Pope Benedict on Islam

John L. Allen, Jr.

July 27 marked Pope Benedict XVI's 100th day in office. Over that time, we have had indications of several of the pope's core concerns--the struggle against the "dictatorship of relativism," the push for Christian unity, a shakeup in ecclesiastical bureaucracy, and global development, especially in Africa.

One event that seems likely to occur with appalling regularity is terrorism, specifically terrorism inspired by Islamic radicalism. This means that the relationship with Islam is destined to be a defining element of papal leadership under Benedict XVI.

Benedict XVI was pressed on Islam by journalism after his Sunday Angelus address in Val d'Aosta July 24.

Can Islam be considered a religion of peace?

"I wouldn't label it with generalized words," the pope responded. "Certainly it has elements that favor peace, as it has other elements. We always have to seek to find the best elements that help."

Can these terrorist attacks be considered "anti-Christian"?

"No," the pope replied. "Generally the intention seems to be much more general, not precisely directed at Christianity."

In this light, it is worth reviewing what is known about Pope Benedict XVI's attitudes towards Islam.

At a personal level, Ratzinger has had fruitful contacts with Muslims over the years. When the Iranian Ayatollah Kashani decided to write a book comparing Islamic and Christian eschatological themes, Ratzinger met with him in the Vatican and swapped theological ideas.

In 1999, Ratzinger joined Prince Hassan of Jordan, Orthodox Metropolitan Damaskinos, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan and former French chief rabbi Rene Samuel Sirat in launching the Foundation for Interreligious and Intercultural Research and Dialogue in Geneva. The foundation is dedicated to promoting relations among Jews, Christians and Muslims. Ratzinger also took part in a Christian-Muslim dialogue sponsored by the Orthodox patriarchate of Constantinople in the 1980s.

Ratzinger's most extended comments on Islam came in 1997's The Salt of the Earth, a book-length interview with German journalist Peter Seewald. It's worth quoting those comments here:

   I think that first we must recognize
   that Islam is not a uniform
   thing. In fact, there is no single
   authority for all Muslims, and for
   this reason, dialogue with Islam
   is always dialogue with certain
   groups. No one can speak for
   Islam as a whole; it has, as it
   were, no commonly regarded
   orthodoxy.... There is a noble
   Islam, embodied, for example, by
   the King of Morocco, and there is
   also the extremist, terrorist
   Islam, which, again, one must not
   identify with Islam as a whole,
   which would do it an injustice.

   An important point, however,
   is ... that the interplay of society,
   politics and religion has a completely
   different structure in
   Islam as a whole. Today's discussion
   in the West about the
   possibility of Islamic theological
   faculties, or about the idea of
   Islam as a legal entity, presupposes
   that all religions have basically
   the same structure, that
   they all fit into a democratic system
   with its regulations and the
   possibilities provided by these
   regulations. In itself, however,
   this necessarily contradicts the
   essence of Islam, which simply
   does not have the separation of
   the political and religious
   sphere, which Christianity has
   had from the beginning. The
   Quran is a total religious law,
   which regulates the whole of
   political and social life and
   insists that the whole order of
   life be Islamic....

   In the cultural situation of the
   19th and early 20th centuries,
   until the 1960s, the superiority of
   the Christian countries was
   industrially, culturally, politically
   and militarily so great that
   Islam was really forced into the
   second rank. Christianity--at
   any rate, civilizations with a
   Christian foundation--could
   present themselves as the victorious
   power in world history.
   But then the great moral crisis of
   the Western world, which
   appears to be the Christian
   world, broke out. In the face of
   the deep moral contradictions of
   the West and of its internal helplessness
   ... the Islamic soul
   reawakened. We are somebody
   too; we know who we are; our
   religion is holding its ground;
   you don't have one any longer....

   So the Muslims now have the
   consciousness that in reality
   Islam has remained in the end as
   the more vigorous religion and
   that they have something to say to
   the world, indeed, are the essential
   religious force of the future.

In a debate with Italian intellectual Ernesto Galli della Loggia on Oct. 25, 2004, Ratzinger rejected the argument that public conversation about the Christian roots of Europe offends Muslim immigrants.

"But this isn't what offends them," Ratzinger said. "It's disrespect for God and religion that offends them. This disrespect is a kind of arrogance in diminished reason. This is what provokes fundamentalisms."

Yet in his writings on eschatology, Ratzinger has accused some Muslim strains of fomenting a kind of liberation theology vis-a-vis Israel--that is, the belief that liberation from Israel will be accomplished through divinely approved armed resistance.

Finally, Ratzinger has irked some Muslims by his opposition to Turkey's candidacy to join the European union.

The flashpoint in the Catholic-Muslim relationship under Benedict is likely to be Europe and, specifically, the extent to which Europe as a matter of both cultural conviction and civil law should express and defend its Christian identity.

In this context, Benedict's meeting with European Muslims in Cologne Aug. 20 is likely to be important, as it gives the pope an opportunity to outline the contours of how he sees things.

[John L. Allen Jr. is NCR Rome correspondent, His e-mail address is jallen@natcath.org. For his complete Word from Rome, go to www.ncronline.org.]

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