Chowrangi

Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics, began his lecture at the University of Regensburg by quoting from a 14th-century dialogue between the Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologos, and a Persian scholar. In a passage on the concept of holy war, Benedict recited a passage of what he called “startling brusqueness,” in which Manuel questioned the teachings of Prophet Muhammad (saw). The remarks were derogatory and presented the teachings of Islam as ‘evil’.

Appartenlty, Benedict was aware of what he is saying and what impact it would have. That’s why he termed it as ’startling brusqueness’. Benedict, it seems, is on a mission to clean ‘filth’ from the church and unite chrisitain factions against Islam.

As John Hooper of the Guardian puts it:

The key word in the Vatican now is “reciprocity”. The leadership of the Roman Catholic church is increasingly of the opinion that a meaningful dialogue with the Muslim world is not possible while Christians are denied religious freedom in Muslim states.

One of the Pope’s earliest personnel moves was to send Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, the Vatican’s leading expert on Islam, to Cairo as the Holy See’s envoy to the Arab League. The department he left behind, the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, has been absorbed into the Vatican’s “culture ministry”.

That reshuffle is one of several major changes effected by Pope Benedict. With what, for the Vatican, is uncharacteristic haste, he has put new men in several top jobs including the secretariat of state. He has set a new agenda for the Vatican whose new concerns include not only relations with the Islamic world but also a redoubled attempt to heal the breach with Orthodox Christianity and a drive to assert the role of God in the processes of creation and evolution.

At the same time - and in contrast to the approach of his predecessor - Benedict has begun to deliver on his pledge to drive the “filth” from the church. In May, in a singularly public and humiliating manner, he disciplined one of the church’s most influential priests, the head of the Legionnaires of Christ movement, who had been accused of sexual abuse.

This is not the first time Benedict said something against Islam and Muslims. In 2004 when he was still the Vatican’s top theologian, he spoke out against Turkey’s joining the European Union, because Turkey, as a Muslim country was “in permanent contrast to Europe.”

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