Well intentioned drivel. The author simply cannot comes to terms with the fact that how things are done within Christendom and not how things are done within Dar al-Islam. The reason is because the Koran and the Bible are radically different books --towards which Christians and Muslims ascribe very different qualities. You would think that, after all this time, a Catholic "expert" on such matters would have actually done some research into Muslim theology, or Muslim thought more generally. You would have thought that an expert would actually have read the Koran to see what it says. But, no, doing any such thing would be too much trouble. Besides, it is much easier to take the pope at face value, someone else who does not seem to have ever studied Islam in anything like a ( scholarly ) critical manner and who, on the subject, mostly doesn't know what he is talking about. Which is not said in anything but a spirit of dismay ; I had expected much better of him. The viewpoint --commendable as it is-- that Muslims need to come to terms with the Enlightenment is certainly a truism. It would be nice if this happened. But how is it even thinkable, given the fact that, for Muslims, the Koran not only consists of God's words without error ( LOL ), but IS the presence of God on Earth, incarnate in his sacred book. There is no wiggle room, to put it in political jargon we can all understand. Some writers insist on characterizing Islam as fundamentalistic. To the extent that this is accurate --not really, but for the sake of argument-- Islam is fundamentalism on steroids. And all the good intentions of Christians, or Jews or Buddhists for that matter, simply cannot change even one little thing. Nor does it matter that some Muslims seem like good people. The acid test is the depth of their belief in the Koran. To the extent that they regard Muhammad's book as God-on-Earth they cannot confront the Enlightenment --or arrive at decisions that are as reasonable as those among Catholic bishops or Protestant clergy. It ain't gonna happen. Or perhaps more accurately, it isn't going to happen among actual believers even if, among "Muslims" who don't really know the Koran and who live in the United States and are fearful because of the bad behavior of overseas Muslims and therefore prefer not to act upon what their "scriptures" actually say, they may give an impression that they very much want their Christian or Jewish neighbors to take in. Billy --------------------------------------------------------------------- Archdiocese of Denver The Catholic Difference GeorgeWeigel 9/11, Benedict XVI and Regensburg Sept. 28, 2011 - In the flood of commentary surrounding the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I found but one reference to a related anniversary of considerable importance: the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture. That lecture, given the day after the fifth anniversary of 9/11 at the pope’s old university in Germany, identified the two key challenges to 21st-century Islam, if that faith of over a billion people is going to live within today’s world in something other than a condition of war. On the fifth anniversary of Regensburg, therefore, it’s worth reviewing what the pope proposed, not least because the 9/11 anniversary commentary assiduously avoided the question that the Holy Father courageously confronted: the question of what-must-change in Islam in the future, to prevent an ongoing global war of Islam-against-the-rest.
Benedict XVI made two proposals at Regensburg. Islam, he suggested, must find a way to affirm religious freedom as a fundamental human right that can be known by reason and that includes the right to change one’s religion—and it must find this “way” from within its own religious, legal, philosophical and theological resources. The question is not one of surrender to certain secularist conceptions of public life, any more than it was when Catholicism confronted political modernity and found a solution in the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom. The solution has to come from within, in what Christian theology would call a “development of doctrine.” Secondly, Islam must find a way—again, from within its own religious and intellectual resources—to affirm a distinction between religious and political authority in a just state. This need not and indeed cannot mean a radical “wall of separation” between the two, based on some (mis)conceptions of the American constitutional order. It might mean something like what the Catholic Church did during the late 20th century, when Catholic scholars reached back into the fifth century and rediscovered a traditional distinction between priestly and imperial authority: a tradition whose deepest roots go back to the Lord’s own distinction between what is owed to Caesar and what is owed to God (Mt 15:21). Despite their being largely ignored during the 9/11 anniversary, these do seem to be the two key issues. An Islam that affirms religious freedom, including conversion from one faith to another, and that buttresses that affirmation through its own religious self-understanding and the arts of reason, is an Islam with which “the rest” can live at ease, and in enriching ways. An Islam in which religious and political authority are distinct, if related, is an Islam in which a genuinely civil society can begin to take root— and a robust civil society is one barrier against the corrupt authoritarianism that has bedeviled Islamic countries for centuries. A robust civil society in which there is room for religious freedom and multiple political perspectives is also essential to realizing the promise of today’s “Arab Spring”—which could give birth to a hot summer and a bitter winter if its chief accomplishment is to effect a change from secular political authoritarianism to religiously-warranted political authoritarianism. What hit the United States on 9/11 was not a “tragedy,” despite the ubiquitous and virtually universal misuse of that word in the 10th—anniversary commentary. What hit New York and Washington was evil unleashed from within an intra-Islamic civil war that had been going on for decades. And at the center of that civil war is a contest over whether Islam can embrace such modern political ideas as inalienable human rights (that can be known by reason, and thus by everyone) and the separation of powers within governments. If the answer to that question is “No,” then the cycle of war between Islam and “the rest” that has ebbed and flowed since the seventh-century will continue. If the answer is “yes,” then that answer will have to come from within Islam, not by a process in which Islamic societies radically secularize. Pope Benedict XVI was insightful enough, and courageous enough, to say this at Regensburg. It’s about time the world paid attention. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
