Unearthing Pope’s Real Message

By now, Muslims should consider themselves no strangers to controversy. Pope Benedict XVI’s controversial comments at Germany’s University of Regensburg are the latest in a long list of precarious statements about the Islamic faith.

In his address to a group of academics, the Pope referred to dialogues that transpired in the 14th century between a Byzantine emperor named Manuel II Pelogolus and a Persian Muslim scholar.

In principle, the pontiff argues that faith and reason are soldiers of the same general. He believes that the faithful must not view these principles as antithetical but complementary. Reason, he argues, can help man entrench his belief in God.

“Telegraph” newspaper columnist Melanie McDonagh last week wrote that the Pope would have fared better if he did not quote Pelogolus, who said: ‘‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’’

To be fair, the official letter from the Vatican purports that Pope Benedict ‘‘did not mean, nor does he mean, to make that opinion his own in any way’’. It goes on to say that he used that merely to make a bigger point that religious ‘‘motivations for violence, from whatever side it may come, must not be tolerated’’.

Considering that Muslims are facing hurdles in their attempt to delink faith from violence, the Pope’s contentious rhetoric was tactless and perhaps even detrimental.

But it is also unfortunate that his progressive message of peace has been detracted from the faithful by drowning voices of protest.

Ironically, Muslims can perhaps take credence from the Christians who also faced an equally damaging controversy with the launch of Dan Brown’s bestseller The Da Vinci Code, which alleges that Jesus Christ is a mortal who married Mary Magdalene and later conceived a child.

Although the book threatens to challenge the very foundation of the Christian faith, the world did not witness widespread pandemonium. In comparison, reaction to the Pope’s comments resulted in violence, like the church attacks in Palestine, and possibly the fatal shooting of an Italian nun in Somalia.

Still, most may agree that disagreements from the Christian community about Brown’s book were far from lacking.

Instead of brute force, the world saw a flurry of books, forums and documentaries that countered what its practitioners hailed as fallacies about their faith.

This was a measured, intellectual neutralisation against a controversy that perhaps works far better than Muslims taking to the streets and burning effigies of Western symbolism. Christians who disagree with Brown’s book came out looking quite composed and mature. Rioting Muslims? Nought.

If Muslims continue reacting with similar forceful fervour to every controversy about Islam, they may possibly damage the image of the faith more than the controversy itself could.

With the Pope’s seemingly negative message, there is much merit in his wider call to reconcile faith and reason, a message that is germane to Muslims living in the modern scientific and technologically adept world.

Already a number of jarring developments in the Muslim world suggest that leaders have somewhat awakened to the realities that Muslims should embrace technology and science.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi describes an ‘‘enlightened Muslim’’ as someone who can harmonise Islamic traditions with human reasoning and science.

He also calls on Muslims to enhance their knowledge of science and technology.

Meanwhile, His Majesty Sultan Hj Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’iziddin called this month for the establishment of a second university. Local Islamic academics interviewed by The Brunei

Times expressed their wish for this to focus on not just Islamic disciplines but also science and technology in which Muslims once excelled.

History will reveal that the voice of reason in Muslim tradition is not a new phenomenon but one that was lost in a stirring battle of ideologies in the ninth century when a group of rationalists known as the Mu’tazilah were overpowered then ostracised politically by the traditionalists of their time who place greater weight on revelation more than reason.

But today, some scholars of Islam believe that the move to embrace rationalism in the Muslim world must take into account the ideas of the Mu’tazilah . All these suggest that contemporary progressive Muslim leaders unwittingly share the views of Pope Benedict to reconcile faith with reason.

But even if Muslims can get past his ‘‘insulting’’ comments, one must be cautious not to produce overzealous God-fearing scientists and technologists who may end up conducting experiments not for the betterment of mankind but to justify the tenets of their faith.

Already in the Muslim world, this is exemplified in the works of Turkish author HarunYahya, whose books are filled with instances on how science and nature proves Islam as ad-Din or The Way, thereby stoking a supremacist view of Islam.

To uncritical minds, ideas like his can create a divisive us (Muslims) versus them (non-Muslims) mentality in an interconnected globalised world where a mere spark can easily lead to widespread conflict.

To avoid this possibly decadent future, the Vatican, Muslim leaders and other religious elite must couch the enterprise of reconciling faith and reason not just in the intellectual pursuit of hard sciences, but also human sciences.

After all, an enlightened believer who can appreciate not just the logic of science and technology but also the aesthetics of philosophy and literature is less likely to take for granted God’s creation, much less desire to destroy them.