[spectre] The pope the emperor the religions as culture

[Heiko Recktenwald]

Uri Avnery is putting things in a strange order, whatever this is good 
for, and, most important, people like to overlook it, he forgets to tell 
us that the question, it was not more than a question, was part of a 
longer conversation amongst FRIENDS!
> At the end of the
> 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had - or
> so he said (its occurrence is in doubt) - with an unnamed Persian Muslim
> scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself)
> flung the following words at his adversary:
>
> "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".
>   
This is the question. But what follows next is the basic norm of the 
Pope, what he is fighting for, with which he has started his "dies 
academicus" speech. The next comes first! It is the introduction to the 
famous question above.

The "dies academicus" is an institution in Bonn, where the Pope once was 
prof, he said so in his Regensburg speech btw, a feast of though 
sotosay, with Luetzeler, oriental art history, a contradiction in 
person, a gnome that the women liked very much, a speech over some 
aspects of Picasso or whatever, as the usual climax. To say controversal 
things is part of the game. "Wow!" And then everybody goes to a concert, 
to see and to be seen.
> The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned
> theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he
> admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by
> force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope,
> he meant verse 257) which says: "There must be no coercion in matters of
> faith".
>
>   
There were more words of caution, the most important being that the 
conversation was written down by one of the participiants, who was 
concentrated on his own view. Has anybody seen the book, that the Pope 
quoted, where this all comes from?
> How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues
>   

The Pope probably never "simply argues"...;-)
> that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the
> beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he
> ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does
> not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in
> his war against opposing tribes - Christian, Jewish and others - in Arabia,
> when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a
> religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the
> faith.
>   
Thats right! And to destinguish those two things the Popes speech was 
probably very usefull.

Why did 9/11 happen? To spread Islam? Probably not.

However crazy or whatever it was.

To put the Pope and Bush in the same line is OVERSIMPLIFICATION and to 
do so deminishes the Arabs noble cause.

If you want to fight for something, you have to have a clear target.

Populism, to play with masses of idiots, is never good, neither in the 
west nor in the east.


H.