Rather than criticising Islam, the Pope is actually offering it a helping hand by suggesting that it do away with the cycle of violence. He also asks Islam not to leave the cycle of “Reason” or better still, he urges it to engage Christianity in a dialogue for reasons related to ethics.
T
he Middle Ages were the Golden Age of the Muslim world. Why? Because at that time a true humanism based on Greek thinking had developed in the lands of Islam. Upon the request of caliphs, Arab and Syriac Christians translated into Arabic everything that was known by and about Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Anaxagoras and the whole of traditional philosophy. In the field of medicine, Hunayn Ibn Ishaq, a Christian who died in 873 AD, translated all the works of Hippocrates and Galen from Greek into Arabic.
For centuries Christian translators acted as teachers for Muslim scholars. Through them Hellenistic thinking was integrated into Arab, Persian, Turkish and other cultures. And it is against this background that Islam experienced its ‘Golden Age’, an age that saw thinkers like Averroes flower. We Arabs know that this was the most beautiful period in Islam’s history, which ended in the 12th century.
Many Muslim thinkers today realise that an Islamic Renaissance today requires looking back at the world of Medieval ideas. In fact, we must heed the Pope’s suggestions; we must face, assimilate, and evaluate modern thinking the way Christian translators and then Muslim scholars did in the Middle Ages.
Today Islam is tempted to reject Western culture as a whole dismissing it as “pagan” (which is partly true). However, this means failing to separate the wheat from the chaff.
As a great scholar, the Pope has dared to do so. With great acumen he has said yes to Reason, but one that is not robbed of its spiritual content; yes to enlightenment but no to its anti-religious version.
The Pope is proposing a universal dialogue open to all religions as well as agnostics based on a “broader” definition of Reason. For this reason, I want to tell my Muslim friends: Before talking, read. When you have read, think and try to understand. Even we Christians can have a hard time trying to grasp what the Pope says.
Fr. Samir makes the other very useful point that it is highly doubtful that anyone who has uttered any kind of protest about what the Pope has said from the Muslim end has even read what he said.
Incidentally, that photo was from the General Audience of 3/1, Ash Wednesday of this year – We Were There.
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