bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
TARIQ RAMADAN IN GLOBE AND MAIL ON POPE'S RECENTS STATEMENTS
Now for the real debate ...
The papal message is troubling, says TARIQ RAMADAN, but Muslims must show they share core values
TARIQ RAMADAN
From Thursday's Globe and Mail (Sept 21, 2006)
A few sentences by the Pope were sufficient to touch off a firestorm. Throughout the Muslim world, religious leaders, politicians and intellectuals joined their voices to masses angered by a perceived "insult" to their faith. Most did not read the speech; others relied on a summary according to which the Pope had linked Islam and violence. But all railed against what they saw as an "intolerable offence."
Whatever the judgments of these scholars and intellectuals, one would have hoped they adopt a more reasoned approach, for two reasons. First, the unquestionable love and reverence Muslims have for the Prophet Mohammed notwithstanding, we are well aware how certain groups or governments manipulate crises of this kind as a safety valve for both their restive populations and their own political agendas. When people are deprived of their basic rights and their freedom of _expression_, it costs nothing to allow them to vent their anger over Danish cartoons or the words of the pontiff.
Second, what we are witnessing is mass protest characterized by an uncontrollable outpouring of emotion that, in the process, ends up providing living proof that Muslims cannot engage in reasonable debate, and that verbal aggression and violence are more the rule than the exception. Muslim intellectuals bear the primary responsibility of not lending credibility to this counterproductive game.
Some, arguing that the Pope had offended Muslims, demanded a personal apology. Benedict XVI offered his regrets, but the polemic has not abated. There is ample reason to be startled by an obscure 14th-century quote attributed to the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologos critical of the malevolent works of the Prophet of Islam. Indeed, the Pope's choice of examples in his attempt to take up the relationship between violence and Islam does raise questions, if not eyebrows.
Equally surprising was his reference to the Zahiri erudite Ibn Hazm (a respected figure but whose school of thought is marginal) to raise the issue of Islam and rationality. Perhaps the whole exercise was rather elliptical, lacking in clarity, but was it an insult for which formal apology should be demanded? Is it either wise or just for Muslims to take offence at the content of the quote -- simply because the Pope chose it -- while ignoring daily questions they faced for the past five years on the meaning of "jihad" and the use of force?
Benedict is a man of his times, and the questions he asks of Muslims are those of the day: questions that can and must be answered clearly, with solid arguments. To start with, we must not accept that "jihad" be translated as "holy war." Our priority should be to explain the principles of legitimate resistance and of Islamic ethics in conflict situations, not to encourage people to protest violently against the accusation that they believe in a violent religion.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect is that the real debate launched by the Pope seems to have eluded most commentators, particularly Muslim ones. In his academic address, he develops a dual thesis, accompanied by two messages. He reminds those rationalist secularists who would like to rid the Enlightenment of its references to Christianity that these references are an integral component of European identity; it will be impossible for them to engage in interfaith dialogue if they cannot accept the Christian underpinnings of their own identity (whether or not they are believers).
Then, in taking up the question of faith and reason, and in emphasizing the privileged relationship between the Greek rationalist tradition and the Christian religion, the Pope tries to set out a European identity that would be Christian by faith and Greek by philosophical reason. Islam, which apparently has no such relationship with reason, would thus be foreign to the European identity that has been built atop this heritage. A few years ago, as cardinal, he set forth his opposition to the integration of Turkey into Europe on a similar basis. Muslim Turkey never was and never will be able to claim an authentically European culture. It is another thing; it is the Other.
These are the messages that cry out for an answer, far more than talk of jihad. Benedict is a brilliant theologian who is trying to set down the principles and the framework of a debate on the past, present and future identity of Europe. This profoundly European pontiff is inviting the continent's peoples to become aware of the central inescapable Christian character of their identity that they risk losing. The message may be a legitimate one in these times of identity crises, but it is deeply troubling and potentially dangerous in its double reductionism in the historical approach, and in the definition of European identity.
This is what Muslims must respond to; they must challenge a reading of the history of European thought from which the role of Muslim rationalism is erased, in which the Arabo-Muslim contribution would be reduced to mere translation of the great works of Greece and Rome. The selective memory that so easily "forgets" the decisive contributions of "rationalist" Muslim thinkers such as al-Farabi (10th century), Avicenna (11th), Averroes (12th), al-Ghazali (12th), Ash-Shatibi (13th) and Ibn Khaldun (14th) is reconstructing a Europe that is not only a deception but practises self-deception about its own past. If they are to reappropriate their heritage, Muslims must demonstrate that they share the core values on which Europe and the West are founded.
Neither Europe nor the West can survive if we continue to try to define ourselves by excluding, and by distancing ourselves from, the Other -- from Islam, from the Muslims -- whom we fear. Perhaps what Europe needs most today is not a dialogue with other civilizations but a true dialogue with itself, with those facets of itself that it has refused to recognize, that even today prevent it from fully benefiting from the richness of its constituent religious and philosophical traditions.
Europe must learn to reconcile itself with the diversity of its past in order to master the imperative pluralism of its future. The Pope's reductionism has done nothing to help this process of reappropriation: A critical approach should not expect him to apologize, but it must simply and reasonably prove to him that, historically, scientifically and, ultimately, spiritually, he is mistaken. It would also give today's Muslims a way of reconciling themselves with the immense creativity of the European Muslim thinkers of the past, who, 10 centuries ago, were confidently accepting their European identity and who nourished and enriched with their critical reflection both Europe and the West as a whole.
Tariq Ramadan, an Islamic studies professor, is a senior research fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford.
source:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060921.wxcopope21/BNStory/specialComment/home
===
-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW
_______________________________________________ is-lam mailing list [email protected] http://milis.isnet.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/is-lam
