History Lessons for The Pope and George Bush II
WRITTEN BY A LIVING JEW IN ISRAEL, WHO IS AN ATHEIST AND A VERY POPULAR
COLUMNIST IS ISRAEL. IT CLEARS THE AIR OVER THE RECENT DEFAMATORY REMARKS THE
POPE MADE ABOUT ISLAM AND THE PROPHET. PLEASE SEND TO AS MANY PEOPLE AND GET
THEM EDUCATED.
Muhammad's Sword
by Uri Avnery
September 27, 2006
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 world-wide 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, the 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 May 29,
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 favorites 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 IS 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
re-conquered 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 50 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 Terrorism"--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.
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