Pope Benedict has said sorry. The Vatican’s new secretary of state, Tarcisio Bertone, is quoted by the AFP saying, “The Holy Father is extremely sorry that certain passages of his speech appeared offensive to Muslim believers and were interpreted in a way that does not correspond in any way to his intentions.” The AFP headline reads, “Pope apologises for offending Muslims.” Since many Muslim leaders have demanded that the Pope directly apologise rather than relying on sources, presumably from the Vatican, one is not certain whether this is indeed a papal apology or not. But the AFP headlines it an apology and presumably the desk should note it as such. Or should it?
It was AFP that decided that “Pope criticizes Islamic extremism in his Germany visit,” and followed it with “Pope enjoys private time after slamming Islam” (both stories were filed on 13 September). It is not my task to save the Pope against the use of an example that could be easily avoided. What is unto the Pope we shall leave unto him. But it is indeed one’s task to determine whether passing a story over the wire that does not pay close attention to the context of a speech, its purport, and labelling it in a manner that would comment rather than convey and provoke rather than report makes for good wire journalism and whether relying on wire services even when the sources may lie in the metropoles of the West, which came for ringing defence from the Pontiff one may add, are a good idea.
Pope Benedict was a teacher of theology at Regensburg University. He returned to his academic home as a pontiff concerned with increasing secularization of the West, the ascendancy of reason and rationality that brackets faith, and the marginalization of theology in universities where arguments based on reason and positivistic science are given credence. The speech, which can be read in full at the Vatican website, is addressed to an academic audience and is titled “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections.” In a time of declining faith in Europe, the triumph of reason over faith and concomitantly the decline of Christianity as a practiced religion (which has had a rather long history since the Enlightenment, though one is never sure of the ebb and flow), the Pope’s speech is a plea for taking faith seriously and not seeing it as opposed to reason. Hence, the deliberation on how the Greek idea of enquiry was married to Biblical faith and hence how it was in Europe that Christianity found its true home. “This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history – it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe,” he said.
In such a speech how does Islam make an appearance? It enters by way of a conversation in the 14th century between a Byzantine emperor and a Persian that the Pope quotes as a point of departure between his reminiscences and the argument he is positing. It is common in many academic pieces to use a quote, an illustration, an event, or a conversation to make a larger theoretical point. After pointing out the uneasy relationship that theology maintained in the university, which was not so in the times when he taught, he said that something that he read brought forth such a recollection. And what he read was a translation of a medieval Byzantine Emperor’s letter and works. After providing the context in which the work was written he says, and I quote at length:
“I would like to discuss only one point – itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole – which, in the context of the issue of “faith and reason”, I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: “There is no compulsion in religion”. According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels”, he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, 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 emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God”, he says, “is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…”.
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.
At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God….”
It would be clear that the Pope is quoting the text to point out how reason and faith are not inimical and in fact, according to him, Christianity brings the two together. By implication it would be that Islam and other religions do not have this harmony of reason and faith. The rest of the speech is rather critical of attempts to dehellenize Christianity and at one point he says that the position of Duns Scotus, a medieval theologian of repute is close to Ibn Hazn. In other words, this speech is not as much an attack on Islam as much a defence of a certain understanding of Christianity that sees it as bringing reason and faith together. Stuff and nonsense, many would say. What does all this have to do with journalism?
Read the AFP story that was filed headlined “Pope criticizes Islamic extremism in his Germany visit.”
“Pope Benedict XVI hit out at Islam and its concept of Holy War during one of the last public appearances of his six-day visit to his Bavarian homeland.
The thinly-veiled attack on extremist Islam’s justification for terrorism came in a complex theological lecture to staff and students at the University of Regensburg, where the former Joseph Ratzinger taught theology in the 1970s.
Using the words, “Jihad” and “Holy War” in his lecture, the pope quoted criticisms of the Prophet Mohammed by a 14th Century Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II.
“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,” Benedict quoted him as saying in a contemporary debate with a learned Persian.
“The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable,” said Benedict, during his 32-minute lecture on the relationship between faith and reason.
“Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul,” he added.”
Reading the headline one would believe that the Pope went well, hammer and tongs at Islam. Not the case. The lead would lead the reader to believe that he hit out at Islam. Hit out would be more like Zidane’s head butt. This is more like an elbow against the rib while the referee is looking the other way. And while the example may be from Islam, no doubt other religions are in the unreason doghouse here. After giving the example and quoting parts of the speech, most of it the quote, the correspondent writes that he added that violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. Well this is what the Byzantine emperor is saying and this line is a linking sentence in the speech. It might have the Pope’s imprimatur, but in the speech it is part of the quote and its context.
The correspondent knows that reporting the speech, which is full of references and allusions would not get any mileage. The Pope in his wisdom uses an eminently unneeded example, and the correspondent picks it up from an otherwise humdrum address that students of philosophy have heard in their introductory classes albeit without theological references, and plays it up in a manner that is likely to cause the most harm.
No one reports in a vacuum. Without context, intentions and nuances are ignored. Truth, in the journalistic sense and hence with a small t, suffers. This story could have been reported in many ways. Highlighting the quote did not make it any more accurate or appropriate. The Pope does not deserve any sympathy for using an ill-advised illustration even if it was for an academic audience since he ought to have known well that the day Ratzinger became Benedict, the luxury of academe was given up for good. But the way AFP ran the story, it does not deserve any charity either. The lesson is simple for the desk: Beware the wires.
