Keywords
Then the three paragrafos that relate to Islam in the speech of Benedict XVI:
I remembered all this when I read the recently published by Professor Theodore Khoury (M nster) dialogue that the learned Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologos, perhaps during the winter of 1391 in Ankara, had with an educated Persian on Christianity and Islam and the truth of both. It was probably the emperor himself who set down during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402, this dialogue. Thus explains why his arguments are reported in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian. The dialogue addresses the scope of the structures of faith contained in the Bible and the Koran and stops especially with the image of God and man, but also necessary in the relationship between “three laws” or three orders life: the Old Testament, New Testament and the Koran. I would like to play in this conference a single argument “nothing more than marginal in the structure of dialogue ‘, in the context of the issue of” faith and reason “has fascinated me and that will serve as a starting point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh symposium (controversy) edited by professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of yijad (holy war). Surely the Emperor knew that Sura 2, 256 is written: “No compulsion in things ugly.” It is one of the suras of the initial period, in which Muhammad did not have the same power and even threatened. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without dwelling on individuals, such as the difference in treatment between those with the Libro ” and to “unbelievers”, a surprisingly sharp addresses his interlocutor with just the central question about the relationship between religion and violence, general, saying: “Show me what Muhammad has also brought up again and you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his directive to spread by the sword the faith predicaba . The emperor also explains in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God is not with blood, not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. So, who wants to bring another person to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly and not resort to violence or threats’ To convince a reasonable soul, one should not use the muscles or instruments for beating or any other medium that can threaten a person with death … The statement in this decisive argument against conversion through violence is not acting in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes that the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by the Greek philosophy, this statement is obvious. For Muslim teaching, however, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not linked to any of our categories, even that of rationality. In this context, Khoury quotes a work of the famous French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who revealed that IBH Send us say that God is not conditioned even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige it to reveal the truth. If his will, the man should even practice idolatry.
Here is opened in the understanding of God and thus the concrete realization of the religion, a dilemma that today we have a very direct challenge.
Benedict XVI
