Church in the World

Muslim clerics answer the Pope

An international group of 38 Muslim clerics and scholars who represent "all eight schools of thought and jurisprudence in Islam" have thanked Pope Benedict for distancing himself from controversial remarks he recently made about their religion.

But in an unprecedented joint letter on 12 October - made public on Saturday 14 October in Los Angeles-based Islamica Magazine - the religious leaders are also highly critical of the Pope for "mistakes and oversimplifications" in the way he portrayed Islam in a lecture he gave last September in Germany.

"While we applaud your efforts to oppose the dominance of positivism and materialism," the Muslim scholars write, "we must point out some errors in the way you mentioned Islam as a counterpoint to the proper use of reason, as well as some mistakes in the assertions you put forward in support of your argument."

Just a day after the text appeared in Islamica Magazine the Vatican announced that the Pope would definitely make his long-planned four-day visit to Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country that is seeking to become a member of the European Union. Significantly, one of the signatories of the three-page letter was the Grand Mufti of Istanbul. Others included the Grand Muftis from Egypt, Russia, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Slovenia, Uzbekistan and Oman. A woman scholar signed, as did leaders of the Shia community and Muslim scholars in the West. 

While the 38 Muslim spiritual leaders say they want to enter a dialogue with the Pope on religious issues, they criticise his Regensburg speech for drawing information on Islam from two Catholic scholars - Theodore Khoury and Roger Arnaldez - who they say are not endorsed by Muslims.

"It seems to us that a great part of the object of interreligious dialogue is to strive to listen to and consider the actual voices of those we are dialoguing with, and not merely those of our own persuasion," they say. In their letter the Muslim scholars also criticise Pope Benedict's reference to holy war: "We would like to point out that ‘holy war' is a term that does not exist in Islamic languages. Jihad, it must be emphasised, means struggle, and specifically struggle in the way of God." And in a veiled reference to the Christian "just war" doctrine, they say: "If a religion regulates war and describes circumstances where it is necessary and just, that does not make that religion warlike, any more than regulating sexuality makes a religion prurient." The authors of the letter say they "totally condemn" the killing of the Italian nun in Somalia and all other violent reactions to the Pope's Regensburg lecture as "completely un-Islamic".

The letter expresses gratitude for the Second Vatican Council's teaching on Christian-Muslim relations, the efforts that were made in the field under Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict's pledge to continue in this vein.

Officials from the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue were scheduled to hold a press conference yesterday, 20 October, to present the Pope's annual message to Muslims for the end of Ramadan.

n A group of Capuchin Franciscans near the northern Italian city of Genoa has offered a piece of its own property to the area's Muslims as a way to move the controversial construction of a mosque away from a Catholic neighbourhood. Under the plan, the foundation Sorriso Francescano would concede a segment of land adjacent to its rural friary in exchange for the proposed construction site. There are an estimated 1.2 million Muslims in Italy and the mosque near Genoa would be the county's third largest after those in Rome and Milan.