There are reasons why the Muslim world is so sensitive to the pontiff, writes Patsy McGarry
The impression that Pope Benedict XVI launched something of a broadside against Islam in his talk at Regensburg in Germany last Tuesday is way off the mark. The reaction of the Muslim world to that address has been, to say the least, entirely disproportionate, if not wholly misplaced.
Indeed the fact that it took until yesterday for such reaction to set in raises its own questions, just as did the fact that it took four months for Islamic reaction following publication of the Danish cartoons of Muhammad to take off in the Muslim world earlier this year.
In both instances Islamic religious leaders have played a leading role. Yesterday was the Muslim equivalent of the sabbath, allowing imams a platform from which to express their outrage.
To begin, Pope Benedict was not making personal comment about holy war. He was quoting the words of Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus in the course of a profoundly philosophical, though readily accessible 3,900-word address on Faith, Reason and the University, which he described as "a critique of modern reason from within".
The address was intended as an argument for more dialogue between religions, and between belief and the secular world. As an instance of such past discussion he referred to a 1391 dialogue between emperor Manuel II Paleologus and "an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both".
The emperor, the Pope recalled, had said to his interlocutor: "Show me just what Muhammad 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." Pope Benedict indicated personal reservation about the emperor's style of expression, which, he said, was made with "a startling brusqueness" and delivered "so forcefully".
Indeed his references to this dialogue between the emperor and his Persian interlocutor were essentially at a tangent to the core of his talk, which argued that "theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith", as he put it.
All that said, one would have expected the Pope as Pope to be aware that while, as a professor before an academic audience the recollection of such medieval observations about Islam was justified in the context of his thesis, he no longer has such luxury.
And the Muslim world has acute sensitivities, as illustrated yesterday, where this particular Pope is concerned.
There are reasons for this.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict declared in his Dominus Iesus document, published in 2000, of all other religions: "It is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation."
That particularly offended Muslims and Jews.
In August 2004 he overtly opposed Turkish entry to the EU because it is a majority Muslim country with Muslim roots. In an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro he said: "In the course of history, Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe. Making the two continents identical would be a mistake. It would mean a loss of richness, the disappearance of the cultural to the benefit of economics," he said.
He also argued forcefully for an explicit acknowledgement of Europe's Christian roots in the preamble to the proposed European constitution.
Despite all of this, last September Turkey invited Pope Benedict to visit there, which he is scheduled to do in November. That invitation arose not from any great magnanimity on the part of the Turks, but was more or less foisted on them.
Earlier last year Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, head of the world's 300 million-strong Orthodox Church, invited Pope Benedict to visit him there last November.
To forestall that visit the Turkish authorities invited him to visit this year. There can be no doubt this Pope is devoted to a particular idea of Europe, which he sees as owing its character and values to the Judeo-Christian-Greek tradition.
It would also be expected that the Pope would be more careful when, even indirectly, drawing attention to the violent spread of Islam by the sword, a fact of history, no matter how outraged the Muslim world may be at such reference.
The Pope, you can be sure, is aware that the spread of religion by the sword is not peculiar to the history of Islam. He need only recall how Catholicism was spread in Central and South America.