Ramesh Bhat ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sujeet Bhatt" <sujeet.bhatt at gmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 7:34 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Return to the dark ages
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1875582,00.html
>
> Return to the dark ages
>
> By drawing on medieval poison about Islam, the Pope has boosted Muslim
> fears of a new crusade
>
> Soumaya Ghannoushi
> Tuesday September 19, 2006
> The Guardian
>
> The Pope's response to the anger his statements sparked in the Muslim
> world was more offensive than the statements themselves. He apologised
> not for what he said, but for Muslims' failure to grasp the intended
> meaning.
>
> That the Pope should have quoted from a Byzantine text on Islam is
> hardly surprising. The line of continuity between Emanuel Paleologos's
> conception of Islam - quoted in the papal speech - and Benedict's has
> never been severed. The massive body of terms, images and narratives
> on Islam which the church inherited from the middle ages survives
> intact. There, Islam is depicted as a false creed propagated through
> violence and promiscuity, with Muhammad as scoundrel, magician,
> heresiarch, and precursor of the anti-Christ.
>
> Though Constantinople's Latin enemies shed few tears over the loss of
> two-thirds of its territories to Muslims in the seventh century, they
> did much to ensure the survival of its literature on Islam. Between
> the 11th and 14th centuries, this was used by the church's propaganda
> machine as it strove to arouse crusading fervour across Christendom.
> The Reformation further developed this literary corpus and ensured its
> transmission into modern Europe. In a 17th-century Christian text,
> Muslims are described in the most chilling of terms. They are "poison,
> scabies, venomous snakes ... the dogs in the church".
>
> Even if this metaphorical language has retreated in favour of the
> profane language of reason and subjectivity, its structural
> foundations remain. Islam is still perceived as the other, the
> embodiment of evil. Only in this context can we make full sense of the
> Pope's statements, and indeed of much of what is said today on the
> subject of Islam. We must defend freedom of expression, but freedom of
> expression should not be used as a disguise for the incitement of
> hatred of other races and religions.
>
> It is ironic that the Pope, who stresses the unity of reason and
> faith, which he uses as proof of Christianity's superiority over
> Islam, has inherited this formula from Ibn Rushd, or Averroes, the
> Andalusian Muslim philosopher. It was on the basis of this Rushdian
> equation that the medieval church could reconcile itself with
> Benedict's beloved logos.
>
> The Pope speaks much of religious tolerance in his lecture.
> Unfortunately for him, the church's historical treatment of its
> religious others has been marked by violence and aggression, against
> pagans, Jews, heretics and infidels alike.
>
> Not a day goes by without calls to reform Islam being raised-a mission
> which Pope Benedict XVI has declared impossible. Perhaps it is time to
> make the same demand of Catholicism and its infallible head. It
> certainly needs to introduce dramatic reforms to its terrifying
> conception of Islam, its prophet and followers. Rather than
> apologising for the church's bloody legacy against Muslims in the dark
> years of the Crusades and Reconquista, the Pope has chosen to twist
> the knife in the old wound. He has driven the gulf between the two
> faiths even wider. He has again pitted the cross against the crescent.
>
> The Pope's statements have done much to convince Muslims from Tangier
> to Jakarta that an open war is being waged against them on three
> fronts: political, military and religious. The pontiff should not be
> surprised that his words generated such strong responses in a Muslim
> world seething with rage at being dragged back to the age of
> colonialism and civilising missions. Who is to convince Muslims now
> that the west is not waging a crusade against them, in an alliance
> between Bush and Benedict, between the powers of the temporal and the
> sacred?
>
> · Soumaya Ghannoushi is a researcher at the School of Oriental and
> African Studies, University of London, specialising in medieval
> Christian literature on Islam soumayak at hotmail.com
>
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