Staff Editorial: Pope's words taken out of context

Last week, Pope Benedict XVI unwittingly brought the Catholic Church into recent global trends of religious tension and violence. In response to statements he made last Tuesday, al Qaeda militants in Iraq declared a war on the Church and burned an effigy of Benedict in an enraged protest. Also, on Sunday angry Muslims set fire to two Christian churches (though neither was Catholic) on Palestine's West Bank; on the same day an Italian nun in Somalia was murdered, also thought to be in response to the Pope's speech.

The source of all this anger is a 30-minute speech given at the University of Regensburg in which Benedict discussed the important role that reason should play in religious faith, and why theology belongs in universities. He described the origin of Christianity's emphasis on reason, and criticized what he sees as attempts by secularists to dismiss theology as unscientific and irrational, and by some theologians to remove reason from religious thought.

In leading up to his arguments, Benedict mentioned exactly what had got him thinking about these issues - a 14th century manuscript written by Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus about Islam and Christianity. Benedict quoted a part of the conversation in which Manuel II accuses Islam of lacking reason and says, "Show me just what Mohammed 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." He also makes mention of a statement by the editor of the transcript that quotes Muslim thinker Ibn Hazn, who believed that God, and faith in him, exist outside the realm of human reason.

Taking those points in context alongside the entire speech, it is clear that the Pope had no intention of attacking Islam as a religion, and the outrage surrounding his statements is misdirected. As Benedict has said, the statements he quoted do not represent his own beliefs. Second, the bulk of the speech discusses problems with modern and historical trends within Christianity and Islam is only addressed in those introductory comments. Though he first mentions an argument against reason made by one Islamic thinker, he later mentions several Christian figures and movements that he feels are guilty of similar things, such as Duns Scotus, the Protestant Reformation, and current attempts to return Christianity to its pre-Greek origin.

So how did those statements cause so much Muslim outrage? In addition to the fact that there are militants who will take any excuse to incite anger at the West, at least part of the blame rests with the popular media in America and elsewhere. Take, for example, a New York Times article that ran the following day. The reporter, Ian Fisher, begins by saying, "Pope Benedict XVI weighed in Tuesday on the delicate issue of rapport between Islam and the West: He said that violence, embodied in the Muslim idea of jihad, or holy war, is contrary to reason and God's plan, while the West was so beholden to reason that Islam could not understand it." He discusses the parts of the speech on Islam until his ninth paragraph, when he finally mentions what the speech as whole was really about.

The intentions of Fisher, and other journalists across the globe, are clear - by taking quoted statements far out of context and reporting them as the Pope's own opinion, a controversial (and therefore widely read) story was created out of what was in fact an intelligent and thoughtful rumination on centuries-old debates about faith and reason. Now people around the world are clamoring for the Pope to apologize for "his" views of Islam, and some are even turning to violent protests. True, there is a good chance that those violent Islamist groups would have gotten a hold of the speech and reinterpreted parts of it to suit their ends anyway, but having sensationalist news reporters do it for them certainly didn't hurt.