroy it altogether.
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p.242
CONVERSION TO ISLAM
From the seventh to the tenth century, Islam was carried by the Arab conquests to North Africa, Spain, Sicily, and the Mediterranean coasts of Europe. Arab warriors and merchants brought it to Saharn and Sudanic Africa. Other Islamic societies were born from the convelrsjon of Inner Asian Turkish peoples to Islam and their migrations, conquests, and empire building. From the tenth to the fourteenth century, Turkish petoples brought Islam westward into Anatolia, the Balkans, and southeastern Europe; eastward into Inner Asia and China, and southward into Afghanistain and the Indian subcontinent. They thus played a crucial historical role in thee diffusion of Islam and in the founding of the Saljuq, Mongol, Timurid, Snfavid, Ottoman, Uzbek, and Mughal empires. Finally, another cluster of Ishamic societies originated from the expansion of Muslim merchants in the Indian Ocean. From Arabia Islam reached India and East Africa (tenth to twelfth century); from Arabia and India it reached the Malay peninsula and the Indonesian archipelago (thirteenth to fifteenth century); from the coastal zones it spread to the interior of the islands and continents.

The expansion of Islam involved different forces. In North Africa, Anatolia, the Balkans, and India, Islam was carried by nomadic Arab or Turkish conquerors. In the Indian Ocean and West Africai it spread by peaceful contacts among merchants or through the preaching of muissionaries. In some cases the diffusion of Islam depended upon its adoptioni by local ruling families; in others, it appealed to urban classes of the popullation or tribal communities. Sometimes its appeal was couched in terms of political and economic benefits; sometimes in terms of social status; sometimes3 in terms of a sophisticated culture and religion. All of these factors were intterwoven and each case must be examined to disentangle the predominant reasons for the diffusion of Islam in any given world area.

QUOTE

The question of why people convert to Islam has always generated intense feeling. Earlier generations of European scholars believed that conversions to Islam ere made at the point of the sword and that conquered peoples were given die choice of conversion or death.

It is now apparent that conversion by force, while not unknown in Muslim countries, was, in fact, rare. Muslim conqueors ordinarily wished to dominate rather than convert, and most conversions to Islam were voluntary.

Even voluntary conversions are suspect to European observers. Were they made out of true belief, or for opportunistic political or social reasons? Did people convert to Islam out of faith or as a result of the pressure of political economic, and social circumstances?

Surely there are innumerable cases of conversion to Islam by the illumination of faith or by virtue of the perceived sanctit) of Muslim scholars and holy-men, as well as by calculation of political and economic advantage. It seems more realistic to recognize that in most eases vorldly and spiritual motives for conversion blended and cannot be differentiated. Conversion to Islam meant the acceptance of Islamic beliefs and rituals and social and political loyalties on the basis of a range of considerations that. included purely religious and purely pragmatic concerns. Moreover, conversion to Islam did not necessarily imply a complete turning from an old life to a totally new life. While it entailed the acceptance of new religious beliefs, including belief in God and the Prophet, and a sense of membership in a new religious community, the new beliefs, practices, and loyalties were not necessarily exclusive. Most converts retained a deep attachment to the cultures and communities from which they came. In the sections that follow, I will stress the historical circumstances that have induced large numbers of people to adhere to Islam rather than analyze the spiritual or material motives of individuals for becoming Muslims. This is not to diminish the centrality of belief and commitment in the subjective experience of individual converts, but to account on an historical basis for the responses of great numbers of human beings.

The first conversions to Islam occurred in the Middle East between the seventh and the thirteenth centuries. These conversions took place in two phases, the first being the conversion of animists and polytheists belonging to the tribal societies of the Arabian desert and the periphery of the fertile crescent; the second, the conversion of the monotheistic populations of the Middle Eastern agrarian, urbanized, and imperial societies. The process of Islamization among pastoral and tribal peoples has to be distinguished from the Islamization of agricultural and state-type civilizations. Similarly, the conversion of pagan peoples has to be distinguished from the conversion of Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians or Buddhists.

The conversion of Arabian populations was part of the process of transmitting the civilization of the sedentarized imperial societies to the nomadic periphery. Arabian peoples, standing on the margin of the agricultural and commercial zones of the Middle East, strongly influenced by Middle Eastern commerce and religious thought, found in Muhammad’s teaching a way to formulate a form of Middle Eastern monotheistic religion parallel to but distinct from the established Christian and Zoroastrian religions. The conversion of Arabian pagan peoples to Islam represented the response of a tribal, pastoral population to the need for a larger framework for political and economic integration, a more stable state, and a more imaginative and encompassing moral vision to cope with the problems of a tumultuous society. Conversion, then, was the process of integrating Arabians into a new cultural and political order defined in monotheistic religious terms.

The conversion of sedentary Middle Eastern peoples to Islam was a different process. In this ease Islam was substituted for Byzantine or Sasanian political identity and for Jewish, Christian or Zoroastrian religious affiliation. The transformation of identities among Middle Eastern peoples took place in two stages. In the first century of the Islamic imperium the Arab conquerors attempted to maintain themselves as an exclusive Muslim elite. They did not require the conversion, but rather the subordination of non-Muslim peoples. At the outset, they were hostile to conversions because new Muslims diluted the economic and status advantages of the Arabs. However, Muslim rule offered substantial incentives for conversion. It formed a protective umbrella over Muslim communities and conferred the prestige of the state on Muslim religious life. Political patronage allowed for the establishment of mosques, the organization of the pilgrimage, and the creation of Muslim judicial institutions. The establishment of an Arab empire made Islam attractive to elements of the former Byzantine and Sasanian aristocracies including soldiers, officials, landlords, and others. Arab garrison cities attracted non-Arab migrants who found careers in the army and administration open to converts. Merchants, artisans, workers and fugitive peasants seeking the patronage of the new elite were also tempted to accept Islam.
Despite these attractions, the mass of Middle Eastern peoples were not soon or easily converted. Only with the breakdown of the social and religious structures of non-Muslim communities in the tenth to the twelfth century did the weakening of churches, the awakening of Muslim hostility to non- Muslims, sporadic and localized persecution, and the destruction of the landed gentry of Iraq and Iran break the communal organization of non-Muslim peoples. Muslim teachers were then able to take the lead in the reconstruction of local communities on the basis of Islamic beliefs and identities. Large parts of Egypt and Iran were probably converted in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In northern Syria, however, Christian majorities survived through the twelfth century, but, compromised in the eyes of the Muslims by their sympathies With and assistance to the crusaders, were put under severe pressure. Most con verted in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but substantial Christian minorities remained. Similarly, most of the remaining Christian population of Egypt adopted Islam in the fourteenth century.

Conversions from Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism to Islam were accompanied by the formation of an urban and urbane high Islamic literary culture and popular forms of Sufi belief and worship which could be substituted for former religious cultures. To adherents of the monotheistic and communalist faiths, Islam offered the same variety of intellectual, legal, theological and mystical appeals. While Islam had a specific religious orientation toward the inscrutable and untrammeled will of Allah and the necessity for submission of spirit and actions to the will of God, its basic religious positions were fundamentally similar to those of the other monotheistic religions.

The conversion of North Africa also began with the Arab conquests, but was a different process because it involved primarily the adoption of Islam, notably in sectarian form, by the chiefs of Berber societies as the basis of tribal coalitions and state formation. Khariji states in Algeria and Morocco represented the adoption of Islam for the purposes of regulating tribal relations and long-distance trade. The process of Islamization of the masses of Christians and Jews is not known, but it may be related to the spread of nba (forts manned by warriors for the faith), trade, and Sufis. In any case it seems to have been rapid compared with conversion in the Middle East.

The diffusion of Islam to regions beyond the Middle East involved analogous processes. The spread of Islam in Inner Asia, Anatolia, the Balkans, and India was closely tied to the conversion of pastoral Turkish, rather than Arab, peoples. The conversion of Turkish Inner Asian peoples began in the tenth century. Inner Asian peoples came into contact with Muslims through caravan trade and contacts with merchants who operated on the steppes as brokers between nomadic and settled populations. Muslim missionaries 51Id Sufis also moved out to proselytize among the Turks. Political ambitl0fl prompted the Qarakhanid and Saljuq elites to take up the new religion. Latet Inner Asian regimes, including the Mongols of the Golden Horde and the Chaghatay Khanates, also adopted Islam and brought itto the northern stePPtS and eastern Turkestan. In Inner Asia Islamization was important for tile establishment of nomadic regimes over sedentary populations, for the creation of politically cohesive ethnic identities among Tatars, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and other peoples, and for the organization of long-distance trade.

The spread of Islam into Anatolia and the Balkans paralleled the historical process of the spread of Islam in the Middle East. The Saljuq and Ottoman conquests of the eleventh to the fourteenth century led to the organization of Muslim regimes that favored the consolidation of an Islamic teaching and judicial establishment. The Turkish aristocracy assumed responsibility for patronizing Sunni law schools, Islamic judicial administration, and the construction of schools and colleges, and other religious and communal facilities. It gave protection to tulama) and Sails who founded centers for teaching and social services in the conquered territories. Furthermore, Islam was carried into the region by migrant Turkish warriors under the leadership of Muslim holy-men. The migration of a substantial Turkish population uprooted Anatolian agricultural communities and replaced them with Turkish Muslim peoples. Nomadic conquests and the hostility of the Saljuq government to the Byzantine and Greek church also led in Anatolia to the progressive reduction of church lands, administrative capacities, and authority. The weakening of the church deprived the Christian population of leadership and organization. In Anatolia, as in Inner Asia, India, and Africa, jihad-minded Sufl warriors and activist missionaries helped to establish Islam among a newly conquered peasant population. The assimilation of Anatolian peoples was facilitated on the cultural as well as the social level by the familiarity of Islamic religious Concepts which were easily adapted to the religious beliefs of the Christians. In Anatolia, as in the rest of the Middle East, the conjunction of Muslim state Power, the decline of organized Christian societies, and the social and cultural relevance of Islam facilitated mass conversions to the new religion.

In the Balkans the factors favoring Islamization and conversion of local peoples were similar to those in Anatolia• the establishment of a regime which favored Islam and the migration and settlement of a substantial Turkish - Population Islamization under these pressures was especially pronounced in the towns. In the Balkans, however, the spread of Islam was limited by the vitality of the Christian churches. Coming at a later stage of Turkish conquests, at a time when Ottoman policy favored Christian nobles and churches as VehIcles of Ottoman administration, the social structure of Balkan commuflitles was maintained intact, and indeed, reinforced, Most Balkan peoples, Uttressed by the Continuity of organized Christian community life, remained loyal to their faith.

The history of Islam in India most closely resembles that of the Balkans. Islam was brought into India by a conquering Afghan and Turkish military elite which established the Delhi Sultanate in the thirteenth century. Conversions were made as a result of the political attraction of the dominant regime to both non-Muslim elites and dependent peasants and workers. Also, as in the Middle East, the construction of new cities favored the conversio0 of mobile peoples attracted to the centers of Muslim administration and trade. In most of India, however, as in the Balkans, the appeal of Islam was relatively restricted. Only in the Northwest Frontier, the Punjab, Sind, and Bengal were the populations converted en masse. In these regions the transition from hunter—gatherer and pastoral activities to settled agriculture was the occasion for a total reconstruction of society under Muslim leadership and for the development of new Islamic loyalties and identifications. Conversion to Islam on a mass scale seems to have been most likely among disorganized populations.

In general, however, the assimilative capacity of Islam in the subcontinent was limited by the relative thinness of the Muslim elite. While Muslim rule in India attracted numerous warriors, administrators and religious teachers, the Muslim conquest was not accompanied by massive migrations as in the case of the Arab conquest of the Middle East or the Turkish conquest of Anatolia. Furthermore, the social structure of conquered peoples remained intact. Hindu Rajputs, for example, maintained their authority under Muslim suzerainty; nor were Brahmanic Hinduism and the caste system challenged by Muslim rule. Indeed, Hindu philosophy and popular religions were invigorated by Muslim competition. In the face of an ordered social and religious structure, conversions to Islam were inhibited.

When conversions did occur, Sufism played a considerable part. Following the scent of battle, Sufis streamed into India from Afghanistan, Iran, and Inner Asia. Many came as warriors to establish Muslim supremacy and convert the infidels. Some tied their fortunes to the state. Others fanned out in north India establishing their influence by personal merit. Here too, the adaptability of Sufism to traditional religious cultures was important in the transition from Hindu and Buddhist identities to Islam. In India the boundary between Hindu and Muslim beliefs, ritual practices, and social loyalties was thin. As in the Middle East and the Ottoman empire, Islam was established under the auspices both of a political elite and of independent religious teachers.

The conversion of Malaya, Indonesia, and sub-Saharan Africa to Islam followed a different pattern. In these regions, Islam was not established by conquest, by the imposition of a single centralized state, or by the settlement of 0f a substantial foreign Muslim population; nor was it associated with massive social change. It was rather due to the diffusion of Muslim merchants and rnissiories who founded small communities, and soétimes induced (or forced) local elites interested in state formation, trade, and political legitimation to accept their religion. Islam spread as the result of commercial contacts, political and commercial rivalries, and by the progressive acceptance of new symbols of identity by ongoing societies.

Islam was first introduced into Indonesia at the end of the thirteenth century by merchants and Sufis from India, Arabia, and perhaps China. It appealed to the rulers of small coastal and riverain principalities who had close trading contacts with the Muslims and intense rivalries with Indonesian and Chinese traders. Acceptance of Islam by local merchant princes won them social and administrative support and an entrée into extensive trading networks. The spread of Islam in coastal regions of Malaya and Indonesia was closely related to the formation of new small states based upon trade. Portuguese and later Dutch intervention in the Indies further stimulated the acceptance of Islam. The struggle against the Portuguese and the Dutch made it desirable for the merchants of coastal Indonesia and Malaya to accept Islam as a bond of solidarity in resistance to the efforts of Christian powers to establish trading monopolies. Local competition facilitated the further spread of Islam. The struggle of the coastal principalities with the interior states of Java led eventually to the establishment of Islam as the official religion of the whole of Java. As a result Indonesian state and elite culture was shaped, not by an aristocracy coming from the Middle East, but by a local elite which preserved its political and cultural continuity, and adopted Islam as an additional expression, or reinforcement, of its earlier legitimacy. Throughout Indonesia and Malaya, Islam was also integrated into popular culture. Sufi missionaries and village teachers settled widely and made Islam part of folk culture and folk identity. In Southeast Asia, as opposed to India and the Balkans where it reached only a minority, Islam became the religion of great majorities of the population.

In most of Africa, Islam was established by processes more closely resembling those of Southeast Asia than the Middle East and India. Muslim merchants and missionary colonies, rather than conquest and empire, were central to Islamization on the continent. Arab and Berber traders and settlers in the Saharan and Sudanic regions, Arab and Persian settlers on the East African coasts, and Dyula communities in West Africa, were the nuclei of Muslim influences. In Sudanic Africa, colonies of Muslim traders became allied with local political elites and induced the rulers of the states of Ghana, Mali, Kanem, Songhay, Hausaland, and Dogomba to accept Islam. It is possible that Muslims themselves seized kingships and created small states. Islam was adopted to consolidate political power, reinforce commercial contacts, recruit skilled personnel, and mobilize spiritual and magical powers in the interests of state elites. As in North Africa, acceptance of Islam provided an additional basis for legitimation of state regimes, coalition formation among disparate peoples, organization of trading networks, and employment of skilled personnel. Under the auspices of Muslim states, a small scholarly elite of qadis, ulama, and imams was established, but no evidence for conversion of the lower classes is available. Islam was primarily the religion of the political and commercial elites.

In other parts of West Africa, the Islamic presence was established by Dyula traders, landowners, missionaries, and teachers scattered throughout the region who created an Islamic presence without necessarily generating Islamic states and without attendant Islamization of the population. These family communities seem to have fitted into a highly stratified and subdivided society, whose internal divisions made it acceptable to have unassimilated communities, but were a barrier to the further diffusion of Islam.

Whereas in West Africa, Arab merchants inspired warrior elites to convert to Islam, in East Africa, Arab traders themselves took over the leadership of small states. In Somalia and Ethiopia, Arab merchants married into local lineages and assumed leadership of tribal coalitions which then adopted an Arab and Islamic identity. In the East African city-states, Arab settlers intermarried with local peoples and became the elites of the coastal Swahili society based on a new language and cultural style which symbolized the merger of populations. Muslim communities were consolidated by the integration of peoples and the formation of new cultural idioms.

As the religion of the state and trading classes, Islam in Africa appeared in highly syncretic forms. Since African elites were not conquered and replaced, but converted and maintained in power, they brought with them a strong component of traditional, non-Islamic African practices. African Islam, like Islam in Indonesia, was adopted by native elites and blended into a native culture. The relative continuity of political elites was an important factor in the syncretism of Islam with local regional cultures at the state level.

In some cases, the formation of African Muslim states was followed by the conversion of the masses. In Somalia, Mauritania and other Saharan regions, the large numbers of Arab migrants, the close identification of pastoral peoples with Arab nomads, and the utility of holy leadership for the regulation of relatio among tribal communities may help to explain why Islam was so widely accepted. In the Funj and Darfur SultanateS, state elites adopted Islam as a result of trading contacts, and opened the way for a large influx of Sufi missionaries. Muslim holy-men, supported by state grants of land, established their authority and converted the common people to Islam. In the Sudan, the spread of Arabic language and Muslim identity, coupled with contacts with Egypt and the Middle East, helped to establish Islam among the common people.

By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, throughout West Africa, the spread of Muslim trading communities linked by lineage, trade, teaching, and Sufi affiliations had reached a critical mass which enabled Muslims to fight for power and work for larger-scale political regimes. Motivated by a tradition of hostility to rulers among both trading and pastoral peoples, African Muslim communities .tempted to seize political power and to Islamize both state regimes and the rnsses of the African population. In Sudanic, savannah and forest West Africa, the jihads were the equivalent of Islamic conquests in other parts of the world, and led indeed to the Islamization of northern Nigeria, Senegambia, and parts of the upper Guinea coast. However, even when colonial conquest put an end to Muslim jihads, Islam, without state support, continued to be attractive to uprooted peoples in much of West Africa, Tanzania, and other parts of East Africa. In the twentieth century, Islam served to express anti-colonialism and to unite uprooted peoples into new communal structures. In Africa, then, the process of conversion was tied to a double mechanism of peaceful expansion of traders, settlers, and teachers, and to militant conquest. As in other parts of the world, the two could work either separately or in tandem.

QUOTE

If there is an underlying common factor in the worldwide diffusion of Islam it seems to be its capacity to generate religious fellowship, larger-order cornmunities, and states among peoples otherwise living in highly factionalized or fragmented societies. Islam became the religion of tribal peoples and merchant groups seeking economic integration, and state elites seeking consolidated political power. In general, the spread of Islam seems to have been most effective when it gave a new social identity to peoples severed from their traditional social structures.

Throughout the old world the diffusion of Islam led to the formation of new communities and states or to the redefinition of existing communities and empires in Islamic terms. In many parts of Africa and Inner Asia the introductjon of Islam was the basis for the first conversions from animistic to monotheistic religions and for the first construction of states in hitherto stateless societies. In most places, however, the advent of Islam inspired the reconstruction of societies which already had “higher” religions and state institutions.

In all these cases, the Middle Eastern experience served as a paradigm for the formation of the new societies. The Middle Eastern Islamic societies were built around three different types of collectivities: parochial groups, religious ãssociations, and state regimes. Parochial groups were based upon family, clan, lineage, tribal, clientele, and neighborhood ties. At the level of religious associations tulama) and Sufi elites were organized around schools of law, Sufi fraternities, and shrines. State regimes were characterized by such institutions as nomadic or ethnic elite armies, slave or other marginal military forces, a combination of bureaucratic and quasi-feudal forms of administration, and a Muslim terminology for taxation. These components of the Middle Eastern societies involved a combination of Islamic and non-Islamic institutions and concepts. While religious associations and certain aspects of state regimes were specifically Islamic, state bureaucratic, administrative, and feudal-like systems of taxation were not peculiarly Islamic. Furthermore, the prevailing concepts of legitimacy were formulated in patrimonial, ethnic, historic, or cosmo’politan cultural terms as well as Muslim symbols. Similarly, the social systems and cultural expressions of parochial communities owed little to Islam. Thus our template for “Islamic societies” by definition includes non-Islamic institutions and cultures.

In the diffusion of Islamic institutions and identities, Middle Eastern precedents were sometimes transmitted as a whole system, sometimes in parts, depending upon who were the bearers of Islam and what were the conditions of its diffusion and reception in different societies. For example, conquest by nomadic peoples as opposed to contact among small groups of merchants made a significant difference in the way in which Middle Eastern Islamic influences were transmitted and received. In all instances, however, the diffusion of Islam released tremendous artistic and cultural forces as each new Islamic state and society attempted to work out its own synthesis of Middle Eastern Islamic institutions and local traditions. The history of Islamic societies illustrates the originality of Muslim regimes the world over and yet reveals them to be variations upon an underlying pattern shaped by indigenous conditions in each part of the Muslim world.

Hey, I would love to defend the Pope, but this seems to confirm that the seat of Rome is now vacant. God Bless the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch.

And thanks, Benedict, for showing your true colours before I started once again crossing myself in the Roman Catholic manner.

And, folks, PADRE PIO WAS RIGHT. It is the BISHOPS, especially the one in ROME, that you simply CANNOT TRUST.

Faith, Reason and the University
Memories and Reflections
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a moving experience for me to stand and give a lecture at this university podium once again. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. This was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas: the reality that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur’an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship of the "three Laws": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur’an. In this lecture I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threaten. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without decending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "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 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 is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably (F×< 8`(T) is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. 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.

As far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the 8`(oH". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and declares simply that he is, is already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates’ attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense perhaps less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God’s nature.

In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which ultimately led to the claim that we can only know God’s voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God’s freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God’s transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language (cf. Lateran IV). God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is logos. Consequently, Christian worship is 8@(46¬ 8"JD,\" - worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).

This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history – it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.

The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity – a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.

Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the fundamental postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system. The principle of sola scriptura, on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.

The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal’s distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue. I will not repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenization. Harnack’s central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. The fundamental goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ’s divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant’s "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature’s capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.

This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.

We shall return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology’s claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science" and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.

Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.

And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world’s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought – to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss". The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably (with logos) is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

Note: The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional

[01245-02.01] [Original text: German]

Source: Holy See Press Office

I will not say what I think. I guess you all know already anyway.

No TROU, I guess I don't.

Funny how when they are trying to contradict the quotation that Islam was to be spread by the sword, Islamists have resorted to violence i.e. the sword.

Organized religion is a plague upon humanity... it is only through the individual acts of humanity and compassion that any real social progress is made... everything else is just so much deception and lies. Organized religion is a perversion of the human spirit used in substitution of logic and reason and science to learn and understand the nature of existence.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - An elderly Italian nun who devoted her life to helping the sick in Africa was shot dead by two gunmen at a hospital Sunday in an attack possibly linked to worldwide Muslim anger toward Pope Benedict XVI.

Sister Leonella, 65, was shot in the back four times by pistol-wielding attackers as she left the Austrian-run S.O.S. hospital at lunch time after finishing nursing school for trainee medics. Her bodyguard was also slain.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, which came just hours after a leading Somali cleric condemned the pope's remarks last week on Islam and violence.

The head of security for the Islamic militia that controls much of southern Somalia, Yusuf Mohamed Siad, said one man had been arrested and the second was being hunted. He said the killing might have stemmed from the uproar over the pope but stressed he didn't know for sure.

"They could be people annoyed by the pope's speech, which angered all Muslims in the world, or they could have been having something to do with S.O.S.," he said. "We will have to clarify this through our investigation."

The Vatican called the killing a "horrible episode," and Italian President Giorgio Napolitano denounced it as a "horrendous crime."

"A woman who had dedicated her life to the service of the weakest, the most defenseless and the neediest, beyond any ethnic or religious distinction, has been hit," Napolitano said.

Sister Leonella, whose birth name was Rosa Sgorbati, had lived and worked in Kenya and Somalia for 38 years, her family said.

A doctor at the hospital, who would give his name only as Dr. Teckle, said she helped to teach and to look after children. "She was a dedicated and organized teacher," he said.

Her body was flown to Nairobi, Kenya, before being returned to Italy, he said.

Like many foreigners, Sister Leonella traveled with a bodyguard in this Horn of Africa nation, which slid into chaos after warlords overthrew Somalia's longtime dictator in 1991. A Swedish journalist, Martin Adler, was shot dead in June during a demonstration in Mogadishu.

An Islamic militia seized control of Mogadishu in recent months and has extended its control over much of southern Somalia, challenging a weak, U.N.-backed interim government that hasn't been able to exert any power outside its base in Baidoa, 150 miles from the capital.

The militia has imposed strict religious rule in the areas under its sway, and its Islamic courts are credited with bringing a semblance of order, but many in the West fear a Taliban-style regime could emerge.

Several witnesses to Sunday's shooting speculated it was tied to the furor over Benedict's discussion last week, which included quoting a 14th century text that called some of Prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman."

"I am sure the killers were angered by the pope's speech in which he attacked our prophet," said Ashe Ahmed Ali, who was among those who saw the nun shot down at the hospital's entrance.

Earlier in the day, a leading Muslim cleric in Somalia had condemned the pope for offending Muslims.

"The pope's statement at this time was not only wrong but irresponsible as well," said Sheik Nor Barud, deputy leader of the Somali Muslim Scholars Association.

In Italy, Benedict said Sunday he was "deeply sorry" that his speech last week offended Muslims, saying the words he quoted about Muhammad did not reflect his personal opinion.

Vatican officials said they hoped the pontiff's explanation would head off further violence.

"Let us hope that the words, so clear, of the pope today are enough to placate this wave (of violence) that goes beyond any reasonable sense," Cardinal Paul Poupard of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue told SKY TG 24 TV.

___
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060917/ap_on_...alia_nun_killed

Associated Press writers Salad Duhul and Mohamed Ali in Mogadishu and Mohamed Olad Hassan in Baidoa contributed to this report.

Will the NYTimes follow up with a condemnation of the senseless murder of the nun. I think not, but we shall see.


Editorial
The Pope’s Words

Published: September 16, 2006

There is more than enough religious anger in the world. So it is particularly disturbing that Pope Benedict XVI has insulted Muslims, quoting a 14th-century description of Islam as “evil and inhuman.”

In the most provocative part of a speech this week on “faith and reason,” the pontiff recounted a conversation between an “erudite” Byzantine Christian emperor and a “learned” Muslim Persian circa 1391. The pope quoted the emperor saying, “Show me just what Muhammad 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.”

Muslim leaders the world over have demanded apologies and threatened to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican, warning that the pope’s words dangerously reinforce a false and biased view of Islam. For many Muslims, holy war — jihad — is a spiritual struggle, and not a call to violence. And they denounce its perversion by extremists, who use jihad to justify murder and terrorism.

<snip>
http://tinyurl.com/pcemu

Pope 'Deeply Sorry' He Offended Muslims
By Tracy Wilkinson, Times Staff Writer
7:39 PM PDT, September 17, 2006

ROME — In his first public appearance since igniting a firestorm in the Islamic world, Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday said he was "deeply sorry" that Muslims were offended and outraged by his use of a Medieval citation critical of their faith, saying it did not "in any way express my personal thought."

The pope used his weekly Angelus blessing, at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo outside Rome, to confront the most serious controversy of his 17-month-old papacy. For a pope, it was a highly unusual gesture of regret.

By making a personal and public apology, Benedict hoped to calm the fury that exploded after he delivered a major address last week at the University of Regensburg, Germany, in which he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who regarded some of the prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman."

Major Arab television networks gave considerable coverage to the pope's Sunday message; the Al Arabiya network carried it live. Initial reaction from Islamic groups was mixed, with many saying they still wanted a fuller apology.

In Somalia, gunmen shot an Italian nun to death outside a children's hospital in the capital. It was not immediately clear whether the shooting of Leonella Sgorbati, 64, was related to the pope controversy, but Somali Islamic extremists had threatened to attack Catholics.

"We hope this remains an isolated act," Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told the Italian news agency ANSA. But he said he feared it could be "the fruit of the violence and irrationality" that has arisen from the pope's speech "without motive or justification."

The Italian Interior Ministry, meanwhile, said it had raised the level of the security alert in parts of the country in reaction to the international protests. National police Chief Gianni De Gennaro, in a statement, called on authorities to be especially vigilant of Catholic sites, noting the presence in Italy of a radical Islamic minority.

At Castel Gandolfo, security was tighter than usual. Police sharpshooters overlooked the piazza where the crowd assembled to hear the pope. Guards screened the estimated 2,000 pilgrims, passing them through metal detectors and checking purses and backpacks.

The pope emerged on the balcony of his palazzo and began to address the crowd when a huge downpour of rain drenched everyone in sight. He chuckled and apologized for the weather, adding that rain is also a sign of God's work. Then he continued with the more serious matter at hand.

"I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims," he said, adding that the quote from Emperor Manuel II Paleologus did not reflect his own opinion.

Benedict noted that on Saturday, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the No. 2 official in the Vatican, had offered a written clarification of the meaning of the pope's speech. The statement also relayed the pope's "deep regrets." But many of the pope's critics wanted to hear it from the pope himself.

"I hope that this serves to appease hearts," Benedict said, "and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect."

Regardless of how Benedict's Sunday message is accepted, damage has been done to the Roman Catholic Church and its international mission, analysts said. In the minds of many Muslims, the pope has cemented what they see as his disdain for their faith, a perception that imperils interreligious dialogue and could only further sour relations between Muslims and Christians at a time of global confrontation.

Several of the Islamic leaders who rose to condemn Benedict in the last several days have cast him as part of what they see as a vast Western conspiracy against Islam, and have put him in the same category as President Bush.

The pope's Regensburg lecture, to an audience of academics at the school where he taught theology in the 1970s, was a long and complex treatise on faith and reason. Among other elements, it said that violence could not be justified by religion, and he used the term jihad, which he defined as Islamic holy war, as an example.

The pope on Tuesday had quoted the emperor as saying: "Show me just what Muhammad 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 speech was designed to provoke a theological debate, Vatican officials said.

Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, apologized at least 10 times during his long papacy for sins committed by the Roman Catholic Church or its members — including slavery, the conquest of indigenous populations in Latin America, and the Holocaust. But none of those acts of contrition was a personal statement about the consequences of the pope's own comments.

As Benedict began Sunday's apology, some in the audience shouted and clapped, suggesting either their approval or that they thought he did not need to qualify his remarks. Many of the pope's supporters believe his words were taken out of context and agree with his more cautious approach to Islam and interfaith dialogue.

Reception across the Islamic world remained skeptical. One official of the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the largest and most influential Islamic movements in the Middle East, was quoted as saying the pope's statement was a "good step." But others were not satisfied.

"The pope's apologies were not enough because, in his aggression, he clearly knew and meant what he said," Jihan Halafawi, director of the Islamic and Political Bureau of the Muslim Brotherhood, said in Cairo. "We need a clear and direct apology to all the Muslims in this world."

Opinion in Turkey was not unanimous, but the Turkish foreign minister said the pope was welcome to proceed with a trip to the Muslim nation scheduled for late November. The visit was thrown into doubt amid the outcry over Benedict's remarks, with some of the sharpest criticism coming from senior Turkish officials.

"From our point of view, there is no reason to change the date of the pope's visit," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said in Ankara, according to the official state Anatolia news agency.

Gul said the terms used in the pope's original speech were "unfortunate," but he wrote to the pope urging him not to postpone the trip because it would serve as a valuable way to promote dialogue between cultures.

In contrast, Turkish State Minister Mehmet Aydin complained to reporters that the pope seemed to be saying he was sorry for the angry reaction but not for the remarks themselves.

There is already a measure of anti-pope sentiment in Turkey because of statements Benedict made before he became pope that opposed the country's campaign to join the European Union.

Elsewhere, hundreds of Iranians also demonstrated against the pope in cities across Iran, the Associated Press reported. In Qom, the religious capital of Iran's 60 million Shiite Muslims, hard-line cleric Ahmad Khatami said the pope and Bush were "united in order to repeat the Crusades." Tehran recalled its ambassador to the Holy See, the second country after Morocco to do so.

Palestinians torched two Christian churches in the West Bank, the second consecutive day of such attacks there. No injuries were reported.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...-home-headlines

Italian Nun Murdered in Somalia
Her murder comes after a Somali Muslim leader demanded jihad against the Pope. From the AP:

MOGADISHU, Somalia - An elderly Italian nun who devoted her life to helping the sick in Africa was shot dead by two gunmen at a hospital Sunday in an attack possibly linked to worldwide Muslim anger toward Pope Benedict XVI.

Sister Leonella, 65, was shot in the back four times by pistol-wielding attackers as she left the Austrian-run S.O.S. hospital at lunch time after finishing nursing school for trainee medics. Her bodyguard was also slain.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, which came just hours after a leading Somali cleric condemned the pope's remarks last week on Islam and violence.

The head of security for the Islamic militia that controls much of southern Somalia, Yusuf Mohamed Siad, said one man had been arrested and the second was being hunted. He said the killing might have stemmed from the uproar over the pope but stressed he didn't know for sure.

"They could be people annoyed by the pope's speech, which angered all Muslims in the world, or they could have been having something to do with S.O.S.," he said. "We will have to clarify this through our investigation."

The Vatican called the killing a "horrible episode," and Italian President Giorgio Napolitano denounced it as a "horrendous crime."

"A woman who had dedicated her life to the service of the weakest, the most defenseless and the neediest, beyond any ethnic or religious distinction, has been hit," Napolitano said.

http://wizbangblog.com/2006/09/17/italian-...-in-somalia.php

MOGADISHU, Somalia - An elderly Italian nun who devoted her life to helping the sick in Africa was shot dead by two gunmen at a hospital Sunday in an attack possibly linked to worldwide Muslim anger toward Pope Benedict XVI.


It would seem that it was religion that motivated this nun to dedicate her life with great compassion and sacrifice to humanity.

So the pope, in an effort to open a dialogue with those of Islamic faith, [he had invited Islamic scholars to this conference but they refused the invitation] quotes a medieval text, and the whole Islamic world starts burning churches and killing innocents. Who in their right mind is going to blame the pope for this barbarity? How can you call this a "scathing attack on Islam?" It would seem that this website would be a little more interested in defending democratic free speech and dialogue, and not jump down the throat of this man who was only trying to start a dialogue that might mean an end to the chaos reigning in the world right now thanks to jihad.

"Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature" (emperor) and then Benedict XVI goes into a very erudite treatise on the nature of reason and to whom we owe our understanding of reason or "logos" (Hellenists)and that this study very properly belongs in a university and that it is to the university to help us rediscover this "great logos...this breadth of reason," inviting all cultures to the table.

The real "meat" of the Pope's speech was lost on the fanatics and the media.


The Pope does not owe an apology to anyone. I'm sure though that he regrets the loss of life and destruction caused by the very thing he was attempting to unwind.

Here's to the war on thought and reason...

Anyone that has the stomach or the mind for the text of the speech can find it here.

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=46474

I say people of good heart are really motivated by reading the words of any religion or secular philosophy through the filter of their own hearts. They enoble and refine religion.

That is where lay the true divinity, in the human heart. Not in any book.

Thanks SFC, I couldn't find this text of his talk anywhere.



The Lord Jesus Christ said: "the kingdom of God is within you." To have a kingdom though, you need a King.

We have a King. His name is George.

"Thanks to your democratic laws, we will invade you; thanks to our religious laws, we will dominate you."

Muslim Cleric

He and every other religious fanatic can go straight to the theological location of eternal punishment.

It would seem that she was a divinely inspired woman with a selfless heart and a fearless spirit. I doubt any religion could have stopped her. And her murders were not doubt deeply indoctrinated in their ignorant leaders dogma.

This took place at a joint Islamic-Christian dialog conference in 2002. I need to correct something, this was not necessary a cleric, he is only referred to as an influential Muslim addressing the conference. The problem is, dialogue seems pretty meaninless given this kind of thinking.

It's not enough to tell "them" to go to hell though Trou, because like it or not, what we have witnessed this past week has been going on for several years. The Christian churches in the Mideast are disappearing day by day. The nun's story isn't an isolated on.

So we have the beginings or continuation of Religious Wars. That's nothing new. We have the the result of religion's effect on mankinds tribalistic tendancies for millenia. We have the result of greed and lust for power that has been around even longer.

Until the "meek" inherit what's left of the Earth, it's business as usual. I know a good person by their acts. Those who have allowed their religions to be hijacked by the worst of humanity, had only a few bright spots. One is the American Constitution which is currently being shredded by the Greedy, the "Holy Joe's", and the Insane. They never left us, and we never threw them overboard.

And until we have a "religion" dedicated to the verifiable truths of human existance, we will remain enslaved by "them".

I think we're talking about two different things and quite frankly, you lost me. I'm a pretty simple person, and usually can handle only one or two things at a time.

The defining term is reform and the question for me is whether or not Islam will reform itself as the Christian church did a few centuries ago. Only then will there be any progress made. Moderate Muslims have been silent - they need to assert themselves.

Sorry if I lost you. Yes reform is needed. But as long as Islam or Christanity or Judaism, or Hunduism can be used to attain Political and Financial ends that reform is unlikely.

The problem has always been greed and power seeking, and it always will be.

Religion purports to "render unto Ceasar", but never got around to "rendering unto God". Whatever one believes God is, to define Him as exclusionary blows the entire concept for me. When "Gods Collide" benifts only the Macheivalliean Mind to divide us.

So to your point. Until Islam is removed from politics it will never reform.

No problem Trou, you're a good conversationalist, I'm not necessariloy a good comprehenderer since I'm a visualizer (new definitions).

Last point - I'm not sure you can divorce Islam and politics and that's been the problem since about