Muhammad's sword
Pope Benedict XVI in the service of George W. Bush
By Uri Avner
09/24/06 "Information Clearing House"; -- -- Since the days when Roman
emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the
emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.
Constantine the Great, who became emperor in the year 306 - exactly
1700 years ago - encouraged the practice of Christianity in the
empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split
into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the
West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded
that the emperor accept his superiority.
The struggle between the emperors and the popes played a central role
in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs.
Some emperors dismissed or expelled a pope, some popes dismissed or
excommunicated an emperor. One of the emperors, Henry IV, "walked to
Canossa", standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of
the Pope's castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his
excommunication.
But there were times when emperors and popes lived in peace with each
other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present
Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present emperor, George Bush II, there
exists a wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which
aroused a worldwide storm, went well with Bush's crusade
against "Islamofascism", in the context of the "clash of
civilizations";.
In his lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what
he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while
Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians
see the logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such
logic in the actions of Allah.
As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this
debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic
of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me
too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this "war of
civilizations";.
In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that
the Prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion
by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because
faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword
influence the soul?
To support his case, the Pope quoted - of all people - a Byzantine
emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At
the end of the 14th century, Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a
debate he had - or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt) - with an
unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the
emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his
adversary:
Show me just what Mohammed 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.
These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say
them? (b) Are they true? (c) Why did the present Pope quote them?
When Manuel II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire.
He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once
illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish
threat.
At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the
Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had
twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern
Empire. On 29 May 1453, only a few years after Manuel's death, his
capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul), fell to the Turks,
putting an end to the empire that had lasted for more than a thousand
years.
During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in
an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church.
There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to
incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to
start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving
politics.
In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the
present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the
Christian world against the mainly Muslim "Axis of Evil". Moreover,
the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time
peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that
object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.
Is there any truth in Manuel's argument?
The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and
renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts.
Therefore, he admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the
spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, Verse 256
(strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant Verse 257) which
says: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith."
How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply
argues that this commandment was laid down by the Prophet when he was
at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that
later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith.
Such an order does not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for
the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes - Christian,
Jewish and others - in Arabia, when he was building his state. But
that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for
territory, not for the spreading of the faith.
Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment
of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: how did
the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they
had the power to "spread the faith by the sword";?
Well, they just did not.
For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become
Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary,
Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman
administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and
other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman
rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to
become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.
True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks.
But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam
in order to become favourites of the government and enjoy the fruits.
In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim
and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle
Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by
the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country.
Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on
them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did
the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language
and the Muslim faith - and they were the forefathers of most of
today's Palestinians.
There no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the
Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a
bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until
almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the
great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets,
scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars
worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and
scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this
have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the
faith by the sword";?
What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics
reconquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of
religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a
cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And
where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon
their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms
in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all
over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east,
from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan
in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like
the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the
pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all
Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.
Why? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of
the "peoples of the book". In Islamic society, a special place was
reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal
rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll tax, but were
exempted from military service - a trade-off that was quite welcome
to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any
attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion - because
it entailed the loss of taxes.
Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel
a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for
fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and
tried many times "by the sword"; to get them to abandon their faith.
The story about "spreading the faith by the sword"; is an evil legend,
one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against
the Muslims - the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the
Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna.
I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these
fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a
Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to
study the history of other religions.
Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?
There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the
new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans
of "Islamofascism" and the "global war on terror" - when "terrorism"
has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a
cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world's oil
resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is
spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the
first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade.
The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the
dire consequences?
Uri Avnery is an Israeli author and activist. He is the head of the
Israeli peace movement, "Gush Shalom". http://zope.gush-
shalom.org/home/en
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