Letters to the Editor
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A Third Possibility
Ms. Bunting assumes that the Pope's words were either politically naive or revealing of a "deep arrogance." In both cases, she assumes the Pope has essentially misspoken.
A third possibility occurs to me- that he thinks the time is right to restage the crusades; that by fomenting the existing hatred for Islam and its followers, the Catholic church can use the "war on terror" as its new "crusaders" to finally defeat the Mohammedans, whereupon it can take its rightful place in the world.
And how better to foment hatred of Islam than to whip up some Muslim fundamentalists with anti-Mohammed rhetoric, knowing full well that a few of them will react with violence?
I think we should acknowledge the definite possibility that he chose his words very carefully. This would also explain his well crafted "apology," which simply refocused attention on the behavior of the Muslims he inflamed.
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Ratzinger and intolerance
The context in which the Pope quoted Manuel II was a speech at the university where he used to teach regarding the dangers of faith without rationality and rationality without faith.
There's a fairly good brief analysis of his speech (sadly presented as a short format point-counterpoint) by NPR's Morning Edition recently.
Ratzinger is not good news for liberal Catholics or for thinking people anywhere. He is not tolerant of other religions and he sees "secular rationality" as the chief threat to Catholicism in Europe.
While there are certainly sins to be laid at the door of secular thinkers and politicians, the Catholic church also was not immune to anti-Semitism, virulent homophobia and casually murderous misogyny. If anything, the history of the Church reminds us that church members are as much part of the cultures they inhabit as they are part of a religious community of faith.
As with the poorly-reported (in the US media) protests against the Danish cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist, many moderate Muslim and Christians are appalled by both Christian bigotry _and_ Islamist violence in response to these insults.
Letter-writers who try to reduce all believers of a religion to a simple monolithic unit are committing the same act of uninformed, half-analysis that the Pope habitually does. In the case of Ratzinger, this is because he has already decided who the enemy is and does not feel he needs to really know anything more about either them or himself. His refusal to acknowledge the consequences of his visit to Auschwitz in the face of a half-century of education by liberal Germans illustrates the way in which this man has failed to rise above a certain early 20th century Manichean view of the world.
It is not the intellectual Dark Ages that have come again, but the intellectual 1930s. And that is a vastly more frightening proposition.
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Fellow Travelers
Madeleine Bunting, frequent columinist of the Guardian newspaper of the UK, is know for her outrageous and controversial columns. A regular in "Comment is Free" on the Guardian site, she attracts a huge amount of ire (as well as support) from the public. But in this and in several similar editorials published in the past few days on Benedict's remarks, she has placed herself so far into the lunatic gallery of "blame the messenger" that I fear she will never recover.
The Pope made a speech that advanced the thought that conversion or religious discourse through the sword was unacceptable. That is the thesis that should be debated. Who cares about the Pope's past - and using it as a flail to discredit anything that the man can ever utter is unfair. The point is that the man said that faith must not be forced - and rational discourse should be the rule now.
No where does it say that both sides of this "debate" - Islam or Catholcism - have clean hands - Tours, the Siege of Vienna, the Crusades and the Inquisition are all dark spots on both sides. So please don't start the "he hit me first" school of debate to justify why the subject cannot be broached for debate.
I find the most troubling passage this one from the story:
An elderly Catholic nun has already been killed in Somalia, perhaps in retaliation for the pope's remarks;
and contrast it with similar remarks by Ms Bunting on the Guardian site on September 18 (which ignited a firestorm of debate):
An elderly Catholic nun has already been killed in Somalia and tragically other good people could lose their lives for the foolishness of this global leader. (september 18)
Which essential holds Benedict responsible for her murder. So to speak is now to kill.
This attitude was echoed on NPR (Diane Rehm - Sept 19) by a Islamic scholar of a major US university - that the Pope's statements "themselves are acts of violence".
So we now have a situation where mere words are violence and justify all actions taken against them. Sorry - Western liberal tradition says not. People like Ms Bunting are just the fellow travellers that try to gloss over the facts that rational discourse cannot sacrificed on the altar of political correctness, no matter who is the person doing the speaking. Dark Ages indeed: Muzzling speech by writers like this to vent their dislike of others will send us back into that period faster than they can imagine.
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Why Salon? Why?
There is an almost pathological bias against Christians at Salon. I say this as a fervent non-Christian, non-Abrahmist. Yes of course you couch this piece as an opinion article but when was the last time we read something critical of Islam and a legitimate evidence-based examination of its relation to the peaceful secular humanist values you otherwise claim to support. Yes the right-wing already provides lengthy analysis on the failings of Islam, but I want to hear about it from people who don't think the answer to Islam is an Evangelical Christian nationalism. The answer is further not Karen Armstrong and Juan Cole telling us how its all our ignorance and politics to blame.
Six-seven years ago you played no favourites (I recall a nice piece where a scholar examined the call to violence in Islamic texts), but now Islam must be coddled like a colicy baby lest it throw a bloody tantrum and ruin the dinner party.
You are cowards. You are afraid at every turn to stand up for the very liberal progressive beliefs which allow Salon to prosper and worse through your mouth-piece Ms. Bunting YOU CONDEMN THE EXERCISE OF FREE-SPEECH BY ANOTHER. The Pope has rights too, to stand up for his beliefs and to express himself publicly. As a bisexual he and his predecessor have linked me to paedophilia and a "culture of death" including the ubiquitous and oxymoronic charge of "killing the unborn". I shrug my shoulders at accusations of the worst kind, maybe Muslims could learn to do the same? Unless of of course Mohammed really was an inhuman serial rapist warlord.... Oh. such vulgar disrespect!