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Tuesday, 26 September 2006 15:08 |
 Sometimes, a bit of context is needed to provide a proper perspective on an issue.
Pope Benedict XVI learned a lesson in this last week when comments he made provoked worldwide outrage from Muslims ÇƒÓ and may have even contributed to the killing of an Italian nun in Somalia.
At face value, anger over his comments might be understandable. The pontiff, in a lecture at the University of Regensburg in Germany, said that the prophet Mohammed brought "things only evil and inhuman to the world."
However, had the protesters who decried the pope as a racist Crusader read the complete transcript of his speech, they would know that he was in fact quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor and that the lecture was a call to the West to bring a more rational ÇƒÓ and less violent ÇƒÓ approach to religion.
Perhaps
Muslims could take a cue from Pope Benedictës message and analyze
whether their extreme ÇƒÓ and sometimes violent ÇƒÓ defensiveness could
stand an infusion of reason.
While
we acknowledge that Muslims worldwide have legitimate reasons to feel
threatened, it must be acknowledged that in much of the Islamic world,
a violent and intolerant culture predominates ÇƒÓ at the expense of
diversity, rationality and debate.
If the leader of
a large Islamic sect were to quote anti-Christian sentiments from a
ruler of antiquity in the context of a call for religious tolerance, it
is hard to imagine that Christians worldwide would protest, riot, or
kill Muslims.
It is an
admirable, but misguided aspect of many Westerners that in an attempt
to be embracing and tolerant, they often fail to hold Islam accountable
for its faults.
Islam is in dire
need of a reformation. It can no longer continue to function from a
militant absolutism born of a medieval desert society.
At the same
time, Christians, Jews and people of other faiths need to avoid falling
into similar traps of intolerance. After a recent lecture in Asheville
by retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a questioner said the War on
Terror was "a spiritual war ... between Christ and Anti-Christ."
Perhaps Muslims and Christians alike could stand to abandon their medieval thinking.
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