Freudian Slip

Is Pope Benedict XVI’s use of a provocative quote with reference to Prophet Muhammad a sign of the world’s orthodox Christian and Muslim elements pitting themselves against each other?

Prasenjit Chowdhury Kolkata

On September 12, in a speech delivered in Germany, Pope Benedict XVI quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, who said Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things. His comments on religious radicalism, many say, are another sign of his intention to bring his voice into one of the world's most critical showdowns: Islam's internal struggles between moderates and extremists. The comments created a furore worldwide, as barely a day after the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the Islamic world saw in the Pope’s comments yet another provocative version of Samuel Huntington’s now-infamous ‘Clash of Civilisations’ theory.

 There is a global tendency to portray that violence is somewhat inherent in Islam. The scale of this din seems a little bit Goebbelsian. The air is highly inflammable. Heresies and facts coagulate and we hear many such syllogisms: not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.

The role of a pontiff stands always to scrutiny. Take the instance of Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII in 1939, who has been the subject of considerable public criticism and even vilification, for his alleged failure to speak out against Hitler during the Holocaust.  Pope Pius' alleged ‘silence’ in the face of the worst Nazi atrocities has led some of his harshest critics to accuse him of being a Nazi sympathiser or an anti-Semite. 

John Paul asked for forgiveness for the past anti-Semitism of the Roman Catholic Church and tendered a more specific apology in 1998 for the Holocaust. Critics of the papacy still want a condemnation of Pope Pius XII for his perceived inaction in the face of Nazi genocide.

Pope Benedict XVI, formerly known as Conservative German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was recently elected as head of the Catholic Church and is the ideological forbear of Pope John Paul. He was earlier known for his provocative statements about the Islamic world. For instance, in August 2004, the said that Turkey did not belong in the European Union, being culturally “in permanent contrast to Europe”.

Although Ratzinger has not repeated his past complaints about Islamic inroads into ‘Christian’ Europe, he has pushed for better treatment of Christians in Muslim lands, and, in a reference to terrorism, stated last August that Christians and Muslims must ‘‘turn back the wave of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people.” Earlier, Ratzinger articulated a doctrine of “reciprocity,” which essentially holds that if the religious rights of Muslims are respected in historically Christian countries, then Islamic countries should offer their Christian minorities equal respect.

But in this façade of this love for rationalism, there is an obvious reactionary face. The most glaring charge against him is that he is the one who has insisted inside the Church, that it is not acceptable to see other religious communities as equally valid ways of approaching God. That is, his consciousness is very much akin to the consciousness in the Church of ancient days that led to the Inquisition.