Pope Benedict XVI's comments about Islam at the University of Regensburg on 12 September 2006 are examined here in terms of the traditions of Orientalism on which he draws and the political functions that they serve. The Pope portrays Islam as tending to irrational violence, in contrast to a Christianity based on a rapprochement between faith and the spirit of Greek philosophical inquiry, a rapprochement that is taken to be the foundation of European identity. This article examines the falsehoods, misrepresentations and weaknesses of the Pope's arguments and locates his understanding of Islam within broader intellectual patterns. It argues that his remarks reflect, more particularly, the specificities of his personal formation and the contemporary needs of the Roman Catholic Church.
For an analysis of the causes of violent Muslim reaction, see the astute comments of the Egyptian Islamist thinker Abdel Wahab al-Messiri: `Arabs and Muslims feel oppressed by the West. Afghanistan and Iraq are features, but most important is Palestine … and all of this built up anger sometimes explodes. The anger at the West can't be expressed through the popular channels because of their own regimes, so they wait for something like cartoons or the Pope's comments and their totalitarian governments can't stop them because that would be something un-Islamic.' Quoted in Dan Murphy, `Pope's comments on Islam hit civilization clash fault line', Christian Science Monitor (19 September 2006), p. 1. For a criticism of the Pope by Daniel Madigan, S. J., president of the Institute for the Study of Religions and Cultures at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, see Nandagopal R. Menon, `The Pope and Islam: an interview with Daniel Madigan, S. J.' (25 September 2006), <www.commonwealmagazine.org>. `It won't work if we tell them what we think they believe, and then criticize what we think they believe … We have to ask: "Where do you stand? How do you justify that? What can I expect from you?"' See, also, Madigan's remarks in an interview with Zenit News Agency from 16 September 2005: `I enjoy very much the theological dialogue that we have here in the University. However, I am not convinced that the differences between us are really about theology. With patience and hard work we can come to a clearer understanding of each other's different ways of believing in the one God. What is more difficult, though, is to get at the root of the anger, the resentment and the sense of alienation that so many Muslims (and not only Muslims) experience and that are increasingly exploited to fuel violent reactions from a few. So many elements enter into the mix which makes our world what it currently is: politics, economics, nationalism, globalization, debt, tribalism, just to name a few.' For critical remarks about the Pope by Thomas Michel, see ucanews.com, 19 September 2006.
2.
Even Christian Science Monitor, known for its relative empathy with Arab-Islamic perspectives, adopted elements of this defensive posture in an editorial of 19 September 2006: `Actually, the Pope's talk was mainly directed against the West. He criticized modernist thinking that relegates religion to a "subculture" (a point on which many Muslims might agree), arguing that such thinking erroneously concludes that faith and reason can't coexist.' As late as April 2008, the argument that the Pope's sophisticated theological message had simply been misunderstood was still commonplace: `As we know from the case of [his speech at] Regensburg, Germany … Benedict doesn't speak in sound bites or worry that his sometimes specialized language might be misunderstood by many.' Frances X. Rocca, Rome correspondent for Religious News Service, as quoted by Miner Brad, `The last great crusade', Newsmax (April 2008), p. 55.
3.
The comments of the Economist were typical: `When compared with John Paul II, the difference is not that Benedict, who was once a professor at a German university, rejects any discussions with Muslims. It is rather that he seeks to fill them with meaty, challenging substance.' `When the heavens open', Economist (23 September 2006).
4.
The trenchant comments of Tariq Ali were characteristically refreshing: `Was Benedict's most recent provocation accidental or deliberate? The Bavarian is a razor-sharp reactionary cleric. A man who organizes his own succession to the Papacy with a ruthless purge of potential dissidents and supervises the selection of candidates with great care leaves little to chance. I think he knew what he was saying and why.' Tariq Ali, `A Bavarian provocation' (16/17 September 2006), <http://www.counterpunch. org/tariq09162006.html>.
5.
James Schall, `God as logos, Allah as will' (3 October 2006), <www.zenit.org/english>. Schall is perhaps revealing his ignorance by speaking of Allah as if it were the proper name of God among Muslims. `Allah' is simply the Arabic word for `God', used by all Arabic speakers, Muslims, Christians and Jews.
6.
`Lecture of the Holy Father', Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg (12 September 2006), <www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/ september/documents>, p. 1.
7.
Ibid., p. 1.
8.
Ibid., p. 2.
9.
Ibid., p. 2.
10.
Ibid., p. 2.
11.
Ibid., p. 2.
12.
Ibid., p. 3.
13.
Ibid., p. 3.
14.
Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing (New York, Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 11.
15.
Michael Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History: doctrines and practice ( Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2006), p. xvi.
16.
Ibid., pp. 23-4.
17.
Ibid., p. 27.
18.
Asad, op. cit., p. 11.
19.
Ibid.
20.
Ibid., p. 12, and Bonner, op. cit., p. 93.
21.
Asad, op. cit., p. 12.
22.
Bonner, op. cit., p. 160.
23.
Ibid., p. 93.
24.
Ibid., p. 89.
25.
Asad, op. cit., p. 9.
26.
Ibid., p. 9.
27.
What Does al-Qaeda Want? Unedited communiqués, with commentary by Robert O. Malin IV (Berkeley, CA, North Atlantic Books, 2004).
28.
Bonner, op. cit.
29.
Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity ( Palo Alto, CA, Stanford University Press , 2003), p. 11.
30.
Open letter to Pope Benedict XVI written and signed by leading Muslim scholars and leaders in response to his remarks at Regensburg, Islamic Magazine (No. 18, 2006), p. 26.
31.
Ibid., p. 26. The quote is from Surah109:1-6.
32.
Ibid., p. 26. The quotes are from Surahs 42:11; 24:35; 50:16; 57:3; 57:4 and 2:15.
33.
Ibid., p. 26. The quote is from Sahih al-Bukhari. No. 6502, Kitab al-riqaq.
34.
Ibid., pp. 26-7.
35.
Ibid., p. 27. The quote is from Surah 6:12.
36.
Ibid., p. 27. The quote is from Surah 7:156.
37.
Ibid., p. 27.
38.
Tarif Khalidi and Muhammad Ali Khalidi, `The Pope's monopoly on reason', Nation (21 September 2006), < http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061009/khalidi> ;.
39.
Ibid.
40.
Ibid.
41.
Aref Ali Nayed , `A Muslim's commentary on Benedict XVI's Regensburg lecture', Islamic Magazine (No. 18, 2006), p. 51.
42.
Jack Goody, The East and the West (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 15-24.
43.
Ibid., pp. 25-6.
44.
Ibid., p. 26.
45.
Ibid., p. 26.
46.
Ibid., p. 10.
47.
Nayed, op. cit., p. 52. Benedict does not, for that matter, give a clear definition of what he means by violence. He quotes Manuel II Paleologos's remark that `violence' goes against God's nature with apparent approval, but surely the Pope must be thinking of the aggressive violence that is not in keeping with God's will. One assumes that he would not criticise Jesus's violence against the money-changers.
48.
See Maxime Rodinson , Islam and Capitalism, trans. from the French by Brian Pearce (New York, Pantheon , 1973).
49.
Ibid., p. 78.
50.
Ibid., pp. 78-9. The quote is from Surah 40:29/28.
51.
Ibid., p. 79. The quote is from Surah 3:187/190.
52.
Ibid., p. 79. The quotes are from Surah 4:169/175, Surah 5:81/77, and Surah 5:79/75
53.
Ibid., p. 79.
54.
Ibid., p. 80.
55.
Ibid., pp. 84-5.
56.
Ibid., p. 86. The quote is from Proverbs 3: 5,7.
57.
Ibid., pp. 87-8. The quotes are from First CorinthiansI:19-20,23, 25; II: 1,4-5.
58.
Ibid., p. 90.
59.
Nayed, op. cit., p. 53.
60.
For a discussion of these moves, see Asad, Formations, p. 168.
61.
Ibid., pp. 168-70.
62.
Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: the Greco-Arabic translation movement in Baghdad and early Abbasid society (London, Routledge, 1998), pp. 2-8. For a related treatment of critical scientific innovations among Muslims, including Copernican breakthroughs, see George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2007).
63.
Gutas, op. cit., pp. 158-9.
64.
Ibid., pp. 152-3.
65.
Ibid., p. 153.
66.
Ibid., p. 172.
67.
Ibid., pp. 172-3.
68.
Christian Jambet , The Act of Being: the philosophy of revelation in Mulla Sadra, trans. from the French by Jeff Fort (New York, Zone Books, 2006), p. 12.
69.
Gutas, op. cit., p. 173.
70.
Ibid., pp. 173-5.
71.
See Olivier Roy'sdiscussion of reformism in theology in his Secularism Confronts Islam, trans. from the French by George Holoch ( New York, Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 45-50.
72.
Ibid., p. 46.
73.
Muhammad Abduh, The Theology of Unity, trans. by Ishaq Masaad and Kenneth Cragg (London, Allen and Unwin, 1966), pp. 126-8; cited in James A. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East: a history (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 161-2.
74.
Reinhard Schultze , A Modern History of the Islamic World (London, I. B. Tauris, 2000), p. 2.
75.
Ibid., pp. 2-3.
76.
Cited in David Gibson, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and his battle with the modern world (San Francisco, Harper, 2006), p. 362.
77.
Ibid., p. 157.
78.
Ibid., p. 192. Before becoming Pope, Benedict accused Islam of fomenting a kind of liberation theology against Israel. See John L. Allen, Pope Benedict XVI: a biography of Joseph Ratzinger (New York, 2000), p. 263.
79.
For an exposition of Ratzinger's Das Neue Volk Gottes, 1969, see Allen, ibid. pp. 99-100.
80.
See Ratzinger's comment upon `Gaudium et Spes', the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world as prepared for Vatican II. Cited in Allen, op. cit., p. 80.
81.
Gibson, op. cit., p. 363.
82.
My discussion of these elements owes much to Maxime Rodinson, `The western image and western studies in Islam', in C. E. Bosworth, ed., The Legacy of Islam ( Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 9-62.
83.
Ibid., p. 48.
84.
For a discussion of the Middle Eastern comprador intellectuals involved in the marketing of Orientalist images, see Hamid Dabashi, `Native informers and the making of the American empire', Al-Ahram Weekly (No. 797, 1-7 June 2006); see, also, Farzaneh Milani, `On women's captivity in the Islamic world', MERIP (Vol. 38, no. 248, Spring 2008), pp. 40-7. Dabashi points out that Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran was published through the influence of the US Orientalist Bernard Lewis and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The link between this book and the neoconservative project of preparing US opinion for an invasion of Iran is treated by Richard Byrne, `A collision of prose and politics', Chronicle of Higher Education (15 October 2006), p. 12.
85.
See Rodinson, `The western image', op. cit., p. 48.
86.
Ibid., p. 48.
87.
Ernst Renan, Histoire générale et système comparé des langues sémitiques (Paris, 1858), cited in Martin Bernal, Black Athena: the Afro-Asiatic roots of classical civilization, vol. I (New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1987), p. 345.
88.
Ibid., pp. 345-6.
89.
Cited in Leon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: a history of racist and nationalist ideas in Europe, trans. from the French by Edmund Howard (London, Chatto and Windus, 1974), p. 324.
90.
Cited in ibid., p. 320.
91.
For a brilliant analysis of Weber on Islam, see Armando Salvatore, Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity (Reading, Ithaca, 1997 ), pp. 67-79.
92.
Claude Lévi-Strauss , Tristes Tropiques, trans. by John and Doreen Weightman ( New York, Penguin, 1992), pp. 344-5.
93.
That Benedict harboured a certain negativity towards Islam was manifested in a number of moves and incidents following his election: his demotion of the `eirenic' (the term is Abdal Hakim Murad's) Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, a known opponent of Benedict, from his position as head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, to run the Papal Mission of Egypt; his distancing himself from Angelo Cardinal Sidaro, the previous Pope's secretary of state, who was widely regarded as pro-Palestinian and who was a close friend of Michel Cardinal Sabbah, the Palestinian Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem fiercely critical of the Israeli occupation; his appointment of Fouad Twal, whom the Israelis regard as far more acceptable than Sabbah, to be Sabbah's auxiliary bishop and to succeed him automatically within two years; his appointment of Pierbattista Pizzabella, who has often been outspoken in his support for Israel and whose appointment was hailed in right-wing Vatican circles, to be bishop of the Hebrew-speaking Roman Catholics in Jerusalem; his granting a private audience to the journalist Oriana Fallaci, who has written that `Islam sews hatred in the place of love and slavery in the place of freedom' and that Muslims `breed like rats'. Benedict's meeting with Fallaci was not made public until it was discovered by an Italian journalist. The content of their discussion remains unknown but Fallaci's condemnation of the previous Pope's commitment to dialogue with Muslims and her consistent support of Benedict are matters of public record. See Abdal Hakim Murad, `Benedict XVI and Islam,' Islamic Magazine (No. 18, 2006), pp. 36-8. One should also take note of Benedict's contention (in an annual retreat in 2005 with former doctoral students which was dedicated to the concept of God in Islam) that Muslims were constricted in interpreting the text of the Qur'an because of their belief that it was God's word in and of itself and in no way reflective of the human mediation of the Prophet through his own words or otherwise. The seminar was addressed by two Roman Catholic experts on Islam, the German Jesuit Christian Troll and the Egyptian Jesuit Samir Khalil Samir of the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut. Nayed speaks of Troll as `suspicious' of `traditional' Islam and supportive of `reformers' and of Samir as `often quite hostile'. I would argue that Samir, the American Jesuit Joseph Fessio and some of the Pope's other close interlocutors on Islam are in fact Islamophobic (a term also used by Nayed) and this in contrast to Arab and non-Arab Christian experts, Roman Catholic and other, who are far more respected and free of Orientalist perspectives. These latter experts include the Lebanese Orthodox Metropolitan George Khodr, the Palestinian Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, and the Jesuits Thomas Michel and Daniel Madigan. Although Samir Khalil Samir, perhaps one of the most prominent influences upon the Pope, is capable of distinguishing between various Islamic strains, he is prone to the most fantastic generalisations, such as `there is technological and scientific modernization in the Islamic world, but this does not lead to modern humanism'. See Samir Khalil Samir, `Islamic terrorism: a result of what is being taught at madrassas' (9 August 2005), <http://www.asianews.it/index. php?l=en&art=4071>.
94.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the end of the millenium: an interview with Peter Seewald ( San Francisco , Ignatius Press, 1997), p. 244.
95.
Ibid., pp. 244-5.
96.
Ibid., p. 151.
97.
For a brilliant and succinct discussion, see Asad, On Suicide Bombing, op. cit., pp. 10-13.
98.
See Sami Zubaida , `Muslim societies: unity or diversity?', ISIM Newsletter (October 1998), p. 1.
99.
Aziz al-Azmeh, Islams and Modernities (London, Verso, 1993), p. 32.
100.
Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, `Millenial capitalism: first thoughts on a second coming', Public Culture (Vol. 12, no. 2, 2000), pp. 291-343.
101.
See Schultze, op. cit., p. 289.
102.
Cited in Allen, op. cit., p. 237.
103.
Cited in ibid., p. 252. That the history of Jews, including the history of their eminently worldly state, is subject to providential determinations was much more strongly reflected in Benedict's remark to Seewald in 1993: `One might think that such a small people couldn't really be important. But I believe there is something special about this people and that the great decisions of world history are almost always connected to them somehow.' See Ratzinger, op. cit., p. 251.
104.
See Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams , `Holy land and holy people', a lecture at the Fifth International Sabeel Conference, Jerusalem (14 April 2004).
105.
Thomas Risse and Daniela Engelmann-Martin , `Identity politics and European integration: the case of Germany' in Anthony Pagden, ed., The Idea of Europe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 294-5.
106.
Ibid., p. 296.
107.
Ibid., p. 296.
108.
Ratzinger, op. cit., p. 126.
109.
Ibid., p. 126.
110.
Ibid., p. 128.
111.
Camillo Cardinal Ruini, `Christianity's place in the new Europe' (11 February 2005), <http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it>. Benedict bestowed greater executive power upon Ruini after he became Pope. Ruini's discomfort with Islam was manifested in his insistence that Muslim children in Italian schools should not have the right to study their religion inasmuch as it would involve `dangerous social indoctrination'. Cited in Murad, op. cit., p. 37.
112.
Ruini, op. cit.
113.
See Sandro Magister , `The church is under siege, but Habermas, the atheist, is coming to its defense' (1 November 2006), <http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it>.
114.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Jürgen Habermas , The Dialectics of Secularization: on reason and religion (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2006), p. 29.
115.
Ibid., p. 24.
116.
Ibid., pp. 44-5. Habermas's search for strong points of reference to hold things together echoes many a statement of Benedict. The idea that religion is needed to serve certain functions, often eminently societal and political, and apart from the truth of religion in and of itself, is characteristic of many of Benedict's arguments. `Much of what Austria is and possesses it owes to the Christian faith and its beneficial effects', Benedict declared in a speech in Vienna on 8 September 2007. See Pope Benedict XVI, `Europe, do not deny your Christian roots … "Where God is there is the future"' (3 November 2007), <http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=10331>.
117.
Cited in Magister, op. cit. The role accorded to religion in Habermas can be seen as part of a broader `turn to religion' on the part of a number of modern and contemporary continental philosophers, including John D. Caputo, René Girard, Richard Kearney, Gianni Vattimo, Merola Westphal and Slavoj Zizek, as mediated by Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida and, in the case of Zizek, Lacan. See Frederiek Depoortere, Christ in Postmodern Philosophy: Gianni Vattimo, Rene Girard, and Slavoj Zizek (New York, T & T Clark, 2008) and Espen Hanmer, `God squaddy', a review of Hent de Vries's Minimal Theologies: critiques of secular reason in Adorno and Levinas, Radical Philosophy (No. 134, November-December 2005), pp. 41-2. As John Roberts remarks, this turn is not to be taken for simply a reactionary move inasmuch as much of the writing emerges from the vicinity of Marxism or Marxism itself. See John Roberts, `The ethics of conviction: Marxism, ontology and religion', Radical Philosophy (No. 121, September-October 2003), pp. 36-48.
118.
Magister, op. cit.
119.
Alberto Melloni , `An interview with Alberto Melloni' (1 November 2006), <http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it> ;.
120.
See Elaine Sciolino, `French government party endorses Sarkozy for president', International Herald Tribune (14 January 2007).
121.
Ali, op. cit.
122.
Attitudes towards the Iraq war reflected a struggle for turf among Curial officials. An ailing John Paul II lamented the invasion while aides and other Church leaders voiced various degrees of opposition, some of it stronger than the Pope's. In November of 2002, Civita Cattolica, a Roman Jesuit journal vetted by the Vatican, argued that an American attack would be legitimate if Iraq posed an imminent threat and a month later Renato Cardinal Martino, the Vatican's principal human rights official, stated that `a preventive war is a war of aggression'. Gibson, op. cit.
123.
Perry Anderson , `European hypocrisies', London Review of Books (Vol. 29, no. 18, 20 September 2007), p. 18.
124.
Ibid., p. 19.
125.
Ibid., pp. 19-20.
126.
For the so-called `wafer watch', the controversy which erupted in the 2004 presidential campaign when a number of conservative American bishops argued that Holy Communion should be denied to Kerry and other Roman Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights, see Gibson, op. cit., p. 43. In April 2004, Francis Cardinal Arize, head of the Vatican department overseeing worship and liturgy, answered a reporter's question about the matter by declaring, `The person is not fit. If he shouldn't receive it, then it shouldn't be given.' When the US bishops applied to Rome for guidance, Ratzinger responded that the local bishops should decide on the matter `prudentially'. A top aide to Ratzinger later declared that Ratzinger's response was a `private' and not an official Vatican response.
127.
See Jan Fisher and Warren Hoge, `Vigorous defense of human rights is urged by Pope in UN address', New York Times (19 April 2008). For a discussion of the US's control of the United Nations, see Perry Anderson's review of two books on Kofi Annan, `Our Man', London Review of Books (Vol. 29, no. 9, 10 May 2007), pp. 9-12. `The US cannot count on always securing UN legitimization of its actions exante. But where this is wanting, retrospective validation is readily available, as the occupation of Iraq has shown.' (p. 12)
128.
On the joy experienced by evangelicals as they awaited the end of time as mediated by Israel's bombs and mortar, see Chip Berlet, `Lebanon and the Christian Zionist apocalypse', Z Magazine (September 2006), pp. 20-1.
129.
Jewish (particularly Orthodox) references to Arab terrorism or any form of armed resistance as the product of the Arabs' Ishmaelite descent are commonplace in Israel and abroad. `Our Torah is eternal', writes Menachem Porush, a former member of the Knesset, in the New York Jewish Press on 21 May 2004. `If it says that Ishmael will be a wild man, then he will forever remain a wild man. Even if all the cultured nations of the world want to educate him into a cultured person, their efforts will be in vain.' A liberal version is provided by David Klinghoffer in the New York Jewish weekly, the Forward: the Bible's `description of Ishmael, with details from Jewish tradition, are strikingly reminiscent of the more troubling aspects of Islamist culture. His shame and humiliation at not being Abraham's heir reminds us of the shame and humiliation at Islamic civilization's failure that drives many terrorists.' Nevertheless, according to Talmudic tradition, Ishmael repented and it stuck. Ishmael is `redeemable' and `Islam can be turned to the good'. See David Klinghoffer, `Redeeming Ishmael, the disputation', Forward (22 September 2006). For a critique of the role of the Amalekite theme as employed by some rabbis to justify the dispossession and murder of Palestinians, see Shulamit Aloni, `Losing God's image', Ha'aretz, weekend English edition (19 September 2004). See, also, Ami Eden, `Top lawyer urges death for families of bombers', Forward (10 June 2002). Eden treats the debate precipitated by Nathan Lewin's suggestion that the family members of suicide bombers be executed. Lewin (a prominent Washington attorney) argued that the `Biblical inspiration to destroy the ancient tribe of Amelek serves as a precedent in Judaism for taking measures that are ordinarily unacceptable in the face of a moral threat.'
