It still sounds like some sort of sick, unfunny joke, but we began this year with mobs of angry Muslims rampaging through Europe, the Middle East and Asia in deadly protests over a cartoon. Now, many in the Islamic world are lashing out over an academic lecture presented by a pope eager to promote dialogue between Islam and Christianity.
The speech, which parenthetically quoted a 14th-century exchange between a Muslim scholar and Christian emperor about the problems of spreading faith through violence, was (ironically) about the age-old struggle between reason and faith — a struggle Christianity and Judaism know well. “The inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry,” he concludes, “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.”
The response has been anything but, well, reasonable:
The world’s top Shiite cleric demanded a personal apology from the pope “for this false reading” of Islam. One wonders if he even read the pope’s speech, which actually calls on people of all faiths to recognize the “breadth of reason” and to become “partners in the dialogue of cultures.”
According to the Washington Post, the Pakistani parliament condemned the pope for “derogatory comments” and also demanded an apology.
A leading Turkish official accused the pope of wanting to revive the Crusades.
In Egypt, protesters predictably chanted, “Oh Crusaders, oh cowards! Down with the pope!”
Primed by Hamas leader (and Palestinian prime minister) Ismail Haniyeh, Palestinians held large-scale demonstrations.
And in Iraq, even as bombs exploded outside an Assyrian Catholic Church, a terrorist group warned that it would begin killing Iraqi Christians unless the pope apologized.
If only Islam’s leaders — and followers — outside the West cared as much about what is spoken and done in the name of their religion as they do about other religions. As with the cartoon jihad that marred January and February, Islam’s outrage is an outrage.
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