13 Nopember 2006 - 04:24
Pope takes on hard questions in new chapter of dialogue with Muslims
By John Thavis, Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI's remarks on Islam in Regensburg,
Germany, opened a new chapter in the Vatican's 40-year dialogue with the Muslim
world and brought the pope's own views on Islam into clearer focus.
In the controversy that followed his speech, the pope told Muslim leaders there
should be no doubt about his commitment to the dialogue launched by the Second
Vatican Council or of his "esteem and profound respect" for Muslim believers.
At the same time, the pope is not hesitating to raise some uncomfortable
questions about the religious foundations of Islam and its cultural and
political influences today.
"It is important that (interreligious) dialogue take place with much patience,
much respect and, most of all, in total honesty," the pope wrote several years
ago.
For the pope, the honest approach to dialogue with Muslims means not simply
talking about the shared belief in one God but also facing sensitive issues
like that of violence and religion. Against a backdrop of global tensions, the
pope believes that question cannot be ignored and that moderate voices must be
heard.
"Many people, including the pope, are asking whether there is not perhaps a
link between certain interpretations of the foundations and sources of Islam,
and what is being done by Islamic extremists," said Jesuit Father Christian W.
Troll, professor of Islamic studies at the Sankt Georgen Graduate School of
Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt, Germany.
While the pope would not fall into the mistake of overly generalizing about
radical Islam, he would like Muslim dialogue partners to take a closer look at
the interpretation of the Islamic heritage, in particular those elements that
can be misused in the direction of violence, Father Troll told Catholic News
Service.
In his first major encounter with Islamic representatives in 2005, the pope
asked Muslim elders to make sure their young are formed in attitudes of
tolerance and cooperation.
"I am profoundly convinced that we must not yield to the negative pressures in
our midst, but must affirm the values of mutual respect, solidarity and peace.
The life of every human being is sacred, both for Christians and for Muslims,"
he said.
During his first 18 months in office, Vatican officials say Pope Benedict has
adopted a new style of dialogue with Islam, but without setting off in an
entirely new direction.
"Pope Benedict XVI is carrying on the work of John Paul II with a style of his
own: It's a work of continuation, not imitation," said Cardinal Paul Poupard,
head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.
In fact, over the course of his pontificate, Pope John Paul frequently spoke to
Muslims about interreligious tolerance, cultural cooperation and reciprocal
respect for religious freedom.
Pope Benedict has touched on the same points, but with more direct language. He
has also tended to avoid the public gestures of interreligious friendship that
were a trademark of his predecessor -- like addressing a soccer stadium full of
Muslim youths in Morocco, praying in a Syrian mosque or riding in a "peace
train" to Assisi with Muslim representatives.
"We are facing two different approaches to dialogue," Father Justo Lacunza
Balda, an official of the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies
in Rome, told CNS.
For Pope John Paul, Father Lacunza said, encounters with Muslims were a key
part of papal travels abroad and special ceremonies at the Vatican. Pope
Benedict is less a "stage person" and more analytical, he said.
"His approach is one in which you have to identify issues that are absolutely
relevant and important to discuss in our modern times," Father Lacunza said.
"Today, these problems include the relationship of faith and reason, the link
between religion and violence in the minds of some supposed religious leaders,
the question of religious liberty, and questions about science, democracy and
freedom," Father Lacunza said.
"He is putting all these issues on a plate for the church and the Muslim world
to discuss," he said.
At the University of Regensburg in September, the pope touched on several of
these themes in language that he later acknowledged was open to
misinterpretation.
Most of the Muslim criticism focused on the pope's quotation of a medieval
Byzantine emperor, who said the prophet Mohammed had brought "things only evil
and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith." The pope
afterward clarified that he was not endorsing the emperor's words.
Much less attention was given to a broader question the speech posed about
Islam: whether God is absolutely transcendent for Muslims and therefore not
bound up with "any of our categories, even that of rationality."
That echoed a question that arose last year, when the pope hosted a two-day,
closed-door seminar on Islam with some of his former graduate students: If
Muslims understand the Quran's revelation as literally divine and unadaptable,
can Islam really engage the modern world and accept concepts like democracy?
According to one participant, Jesuit Father Samir Khalil Samir, the pope
believes Islam and democracy are compatible, but not without difficulty.
Father Troll, the German Islamic scholar who gave a presentation at the papal
seminar, said the pope avoided categorical judgments about Islam. But he said
the pope understands that the traditional, mainstream theology of Islam may
make it difficult for Muslims to critically evaluate how their faith interacts
with history.
The pope has long held that Islam's all-encompassing approach makes it a
challenging dialogue partner. As he said in the 1997 book, "Salt of the Earth,"
the Quran is "a total religious law, which regulates the whole of political and
social life and insists that the whole order of life be Islamic."
Father Samir, an Egyptian-born expert on Islam, said in a recent article that
Pope Benedict is one of the few figures to have understood Islam's struggle to
find a place in modern society.
He said this awareness has led the pope to broaden Christian-Muslim dialogue,
emphasizing cultural issues above strictly religious aspects.
"The essential idea is that dialogue with Islam and with other religions cannot
be essentially a theological or religious dialogue, except in the broad terms
of moral values; it must instead be a dialogue of cultures and civilizations,"
Father Samir said.
That interpretation would explain why the pope, as one of his first
reorganizational acts at the Vatican, made Cardinal Poupard, who is president
of the Pontifical Council for Culture, the head of the interreligious dialogue
council.
Cardinal Poupard told CNS that this was a natural move, given the complementary
nature of religion and culture.
"There is a close connection between faith and culture and, therefore, between
cultural dialogue and interreligious dialogue. The faith is not 'born' in a
vacuum, but inside a culture," Cardinal Poupard said.
In promoting what he calls a "dialogue of cultures and religions," the pope
also has outlined a potential area of Christian-Muslim cooperation -- the
struggle against secular trends in contemporary society. As the pope said in
Regensburg, it's a society that risks becoming "deaf to the divine" and that
"relegates religion to the realm of subcultures."
Cardinal Poupard said the pope was, in effect, offering "an outstretched hand"
to Islam in the battle against an oversecularized global culture.
But the pope has also made it clear that for Christians, the struggle against a
godless society is based on a rational approach, one that rejects violence,
that does not see faith and reason in conflict, and that affirms the centrality
of the person. His Regensburg speech, then, could be viewed as an invitation
for Muslims to clarify the teachings of Islam on the same points.
The strong initial criticism of the Regensburg speech has given way to more
thoughtful evaluation by Islamic scholars. Even though the Muslim commentary is
still largely unfavorable, Vatican officials now say the papal speech may turn
out to be providential in promoting a frank, in-depth look at Christian-Muslim
issues.
One problem demonstrated by the controversy, however, was that Islam speaks
with many voices. In the absence of a Muslim hierarchy, a small group burning
an effigy of the pope may make a greater global impact than a group of Islamic
scholars calmly dissecting the pope's arguments.
That's something the pope has long recognized. In "Salt of the Earth," he said
the currents of Islam run from "noble Islam" to "extremist, terrorist Islam."
The Islamic religion as a whole should not be identified with a militant
minority, he said.
"I think that first we must recognize that Islam is not a uniform thing. In
fact, there is no single authority for all Muslims, and for this reason
dialogue with Islam is always dialogue with certain groups. No one can speak
for Islam as a whole; it has, as it were, no commonly regarded orthodoxy," he
said.
An important issue the pope and his aides have raised with diverse Muslim
audiences is the need for mutual respect for religious rights, including those
of minority Christian populations in majority Muslim countries.
But reciprocity is not seen at the Vatican as a prerequisite for dialogue, nor
is it a Pope Benedict invention. Pope John Paul repeatedly raised the issue,
notably in his 1985 speech in Morocco -- at the same soccer stadium appearance
where he was cheered by 70,000 Muslim youths.
Pope Benedict has said he wants to build on the work of his predecessor and the
relations of trust that have developed between Christians and Muslims. He has
described his own approach as recognizing with joy the shared religious values
and respecting "with loyalty" the differences.
His recent prodding on some of the differences, his aides say, only illustrates
the crucial importance he gives to this dialogue.
As the pope told Muslim leaders in 2005: "Interreligious and intercultural
dialogue between Christians and Muslims cannot be reduced to an optional extra.
It is, in fact, a vital necessity, on which in large measure our future
depends."
Catholic News
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