{"id":5497,"date":"2006-10-01T11:22:42","date_gmt":"2006-10-01T11:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/regensburg-redux.html"},"modified":"2006-10-01T11:22:42","modified_gmt":"2006-10-01T11:22:42","slug":"regensburg-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/regensburg-redux.html","title":{"rendered":"Regensburg, Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

We could head many posts with that title, but just for today, this AsiaNews essay by Jesuit Samir Khalil Samir. <\/a> A bio from something Magister reprinted earlier this year from him:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The author of the essay, Samir Khalil Samir, an Egyptian Jesuit, is a professor of Islamic studies and of the history of Arab culture at the Universit\u00e9 Saint-Joseph in Beirut and at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome; he is the founder of the Centre de Recherche Arabes Chr\u00e9tiennes and president of the International Association for Christian Arabic Studies. In September of 2005 he participated, at Castel Gandolfo, in a study meeting with Benedict XVI on the concept of God in Islam.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From the AsiaNews piece:<\/a><\/p>\n

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At least 99% of those who protested have not even read the speech as yet. Yesterday I took part in a broadcast on Iranian television with two imams, a Palestinian Sunni and an Iranian Shiite. They all told me they had read the speech in Arabic two days after it was given. But this was not true: the translation into Arabic was prepared only eight days later, by a friend who put it on his private site. When I tried to explain the meaning of the entire text, they kept quoting the famous phrase of Manuel II Paleologus, like a script. Even the pope has been used to hit out at the west. Usually, Muslims hesitate to attack the pope, even if the Catholic Church is always perceived alongside the West. Even in that broadcast on Iranian television, Benedict XVI, Bush, Blair, Merkel, Israel, Zionists and so on, were thrown together, accused of \u201cconspiring against Islam\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<snip><\/em><\/p>\n

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Islam\u2019s no.1 problem today is that of violence. Yesterday on television, the Iranian imam said Zarqawi and Bin Laden were only \u201cterrorists\u201d, they did not represent Islam because \u201cno one follows them\u201d. But this is another falsehood. A survey conducted by al-Jazeera<\/em> on \u201cwhat do you think about Bin Laden?\u201d revealed that 50% of those interviewed backed Ban Laden, while the other half rejected him.<\/p>\n

The problem of violence of Islam cannot be put off. It also affects peace on the planet. Today, many wars in the west and in Asia are caused precisely by Muslims who want autonomy, a state for themselves. It is enough to cite Bosnia, Thailand, the Philippines, Kosovo, Kashmir, Nigeria… to say nothing of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Wherever there is a Muslim minority concentrated in an area where it becomes the majority, a separatist war is quick to break out. It should be noted that violence is practiced mostly against their fellow members of the faith, Muslims. Just look at violence in Iraq, or in Pakistan, where Sunnis and Shiites attack each other to the point of striking mosques, their most sacred places. In Algeria, in the name of the Koran and the Prophet, nearly 100,000 people were killed in recent years… <\/p>\n

But when violence is committed in the name of God, this is a blasphemy, an offence against God. And this is what the pope was talking about. A text attributed to Muhammad says: \u201cTake the sentiments, the customs of God\u201d (takhallaq\u00fb bi-akhl\u00e2q All\u00e2h<\/em>) [the same expression we use to translate St Paul: \u201cHave the same sentiments of Jesus Christ\u2026\u201d]. There is the need, then, for Islam to rethink its relationship with violence, to take on the \u201csentiments\u201d of God. Therefore the pope insisted: \u201cViolence is contrary to the nature of God\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We could head many posts with that title, but just for today, this AsiaNews essay by Jesuit Samir Khalil Samir. A bio from something Magister reprinted earlier this year from him: The author of the essay, Samir Khalil Samir, an Egyptian Jesuit, is a professor of Islamic studies and of the history of Arab culture…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nRegensburg, Redux - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/regensburg-redux.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Regensburg, Redux - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We could head many posts with that title, but just for today, this AsiaNews essay by Jesuit Samir Khalil Samir. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}