The Muslim Council of Britain, the largest Islamic body in the country, has demanded an immediate retraction. The extremist Muslim group Hizb-ut-Tahrir also condemned the Pope’s words. Imran Waheed, spokesman for the group, said: “The comments follow consistently negative, violent and extreme descriptions of Islam — the use of the term Islamo-fascist by George W Bush, and evil ideology by Tony Blair, and the gratuitous publication of the offensive Danish newspaper cartoons throughout Europe earlier this year.”
Ever since 9/11, unofficial sources I have spoken to in the Vatican have voiced fears of a strike on St Peter’s basilica and the Vatican City. Pilgrims entering St Peter’s Square now have to pass through x-ray checkpoints and last week Al-Qaeda-linked websites were indeed targeting the Vatican. One carries an image of the black flag of Islam flying over the apostolic palace, the Pope’s residence. A message posted by a senior Al-Qaeda figure said: “We are certain that the infidelity and tyranny of the Pope will only be stopped by a major attack.”
Inside the Vatican it is being said unofficially that Benedict was trying to pre-empt an aggressive letter aimed at the papacy by the president of Iran, which was why he cited the debate involving a Persian. Vatican sources say the Pope will clarify his words at his audience in St Peter’s Square today.
The editor of The Tablet, Catherine Pepinster, commented: “It seems surprising the Pope’s comments were not checked by one of his expert aides.”
The predicament of this Pope, however, is strangely anomalous. He was the theological backstop for so long that he presumably does not feel the need for advice. At the same time, there has been a significant shift within the Vatican’s governance that has seen a weakening of the department responsible for international affairs, the Secretariat of State.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, secretary of state under John Paul II and for more than a year under Benedict, might have been a restraining influence. But he has been something of a lame duck this past year in the expectation of his retirement at the age of 78.
Ironically the transition to his successor Cardinal Bertone took place before the weekend in the midst of the uproar. On Friday, while Muslim leaders united in outraged condemnation of the Pope, Bertone, Sodano and Benedict were downing truffles and sparkling wine to celebrate the handover.
Yet by any yardstick Benedict’s words have betrayed his long-term antipathy towards Islam. Vatican watchers are now remembering the unprecedented privilege he granted last year of an extended interview to the late Oriana Fallaci, an Italian Islamophobe.
A consistent theme of Benedict’s preaching as Pope has been the erosion of Christianity in Europe, and, by implication, the danger of the spread of Islam. He is thought also to oppose the inclusion of Turkey in the European Union.
The origins of the Pope’s abrasive comments date back to a seminar at his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo in September last year. Some 40 of his former students gathered to talk about Islam and Catholicism. The Pope is reported to have said dialogue with Islam was difficult. A Jesuit professor, Khalil Samir, who took part in the seminar, says Benedict deplored the fundamentalism of Islam and its rigid reading of texts without room for interpretation. Muhammad, the Pope said, was treated like a “tape recorder”, as he expressed the word of God directly, “which is absurd”.
The church and the papacy in particular have long had problems with the existence of other religions, let alone tolerance of them. It started with the crusades in the early Middle Ages, continued with the Reformation (the memory dies hard that the Guy Fawkes plot was a Catholic conspiracy to destroy the establishment of Protestant England). Through the 19th century the popes set their faces against the notion of religious freedom and separation of church and state. A succession of pontiffs, notably Pope Pius IX (1846-1878), declared that respect for other religions was a form of “insanity”.
A stunning historic U-turn occurred at the reforming Second Vatican Council of the mid-1960s. The church, after a battle royal between cardinals, finally endorsed a model of respect for other religions that looked similar to America’s respect for religious pluralism.
Catholic traditionalists, however, have never liked this tardy acceptance of religious difference: after all, how can you believe your Pope is infallible and that Catholicism holds the full content of truth if you grant that other religions, and other Christian denominations, are also an authentic path to salvation?
John Paul II, whose views on religious freedom were honed in communist Poland, went along with the new religious pluralism of Vatican II while it spelt out the right of Catholicism to exist in an atheistic state. That is, until he saw what happened to his native Poland after the fall of communism: McDonald’s, western music, pornography, abortion, swept through his beloved country.
Pluralism, the idea that people should be allowed to follow their own beliefs and value systems, or none at all, became in John Paul’s view a recipe for cultural relativism: “a new form of totalitarianism”, he called it. The answer was the single infallible magisterial truth proposed by Catholicism.
Through a quarter of a century of John Paul’s reign the theological underpinning of his statements was nuanced by none other than Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In 1999 it was Ratzinger who wrote a document for the entire world, albeit signed by John Paul, stating that all religions were defective other than the Catholic faith. There was outrage, but there was no retraction.
Whatever the Pope intended to impart to his audience at Regensburg, the effect has been to alienate rather than forge connections with Islam by pointing up what he sees to be a striking contrast between the two faiths.
The best that can be said in this instance is that he has played unintentionally into the hands of Islam’s critics, thus raising the likelihood of inter-religious violence.
The Muslim theologian Adnane Mokrani is insistent that the Pope has made a huge error of judgment: “In today’s climate it would have been much more productive to find common ground, inciting followers of both faiths to dialogue.”
Additional reporting: John Follain, Rome
