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"It was very tactless, given the delicate situation we are in," said Zirker.
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VATICAN CITY — Pope
Benedict XVI's remarks on Islam are a blow to
the dialogue between the Muslim world and the
Roman Catholic Church that his predecessor
John Paul II did much to encourage,
theologians and scholars have agreed as
experts appeared divided on whether the
statements were politically motivated or just
a call for reflection.
"It was very tactless,
given the delicate situation we are in"
just months after caricatures of prophet
Muhammad in the European press enraged many
Muslims, German theologian and Islam
specialist Hans Zirker told Agence France-Presse
(AFP).
Speaking at a German
University on Tuesday, Benedict quoted
criticism of Islam and Prophet Muhammad (peace
and blessings be upon him) by 14th century
Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who
wrote that everything Muhammad brought was
evil and inhuman, "such as his command to
spread by the sword the faith he
preached."
The pontiff fell short
Saturday, September 16, of explicitly
apologizing for the quotes he mentioned with a
Vatican official saying that the pontiff was
"very sorry" if he offended the
sensibilities of Muslims worldwide.
Al-Azhar's Islamic Research
Academy said in a statement released Saturday
that Benedict has thrown a spanner in the
works of the late pope.
"Late Pope Paul II was
instrumental to inter-faith dialogue," it
said. "The late pope's visit to Al-Azhar
Al-Sharif (the highest Sunni body in the
Muslim world) came to demonstrate the
Vatican's keenness on enhancing dialogue
between the three divine religions."
The Ramadan Foundation, a
British Muslim organization, said it was
"disappointed that the current pope
didn't follow his predecessor's example",
after "John Paul II spent 25 years
building bridges and establishing links with
the Muslim community."
John Paul II, the German
pope's predecessor, made considerable
achievements in improving relations between
Islam and Catholicism.
In 1986 he took the
unprecedented step of hosting a grand
inter-religious gathering that saw Jewish,
Christian and Muslim dignitaries gather in
Assisi, central Italy, alongside Hindus,
Buddhists, Sikhs, representatives of the
Shinto faith and African and Amerindian
religions for a day of prayer for peace.
Years later in November
2004 the Polish pope was still promoting the
same ideals: "No one has the right to use
religion as an instrument of intolerance, as a
means of aggression, violence and death,"
he told a mixed-faith delegation from
Azerbaijan, a mainly Muslim country.
John Paul II also sought
direct dialogue with Islam. Already the first
pope to enter a synagogue, in May 2001 in
Damascus he became the first pope to enter a
mosque.
Divided
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"I do think that is done on purpose: this is someone who has always voiced his thoughts, sometimes brutally. He is no diplomat," Vallet said.
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Experts were divided Sunday
on the aim of Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg
address, with some believing the pontiff
wanted to make a political point about Islam
and violence and others maintaining it was a
simple lesson in theology meant to inspire
reflection.
"There is no doubt
that there is a political dimension in the
pope's declaration even if it is more or less
disguised by prominent theological
reasoning," French religious historian
Odon Vallet told AFP.
"Benedict XVI says
that the Christian revelation is not contrary
to reason... while for Islam, God's revelation
is superior to reason and so can do without
it, which would explain the part of passions
and violence in Islam," Vallet said.
"I do think that is
done on purpose: this is someone who has
always voiced his thoughts, sometimes
brutally. He is no diplomat," Vallet
said.
The historian added that
Benedict is much closer to the United States
than his predecessor John Paul II, who opposed
both Iraq wars, never condemning a single
element of US foreign policy.
Rene Remond, another
historian, said that while the pope's address
was "lucid and intellectually sound, one
could wonder whether it was politically
opportune."
However, the pope sees it
as his role to teach and wanted to
"invite the whole world to reflect,"
Remond argues.
"For him, the problem
is not just religious but about culture and
civilization. He fears the rise of
irrationality in today's world," Remond
explains.
"There can be no
opposition between the exercise of reason and
faith," the pope believes, which comes
back to John Paul II's 1998 "Fides et
Ratio" ("Faith and Reason")
encyclical on the relationship between the
two, the historian said.
"His main motivation
is to avoid the reduction of religious fact to
fundamentalism, and the drift which is
affecting a part of Islam seems to him
worrying from this point of view," Remond
believes.
Jean-Dominique Durand,
professor of contemporary history at Lyon
University, thinks that the Regensburg address
is "absolutely not a political text but a
real lesson on the theme of faith and reason,
a subject close to Benedict's heart."
"And like a good
professor, he gives arguments, examples to
nourish reflection: he most certainly did not
want to attack Islam," Durand said.
Benedict XVI's remarks have
sparked a wave of indignation across the
Muslim world that the pope's "sorry"
on Saturday does not appear to have calmed
down with pressures mounting on him to issue a
personal apology.
Vatican insiders and
diplomats say the Pope may have mixed up his
new role with his former posts as a theologian
and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith, when as Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger he was known as a disciplinarian.
The Pope, leader of the
world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics, was due
to give his regular Sunday blessing -- known
as the Angelus -- in St. Peter's Square, an
occasion often used by pontiffs to express the
church's views on current affairs.
