Crusaders for Truth

POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD

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News for Arab Countries
Special service by AGI on behalf of the Italian Prime Minister's office

(AGI) - Ratisbon, Sept. 12 - Benedetto XVI once again condemned every form of religious fundamentalism by citing the Koran that says: "no oppression of faith." It is one of the sure things of the initial period in which Muhammad himself was still without power and was threatened," reminded the Pope in his speech this afternoon in the aula magna of the University of Ratisbon in Germany. Ratzinger also cited other "dispositions, developed subsequently and established in the Koran, about the Holy War", but he focused his attention precisely on the contradiction that exists between this statement and the norm, even if attributed to Muhammad, "of spreading the faith that he preached by the sword." An opportunity for this analysis of the two different concepts of Islam was given to the Pope by a historic page, the talk that "the intellectual Byzantine emperor Manuele II Paleologo, perhaps during the winter in 1391 near Ankara, had with an intellectual Persian on Christianity and Islam and on the truth of both." The Pontiff states clearly while citing Theodore Khoury, the author that reconstructed that conversation, "Violence is against with the will of God and the nature of the spirit. God does not give in to blood; to not act according to reason is against the will of God. Faith is fruit of the spirit, not of the body. Thus whoever wants to bring someone to faith needs the capacity to speak well and to reason correctly, not violence and threats." From that conversation, the theologian Pope also described the end: "to convince a rational spirit it is not necessary to use your fist, nor firearms, nor any other means to threaten a person with death. According to Ratzinger, "the decisive statement in this argument against conversion through violence is: to not act according to reason is against the will of God." Pope explained, "For the Muslim doctrine, God is absolutely supernatural, thus his will is not tied to any of our categories, even that of rationality." Thus we can discern from the Pontiff's argument that this is the element that causes the most problems in the dialogue with Islam, because for this theological vision, "God is not even tied by his own words and nothing would obligate him to reveal the truth to us. If it were his will, man would also have to practice adulation," the pope concluded. (AGI) - 121857 SET 06
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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 10:00 AM