Reply #7: It seems like a gratuitous swipe at Islam , to me

[muriel_volestrangler]

Benedict may now protest that he "did not mean ... to make that opinion his own in any way", but he never even attempted to make that clear in his original speech. He just quoted an obscure 14th century emperor, and let the quote stand, without any criticism of it, but developed his own thoughts from it. That is normally taken as acceptance of the original opinion as valid.

The subject of the speech was nothing to do with Islam; I can't see why Benedict wanted to talk about Islam, unless he just felt like criticising a rival religion. He has the right to do so; but it's undiplomatic. If he wanted an example to start his lecture, he could have done a lot more for harmony in the world than "remember that geezer from 600 years ago? He said Islam was just a ripoff, with some extra evil. Islam doesn't make sense to me. Now, about faith and reason, which Christianity has lots of ..." (readers of the British Private Eye magazine might read that last bit in the style of "A Taxi Driver Writes ...").

I don't agree that "the Pope basically implies that the transcendence belief leads to idolatry"; he just gave idolatry as an extreme example of what a transcendent god could demand of his followers, even if he had previously banned it (as in both Christianity and Islam).

If he did want a discussion about the relative rationality of Christianity and Islam, I bet a few Muslims would like to ask him how rational the doublethink required to hold the church-approved concepts of the Trinity is, compared with the "there is one God" of Islam.