Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been thinking over the whole kerfluffle concerning the recent comments of Pope Benedict to the students and professors at Regensburg University last week. In case you’ve not perused them, here is the text of His Holiness’ remarks.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, and your Maximum Leader presumes that none of his readers live under rocks, you know that Benedict XVI cited the 14th Century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus in his remarks. Emperor Manuel II was not a big friend of Islam and said as much. The Pope, by quoting the Emperor, is now being charged by Muslims around the world as not being a friend of Islam.
Your Maximum Leader is not surprised by anything that has transpired so far. He is not surprised by the entirety of what the Pope said. Nor is he surprised that one portion of it has been picked out and picked upon. Nor is he surprised that Muslims around the world are outraged.
In fact, it all seems a big formulaic don’t you think? Western leader says some unflattering thing about Islam in the context of other comments which are rather praisworthy. Muslims riot. Muslims burn things. Mslims threaten to (and sometimes do) start killing people to protest.
Lenin once wrote that “left-wing communism” was an “infantile disorder.” At what point can we call the “Islamic Street’s” propensity to riot over verbal slights an equally infantile disorder. Your Maximum Leader’s two year old has fewer tantrums than the “Islamic Street.”
Your Maximum Leader is, in a way, sad that Pope Benedict has felt the need to issue apologies and start The Vatican spin machine to mitigate the negative press around the world. Your Maximum Leader says that he is sad “in a way” because he doesn’t find the statement (or quotation as the case may be) offensive in the least. In fact, your Maximum Leader would prefer to mount a vigorous defense of the comments in context. If your Maximum Leader were Pope (a laughable supposition) he would say that he is saddened that Muslims around the world are incapable of rational discourse about their religion - which had a long history of inquiry until the modern age. Your Maximum Leader might further ask if there is a point to attempting dialogue when conversation, by definition, is a two way street. If every comment is greeted with rioting one can hardly expect to talk often…
Many, including your Maximum Leader’s best friend - Kevin the Big Hominid, point out the Pope’s history of not doing a good job of fostering interreligious dicussion. (Here and here) But your Maximum Leader must ask what is the purpose of such dialogue? What is the practical end of discussions between Catholics and Muslims? (Or for that matter Baptists and Jews, or Shintos and Zororastrians?) Assuming that the point of interreligious dialogue is not to attempt to convert one side to the other, then the only practical end of discussions is how can we all get along better? And the question of how we all get along better isn’t so much a religious issue as one of good manners and civility. For example, Catholics should agree that they were wrong to call Jews “Christ-killers,” offer a contrite apology, and never do it again; in return Jews should agree to politely ignore the Catholic faith. (Since your Maximum Leader can’t actually think of anything that Jews have done against Catholics. Further, your Maximum Leader seems to remember that Pope John Paul II did apologize to Jews for the many evils done against them in the name of the Catholic Church and Christian faith.)
So… Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure where to go from here. Jacques Chirac, while neither defending nor attacking the Pope, says that we shouldn’t say things that get Muslims agitated. Unfortunately, it appears as though nothing (of a critical manner at least) can be said which doesn’t agitate muslims. Guess there will not be a lot of dialogue going on.
Carry on.
