Pope Benedict's address last Tuesday at the Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg was on "Faith, Reason and the University".
He said he had recently read "part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam and the truth of both." The emperor had touched on the theme of holy war.
"The emperor must have known that surah 2,256 reads: 'There is no compulsion in religion'. According to the experts, this is one of the surahs of the early period, when Muhammad was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Koran, concerning holy war.
"Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the 'Book' and the 'infidels', he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached'."
Pope Benedict continued: "The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain 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', he says, 'is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats . . . To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death'."
Ending the quote, the Pope observed: "The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature."
He recalled that the editor of an edition of the dialogues he had recently read, Prof Theodore Khoury, observed: "For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality."
He noted that Prof Khoury quoted a work of noted French Islamist R Arnaldez, "who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry."
Pope Benedict concluded by again quoting the emperor: " 'Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God', said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God . . . It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures."
