{"id":298856,"date":"2010-02-09T14:07:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T19:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:magazine.nd.edu,2005:News\/14593"},"modified":"2010-02-09T14:32:16","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T19:32:16","slug":"muslim-christian-relations-if-not-brothers-good-neighbors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/298856","title":{"rendered":"Muslim-Christian relations: If not brothers,  good neighbors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict returned to the University of Regensburg, where he had been a professor of theology from 1969 to 1977, to give an address to the faculty on faith and reason. In his address Benedict famously (or infamously, if you read the press accounts) drew the faculty\u2019s attention to a 14th century dialogue between the Byzantine emperor Manuel II and a Muslim among the Ottoman Turkish forces who had taken the emperor captive.<\/p>\n<p>Among other things Pope Benedict quoted Manuel\u2019s comment: \u201cShow 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.\u201d With this Manuel meant to counter his opponent\u2019s claim that Islam is the final religion, the religion which completes and corrects Judaism and Christianity.<\/p>\n<ul id=\"callout\">\n<li>Related article<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/magazine.nd.edu\/news\/14210\/\">The differences are similar<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Unfortunately, misunderstanding over the pope\u2019s use of the quotation and the ensuing uproar generated so much heat that the light shed by his remarks was missed by most of the public. Benedict, for his part, turned to Manuel\u2019s dialogue in order to address the question of terrorism, a topic of international concern at the time after a series of well-publicized incidents involving Muslim fundamentalists (the September 11 attacks in 2001; the Moscow opera house crisis in 2002; the Beslan [Russia] school hostage crisis in 2004; the London underground attacks of 2005; and the Mumbai train bombings in 2006).<\/p>\n<p>In Manuel\u2019s dialogue the polemic against Muhammad is a preface to an argument against religious violence. Manuel argues that \u201cGod is not pleased by blood \u2014 and not acting reasonably is contrary to God&#8217;s nature.\u201d On this point Benedict comments that the word \u201creasonably\u201d in Greek is literally \u201cwith the word (logos).\u201d In this light the opening of John\u2019s Gospel, \u201cIn the beginning was the Word (<em>logos<\/em>),\u201d testifies to the importance of reason.<\/p>\n<p>Thus the first point of Benedict\u2019s address is the necessity of rationality to religious thought. The second point is the necessity of faith \u2013 that is, truths known only because God has revealed them. Among other things, Benedict argues that Catholics\u2019 recognition of faith should make them sympathetic to Muslims (and indeed the absence of faith makes it difficult for the secular West to understand Islam). Thus Benedict\u2019s speech, if seen as a whole, is a compelling argument for the importance of faith and reason in Catholic thought.<\/p>\n<p>Yet most of the mass media, predictably, was concerned only by the quotation on Muhammad. Benedict\u2019s inclusion of this quotation showed him to be, in the media\u2019s view, a maladroit (if not malicious) academic in pope\u2019s clothing. The media\u2019s portrayal of the Regensburg speech soon reached the Islamic world and protests \u2014 some violent \u2014 followed, to which the pope responded with a series of apologies.<\/p>\n<h3>The letters<\/h3>\n<p>About a month after Benedict\u2019s address, 38 Muslim leaders addressed a letter to him. It acknowledged his apologies and insisted on the peaceful and rational nature of Islam. The following year (October 11, 2007) a group of 138 Muslim leaders, led by the Libyan scholar Aref Ali Nayed, addressed a longer letter not only to the Holy Father but also to Orthodox and Protestant leaders worldwide. Therein they propose to base future Muslim-Christian conversations on love of God and love of neighbor.<\/p>\n<p>This second letter has since become well-known among those involved with Christian-Muslim relations. Its title, \u201cA Common Word between Us and You,\u201d is a quotation from the third chapter of the Quran (hence the peculiar diction). For the most part Christian leaders responded enthusiastically to it. Three hundred Protestant, Orthodox and Catholics (although no bishops) signed \u201cA Christian Response to \u2018A Common Word,\u2019\u201d a document prepared by Yale\u2019s Center for Faith and Culture in 2007.<\/p>\n<p>The Vatican\u2019s response to \u201cA Common Word\u201d was not immediately forthcoming. However, the pope later invited groups of 24 Muslim and 24 Catholic scholars to a three-day symposium at the Vatican, an event that took place in November 2008 and led to a joint declaration. Few would have predicted that Benedict\u2019s Regensburg speech would lead, eventually, to such an unprecedented meeting of Muslims and Christians.<\/p>\n<p>To many the Muslim initiative of \u201cA Common Word\u201d and the meeting at the Vatican are of historical importance. They are signs that Christians and Muslims have begun, as the Vatican II document <em>Nostra Aetate<\/em> puts it, \u201cto forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding.\u201d Yet it seems to me that the lessons to be drawn from this episode are somewhat sobering.<\/p>\n<p>It is worth noting, among other things, that the phrase, \u201cA Common Word between Us and You\u201d is hardly an invitation to dialogue in Islamic tradition. It comes from a passage in which the Quran refutes Christian claims about Jesus. In 3:51 the Quran has Jesus himself proclaim \u201cGod is my Lord and your Lord, so worship Him\u201d (contrast <em>John<\/em> 10:30: \u201cThe Father and I are one.\u201d). The \u201ccommon word\u201d to which the Quran calls Christians in 3:64 is nothing less than an invitation to abandon Christian teaching on Jesus. The Quran defines it in the following manner: \u201cWe shall worship none but God, ascribe no partner to him, and no one shall take another [person] as a Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Otherwise the Muslim letter is marked by an apologetical reading of the Quran on questions of religious violence and freedom of religion (for a detailed examination <a href=\"http:\/\/tobias-lib.uni-tuebingen.de\/frontdoor.php?source_opus=3940&amp;la=de\">read the observatons by Lutz Richter-Bernburg<\/a>) Now there is nothing wrong, of course, with Muslims re-evaluating the literal meaning of the Quran or the standard interpretation thereof. The problem with the Muslim letter is that the apologetical reading (i.e. the insistence that the Quran teaches peace and tolerance) is presented as the literal meaning of the Quran. The letter is thus completely out of touch with the teaching of the Quran throughout history and throughout the Islamic world in Friday sermons today. It is little wonder, then, that \u201cA Common Word\u201d has had no noticeable impact there. Christians of Muslim background, for example, still live in fear for their lives in the Islamic world, as do Muslim women who marry Christian men.<\/p>\n<p>So Christians might learn from this episode that the relationship between Islam and Christianity is not like that between two brothers with different opinions on the same topic. Islam is a religion that has come to replace Christianity, to teach Christians that Jesus was a Muslim who predicted the coming of Muhammad. Christians should not take offence to this claim. This is, after all, the sort of thing that religions do (has not the Church long told Jews to become Christians?).<\/p>\n<p>But the point is that on religious matters there is no question of reaching a \u201ccommon\u201d position. Instead Christians and Muslims should strive for two things. First, we should learn to look on the intense devotion in the religious lives of the other with profound and honest admiration. Second, with reference to faith and reason we should learn to live together, if not as brothers, then as good neighbors.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><em>Gabriel Said Reynolds is an associate professor of Islamic studies and theology at Notre Dame and the author of<\/em> A Muslim Theologian in the Sectarian Milieu <em>and the editor of<\/em> The Quran in Its Historical Context.<\/p>\n<hr>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict returned to the University of Regensburg, where he had been a professor of theology from 1969 to 1977, to give an address to the faculty on faith and reason. In his address Benedict famously (or infamously, if you read the press accounts) drew the faculty\u2019s attention to a 14th [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4248,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4248"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}