The Pope and Islam

The news this week has been dominated by the reaction to an academic lecture Pope Benedict gave in Germany, in which he quoted a 14th century Christian emperor who said that the Prophet Muhammad brought the world only evil and inhuman things. It was an unfortunate choice of quote for the Pope to use, and he should have realised the potential for this quote to be read out of context. What the Pope was attempting to say is that violence in the name of religion is totally unacceptable, whether that be by Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, etc (his exact words were violence was “incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul”.) Unfortunately people have focused on this one quote, and there have been angry scenes in a number of Muslim countries. The damage caused to Muslim and Christian relationships by this poor choice of quote (although not the Pope’s personal views) is extremely regrettable, especially in the current climate of fear and mistrust over the issue of terrorism and the Iraq war.

The trouble is that there are some radical Muslims (maybe only a minority, but they are there), in this country and abroad, who give Islam a very bad name. For example on the news tonight a small but vocal group of Muslims were shown protesting outside Westminster Cathedral, holding placards which were extremely offensive to Christians, their leader was quoted as saying anyone who insulted Mohamed and the Muslim faith became a legitimate target for reprisals. It was also reported that a number of churches in the Middle East have been attacked and burnt down, and that a nun in Somalia was shot dead (although it’s not clear if this is connected to the Pope’s comments). Violence in the name of religion (whatever that religion may be) is totally unacceptable, although sadly religion will always be susceptible to being hijacked by extremists to justify their own causes. Jesus taught, treat others the way you would like others to treat you, I hope that in time we will begin to see more of this put into practice. So that the rights and freedoms of all religious groups, wherever they are in the world will be respected and upheld, and that we can have healthy and intelligent debate, rather than having these angry protests on our streets, which does not do anything to promote religious understanding.