The Pope's Remarks

Recently the Pope for whatever unknown reason managed to inflame the Muslim world by quoting an obscure 14th century emperor of the Byzantine Empire. In his speech, delivered in Germany, the Pope quoted Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus. Palaeologus said “everything Mohammad brought was evil and inhuman such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The Pope has said he meant no offense or harm with the comment. The Pope comments have led to widespread protests and demonstrations against the Pope in many Muslim countries. Just when the uproar over cartoons depicting Mohammad as a terrorist had subsided the Pope goes and throws gasoline on the simmering embers that remain. It is beyond me how the Pope, who must be a somewhat learned man and theologian, would wrongly believe his comments wouldn’t provoke any backlash. Either the Pope doesn’t read the speeches that are prepared for him before he delivers them or else he lacks any understanding of the Muslim world. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to know that if you speak out about Islam and Mohammad it will cause a furor. Besides that, what business does the Pope have in criticizing another religion? A person of one faith is in no position to criticize another faith. Only people in that faith and culture have the right to criticize. There is plenty in Christianity for the Pope to criticize. Criticizing another religion borders on pandering to your base. If you speak out against a supposed evil religion, you can turn attention away from what people really want to discuss. You can draw attention away from scandal by distracting people by making another religion seem like a threat. The Pope is demonizing Islam. He is not interested in building bridges between faiths as his predecessor was. The Pope is a Yahwahist. He believes in the punishing, all-powerfully god of the old testament. His thinking is straight out of the 14th century. I guess that is why he would quote an obscure Byzantine emperor. The Pope in no way should be criticizing another religion. He fails to understand history and what happens when you criticize another’s religious views. Far too many times in the recent past have people criticized another’s religion with disastrous results. Sunnis criticize Shias and vice versa, Jewish criticize Muslims and vice versa, Hindus criticize Buddhist who criticize Muslims who criticize Christians and it goes on and on. I believe the problem isn’t about god but what people do in the name of their god. Christians believe that the only way to salvation is to accept that Jesus Christ is the savior and only through him can people get to heaven. Well, that leaves how many hundreds or millions of non-Christian in a lurch. How can they get to heaven if they don’t believe in Jesus Christ? Muslims have a different belief about how to get into heaven. If you don’t believe what Muslims believe how will you get to heaven? Each faith grew out of its own political, social, and religious reality hundreds to thousands of years ago. Each religion, when it was founded was created to meet the political, social, and religious needs of its audience. Mohammad needed to convince nomadic tribes living in a desert that his way was the right way. Early Christian needed to convince people living in the Roman world under Roman influence that Jesus was the way. The writings of each of these figures reflect those realities. All the books in the old testament are based on different political, social, and religious realities. Plus they are all myths created by nomads as they moved about a desert environment. The stories reflect the scientific understanding of that particular time. None of which is particularly relevant today. Science is the new religion. Belief should be based on what a person can see and experience not what an archaic text written anywhere from 8000 to 1600 years ago. I can accept that Jesus probably existed, was a charismatic teacher, and had some good things to say about how to treat people. What I have trouble accepting is the miracles he supposedly performed. Indications are that the gospels were based on stories that were circulating around the Mediterranean from Rome, Greece, Egypt, and Persia. The writers of the bible stories were smart and literate enough to copy and change the stories to make them fit their political, social, and religious realities. The same should be done today. The bible stories either, (a) need to be relegated to the dust bin of history, along with the god of the old testament and the god-man Jesus, or (b) reinterpreted to fit our current political, social, and scientific realities. If we reinterpret the stories to fit today’s reality, the stories become nothing more than myths like the stories of Zeus, Hades, Jupiter, Ossiris, etc. All of these gods have been discarded as human knowledge and scientific knowledge has expanded. Yahweh needs to be discarded, as does the god-man Jesus. If we strip away the miracles and religious underpinnings of the god-man Jesus, we are left with a humanitarian who preached love, tolerance, kindness, and compassion for others. And really isn’t that what we should all be doing, practicing love, kindness, compassion, and tolerance not sowing the seeds of hatred and distrust as the Pope has done.