Footnote to regression September 28, 2006

SOME friends have asked me what I think of the furor involving the Pope. There seems no escaping the subject, after all.

Mona Siddiqui, the director of the Centre for the Study of Islam in Glasgow University offers some very good insights about it, which I share fully. He is not sparing in his criticism of fellow Muslims. "As a Muslim I remain perplexed. Why are Muslims magnifying every incident to the level of a global conflict? Adulation and veneration of the Prophet may be laudable qualities but . the ease with which marches are mobilized and threats directed are symptoms of a community not only feeling under siege but slightly reveling in their victim status."

But he is unsparing in his criticism of the Pope as well: "I'm sure that Pope Benedict did not deliberately intend to offend the Prophet in particular. But as someone who was previously the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, he is not naive and must have known that his speech could be contentious and open to all sorts of interpretations. This incident is not about defending freedom of speech . it is about recognizing that pitting one faith against another to show the superiority of one and the deficiencies of the other is a dangerous and arrogant exercise. Both Christianity and Islam have blood on their hands."

He has very sage advice for people of his faith: "Muslims must learn that differing viewpoints and multiple voices are the very essence of civil society. Even when the viewpoint touches on something as sacred as the Prophet and his legacy, responses must be dignified and respectful. This would reflect the true essence of Islam; calling for revenge and retribution is doing little more than proving all the critics right."

I agree with the sentiment. I respect religion, but I am not a great fan of religions that cannot separate Church and State. That is an open invitation to intolerance. That was the case with Christianity not too long ago, which kept the sun revolving around the earth. Indeed, I am not a great fan of religions that construe difference as heresy and punish itharshly. Lest we forget, Salman Rushdie still has a "fatwa," or death sentence, hanging on his head for writing "The Satanic Verses," courtesy of that modern-day caricature of a religious fanatic, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Of course, Christians too have their share of fanatics – none better than Pat Robertson, the preacher who wants duly elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez murdered. But it's quite another thing when the death sentence carries with it the backing of the State -- as it does with Iran, its government lifting the fatwa against Rushdie in compliance with Britain's precondition for restoring normal relations but reimposing it soon afterward. That deserves the condemnation of the world. Intolerance may not invoke religious tolerance.

That said, nothing may justify either the uncalled-for remarks of the Pope about Islam. I am not a great fan of Benedict either, and find comparing him to his predecessor, John Paul II, not unlike comparing Martin Luther King to George W. Bush. Pope Benedict and his supporters have repeatedly explained that the offending passage about Islam, coming from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor, was meant to highlight the theme that faith and reason are not incompatible, or indeed that holy wars are not holy at all, they are incompatible with true faith. But surely even Popes must know that meaning comes not just from the text itself, or from what is explicitly said, but from the context in which something is said. If you are an imam, and you quoted a Roman emperor saying the Jews were a people who thought nothing of butchering others, including their own, while Israel was busy invading Lebanon, you won't be able to explain that away as a historical footnote.

The Pope's supporters have said that, unfortunately, the Pope is not a PR dream, he is a PR nightmare. But this is more than a PR problem. Benedict isn't just the Pope, he is a Pope who has been at pains to reconvert Europe -- and not quite incidentally halt the advance of Islam – by demonstrating the superiority of Christianity. He is a Pope who, asSiddiqui points out, headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which not quite incidentally, too, traces its roots to the Inquisition. It was in that capacity that Benedict, then a.k.a. Joseph Ratzinger, sought to stamp out religious or ideological impurities within the Catholic Church itself, notably in the form of the Theology of Liberation that the Latin American bishops in particular were ardently espousing.

And if all that wasn't enough, Benedict's quote of a medieval emperor, which comes very early on his speech-I have this image of his audience's jaw dropping in disbelief-strikes a monumental contrast with one of his predecessor's brightest moments, when Pope John Paul II apologized to the world for the atrocities Christianity wreaked during the last two millennia. Islam and Christianity do have blood on their hands. The thrust of John Paul II's papacy was ecumenism, or trying to bring out what was best in all religions. The thrust of Benedict's papacy, at least so far, seems the opposite, which is pointing to the worst in other religions, and which is the worst aspect of Christianity itself, the mountain of bones of presumed heretics being fierce proof of it.

Completely ironically, the one who seems to inherit in part John Paul II's frame of mind is Bill Clinton who, after lambasting Fox in an interview by Fox itself last week, later told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the biggest problem in the world today is "the illusion that our differences matter more than our common humanity."

What can one say? Sometimes asceticism sucks and BJs improve the mind.

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