My God’s better than your God… 10 comments

19 Sep 2006 @ 00:09, by D Someone ought to make it a song or a poem. Actually someone did (here): My god’s better than your god, My special book tells me so, It tells me how to think, who to love, And how my life should go. (…) My god’s better than your god, Yours has a silly name, And your book is stupid, Really dumb and lame. I remember vividly a scene from my childhood when one of my schoolmates in primary school (the only Muslim kid in the entire classroom) burst into tears in the middle of a class. Upon investigating what happened, the institutor found out that one of the other kids seated next to him had made some derogatory remark about Allah. Upon which the teacher had the kid stand up and challenged him to explain in front of the whole class in what he thought HIS God was any better than his classmate’s God. The kid was pretty embarrassed already at this point by the outburst he had created and chose to apologize to his classmate instead. I am reminded of that scene as I reflect upon the recent controversy generated over the words of a major religious figure. It is always a strange thing indeed when children behave with wisdom and wise men behave childishly. In a speech in Germany, last week Pope Benedict XVI, formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, quoted a 14th century Christian emperor as referring to elements of the Muslim faith as “evil and inhuman”. Even though Pope Benedict XVI has not, to this date, apologized for his comment, he later on tempered his offensive remark in a follow up speech in which he insisted that the quotation “in no way” reflected his personal thoughts on the matter. Why, then, did he use the quotation in the first place? One can only wonder. Especially when this comes as such a shocking contrast with his strong condemnation of the Mohammed cartoons earlier on this year, when he had expressed the view that "in the international context we are living at present, the Catholic Church continues convinced that, to foster peace and understanding between peoples and men, it is necessary and urgent that religions and their symbols be respected.” What happened? It is, of course, no secret that among Joseph Ratzinger's better-published positions is "a sense that Catholicism is in competition with Islam": “In a highly controversial document published six years ago, when he was still head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger wrote that only the Roman Catholic Church provides the means for salvation and that followers of non-Christian religions are 'gravely deficient.'” ("Pope Benedict's Islam blunder undermines dialogue" by Nicholas Rigillo, Sep 18, 2006 link) Well, no big surprise, here. Still, this new development is a broad departure from the interfaith strategy carried out for decades by his predecessor John Paul II who always stressed the “common faith” that unites Muslims, Christians and Jews under one God. One may wonder in what this return to middle age obscurantism (literally so, in view of the quoted material) and this seemingly revived antagonism toward Islam are very different from the Vatican's attitudes toward European Jews during the middle age or, more recently, during the early part of the twentieth century? As the Bush administration pursues what most in the Islamic international community view as a latter-day Christian crusade, it is little wonder that Pope Benedict XVI’s anti-Mohammedan citation appears to fit right in with the picture and is perceived as much more than a communications mistake---mistakes are seldom perceived as “accidental” from men of this stature, as they seldom are. As it is, the remark stands as yet one more provocation and plays in the hands of the button pushers, those, both at home (the Bush doctrine) and abroad (Radical Islamism), who are seeking to make their dream of a “war of civilizations” a self-fulfilling prophecy. So much for fostering “peace and understanding between peoples and men.”

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