Popes and the tragedy of unjust notoriety

by Saad Anis

Remarks by Pope Benedict XVI during a lecture at the University of Regensburg on September 12 triggered an outrage in the Muslim world. At the beginning of his address, the pontiff quoted the 14th century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus as saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The governments of Pakistan, Malaysia, Iran, Turkey, Libya and several Muslim groups across the world immediately called on the pontiff to apologize for his remarks. The comment also prompted attacks on at least three West Bank churches in Nablus, and it is suspected that an Italian nun was shot dead in Somalia over the same issue.

While the pope twice reminded his audience at the lecture that those were not his own words, he refrained from positing a value judgment on the quote.

It is unreasonable to evaluate a stance without knowledge of the history and disposition of its source. Manuel II spent most of his reign staving off attacks on his empire from the then powerful
Ottomans. He suffered the ignominy of serving as a hostage to the Ottomans, and was even forced to participate in the Ottoman campaign against Philadelpheia, an enclave of his own empire. His hatred for Muslims and their faith is entirely understandable, though not condonable.

In fact, the sentiment fostered by Manuel II was shared by the entire Western leadership and the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. The Muslims were the dominant power in a major part of the
world for around 700 years between the eighth and 15th centuries. They were reviled by the Western nobility and the Catholic Church as the inherently evil conquerors of their land, most notably Jerusalem, which the Christian West viewed as its rightful property. Naturally, this hatred found its way to the Western people through propaganda. Some of it lives on to this day in the form of narrow stereotypes widely held in the West about Muslims and Islam. It was during the time of the Crusades that the notion of Islam as a religion spread by the sword gained popularity among Western historians and politicians alike.

While explaining the statement, the pope said in his lecture that Manuel II was probably aware of verse 2:256 of the Quran that reads: "There is no compulsion in religion," but added that "experts
(believe) this is one of the surahs of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat."

However, a brief look at Islamic history provides a different account. Mohammed's conquest of Mecca in 630 AD assured his supremacy across Arabia, implying that he was no longer "powerless". The ancient holy city contained some of his worst enemies, who had scorned him, made attempts on his life, forced him to seek refuge in Madina and had subsequently engaged him in three bloody wars. They were at his mercy, and yet he declared general amnesty in the city. The Muslims conquered Jerusalem five years after Mohammed's death in 632 AD. The then caliph, Umar, granted the local Christian and Jewish populace full religious liberties, and even permitted the city's Christian patriarch Sophronius to retain control of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. When Sophronius invited the caliph to pray at the church, he refused and chose to pray at a distance in order to avoid endangering its status as a Christian temple. Time proved his wisdom as 55 years later, the faithful built a mosque on the spot where he had prayed.

And even the West is charitable to the nobility of the Muslim ruler Saladin, whom Dante describes as the "great Saladin" and deigns to grant him a place in limbo in his Divine Comedy.

The Jewish community was the largest beneficiary of Muslim tolerance in the Middle Ages. What is described as the "golden age of Jewish culture in Spain" witnessed Jewish intellectuals flourishing under Muslim rule and rising to important positions in Islamic courts, the most notable being the great Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides. Similarly, the expansion of Islam in South Asia is attributed initially to Arab traders and later on to mystic traditions initiated by Sufi saints. The Muslim expansion from Arabia was prompted not by zeal to spread the word of God through brutal force, but from political ambition to reach out to the world and strengthen the incipient Islamic empire. It would be unreasonable to deny outright that there were no forced conversions during the several hundred years of the expansion and consolidation of the Islamic empire. However, one can safely conclude that neither the Muslim faith nor the political system thrived on account of exceptional instances of adding to the faithful by threatening non-Muslims with death. From the fact that the pope left Manuel II's comment hanging in the air and has thus far refused to apologise, one gets the impression that he agrees with the Byzantine emperor's perception. Given the rise in violence in recent times by a handful of extremists calling themselves Muslim, it is an easy conclusion to arrive at. Such a connection between Islam and extremism becomes even more convenient when one notices that Muslim condemnation of such actions is weak at best, and that the Muslim attitude towards the West in recent times has bordered on belligerence. A case in point is the relative silence of the Muslim world to incidents of violence in reaction to the pope's remarks.
 

However, merely because a conclusion is handy does not make it correct. Further, one would expect the head of the Catholic Church to look beyond appearance and medieval prejudices to make the distinction between the spirit of the religion and a handful of miscreants trying to sully it. On August 24, 1572, Catholic mobs slaughtered tens of thousands of Huguenots (French Protestants) in what came to be known as the St Bartholomew Day's Massacre. Gregory XIII, then the pontiff, reacted with unbounded jubilation. All the bells in the city of Rome sounded throughout the day in thanksgiving, a medal was struck to commemorate the joyous occasion, and the pontiff commissioned Giorgio Vasari to paint a mural depicting the massacre, which lies in the Vatican to this day. The actions of the then representative of the Catholic God on Earth may well lead one to believe that Jesus preached violence and brutality. Of course, that would be untrue. Of all the religious institutions and religious leaders in the world, the Catholic Church and the pontiff should be the most sympathetic to the tragedy that is the unjust notoriety of Islam.

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