The Regensburg Effect:

 

The Open Letter from 38 Muslims to the Pope

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Instead of saying they are offended and demanding apologies, they express their respect for him and dialogue with him on faith and reason. They disagree on many points. But they also criticize those Muslims who want to impose, with violence, “utopian dreams in which the end justifies the means”

by Sandro Magister

ROMA, October 18, 2006 – One month after his lecture at the University of Regensburg, Benedict XVI received an “open letter” signed by 38 Muslim personalities from various countries and of different outlooks, which discusses point by point the views on Islam expressed by the pope in that lecture.

The letter came to pope Joseph Ratzinger through the Vatican nunciature in Amman, to which it was delivered by one of the signatories, prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, special advisor to the king of Jordan, Abdullah II.

The complete text of the letter, in English, has been available since Sunday, October 15, on the website of “Islamica Magazine,” a periodical published in the Unites States that holds the copyright to this document.

The letter is followed by the names and roles of the 38 main signatories, who may be joined by others.

The authors of the letter welcome and appreciate without reservation the clarifications made by Benedict XVI after the wave of protests that issued from the Muslim world a few days after the lecture in Regensburg, and in particular the speech that the pope addressed to ambassadors from Muslim countries on September 25, and also the reference made by cardinal secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone, in a note issued on September 16, to the conciliar document “Nostra Aetate.”

And not only that. They condemn with very strong words the assassination that took place in Somalia, in Muslim Mogadishu, of sister Leonella Sgorbati, thereby linking this to the protests that were at their peak at the time:

“We must state that the murder on September 17th of an innocent Catholic nun in Somalia – and any other similar acts of wanton individual violence – 'in reaction to' the lecture at the University of Regensburg, is completely un-Islamic, and we totally condemn such acts.”

The authors of the letter appreciate Benedict XVI’s desire for dialogue and take very seriously his theses. “Applaud” pope's “efforts to oppose the dominance of positivism and materialism in human life,” while contest him on other points, adding their reasons for their opposition.

In this sense, the letter signed by the 38 – together with the preceding essay by Aref Ali Nayed, previewed by www.chiesa on October 4 – goes towards what the pope meant to accomplish with his audacious lecture in Regensburg: to encourage, within the Muslim world as well, public reflection that would separate faith from violence and link it to reason instead. Because, in the pope’s view, it is precisely the “reasonableness” of the faith that is the natural terrain of encounter between Christianity and the various other religions and cultures.

A first point on which the letter from the 38 Muslims “reasons” with Benedict XVI concerns sura 2:256 of the Qur’an: “There is no compulsion in religion.” The authors of the letter assert that Mohammed formulated this commandment, not when he found himself “powerless and under threat” – which the pope maintains as “probable” in his lecture – but when he was in a position of strength, in Medina . And that he intended by this to appeal to Muslims, whenever they conquered a territory, “not to force another’s heart to believe.”

A second point on which the letter dwells concerns the transcendence of God. That Muslim doctrine holds that God is “absolutely transcendent,” as the pope asserts, is in the judgment of the 38 signatories “a simplification which can be misleading.” The eleventh-century Muslim author to whom the pope refers - Ibn Hazm - is in their view “a worthy but very marginal figure, who belonged to the Zahiri school of jurisprudence which is followed by no one in the Islamic world today.” It is not true – they write – that “the will of God is not bound to any of our categories,” that the God of Islam is a “capricious” God, and far less so that he could delight in bloodshed. God has many names in Islam, and his “clemency and mercy” have the greatest prominence: they are present in the sacred formula that the Muslims recite every day.

The third point is the use of reason. The authors of the letter write that Islamic thought has always wanted to avoid two extremes: the first is that of raising up analytic reason as the arbiter of truth, and the other is that of denying the capacity of the human intellect to address the ultimate questions. There is – they write – a harmony between the questions of human reason and the truths of Qur’anic revelation, “without sacrificing one for the other.”

The fourth point is holy war. The 38 signatories of the letter recall that the word “jihad” properly means “struggle in the way of God,” which is not necessarily war. Even Christ used violence when he chased the merchants from the temple. They sum up in this way Islam’s three “authoritative and traditional” rules on war:

– civilians are not approved targets;
– religious creed alone cannot make a person the object of an attack;
– Muslims can and must live peacefully beside their neighbors, although the legitimacy of self-defense and the maintenance of sovereignty remain valid principles.

So if some Muslims – they write – have ignored such well-established teaching on the limits of war, preferring to this “utopian dreams where the end justifies the means, they have done so of their own accord and without the sanction of God, His Prophet, or the learned tradition.”

The fourth point taken into consideration is forced conversion. As a political reality – write the authors of the letter – Islam certainly did spread in part by military conquest, “but the greater part of its expansion came as a result of preaching and missionary activity.” The commandment of the Qur’an, “no compulsion in religion,” must always hold true: the fact that some Muslims disobey this is “the exception that confirms the rule.” “We emphatically agree that forcing others to believe – if such a thing be truly possible at all – is not pleasing to God.”

The fourth point: the “new” – and moreover “evil and inhuman” – things that Mohammed is imagined to have brought, according to Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus as cited by Benedict XVI in the lecture in Regensburg . The 38 authors of the letter object that, according to Islamic doctrine, even before Mohammed “all the true prophets preached the same truth to different peoples at different times: the laws may be different, but the truth is unchanging.”

The sixth point discussed: the “experts.” The authors of the letter refuse to acknowledge as reliable experts on Islam the scholars cited by Benedict XVI in the Regensburg lecture: Theodore Khoury and Roger Arnaldez. In order for a true religious and intercultural dialogue to be established – as the pope appealed in Cologne in August of 2005 – they issue a call to “listen to the actual voices of those we are dialoguing with, and not merely those of our own persuasion.”

The seventh and last point: relations between Christianity and Islam. The authors of the letter point out that the tremendous following of the two religions – more than 55 percent of the world population – makes it such that the relationship between them is a decisive factor for peace. In Benedict XVI, they recognize an exceptionally influential role “in the direction of mutual understanding.” They cite with appreciation the words dedicated to Islam in the declaration “Nostra Aetate” of Vatican Council II. They cite with appreciation the words dedicated to Islam in the address delivered by John Paul II in Morocco in 1999, in the stadium of Casablanca filled with young Muslims. And they express their hope “to continue to build peaceful and friendly relationships based upon mutual respect, justice, and what is common in essence in our shared Abrahamic tradition, particularly ‘the two greatest commandments’ in Mark 12:29-31: ‘The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these’.”

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And here follows the alphabetic list of the 38 signatories, with their respective roles. It should be noted that they belong to many nations and to different currents of Islam – the Iranian ayatollah Muhammad Ali Taskhiri, for example, is a Shiite:

1. Abd Allah bin Mahfuz bin Bayyah, King Abd Al-Aziz University, Saudi Arabia; former vice-president and minister, Mauritania

2. Muhammad Said Ramadan Al-Buti, dean of Department of Religion, University of Damascus , Syria

3. Mustafa Cagrici, grand mufti of Istanbul , Turkey

4. Mustafa Ceric, grand mufti and head of ulema of Bosnia and Herzegovina

5. Ravil Gainutdin, grand mufti of Russia

6. Nedzad Grabus, grand mufti of Slovenia

7. Ali Mashhour bin Muhammad bin Salim bin Hafeez, imam of the Tarim Mosque and head of Fatwa Council, Tarim , Yemen

8. Umar bin Muhammad bin Salim bin Hafeez, dean of Dar Al-Mustafa, Tarim , Yemen

9. Farouq Hamadah, Mohammad V University , Morocco

10. Hamza Yusuf Hanson, founder and director of Zaytuna Institute, California , USA

11. Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun, grad mufti of Syria

12. Izz Al-Din Ibrahim, advisor for cultural affairs, prime ministry, United Arab Emirates

13. Omar Jah, secretary of the Muslim Scholars Council , Gambia

14. Ali Zain Al-Abideen Al-Jifri, founder and director of Taba Institute, United Arab Emirates

15. Ali Jumuah, grand mufti of Egypt

16. Abla Mohammed Kahlawi, dean of Islamic and Arabic Studies, Al-Azhar University , Egypt

17. Mohammad Hashim Kamali, dean of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, Malaysia

18. Nuh Ha Mim Keller, Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought , Jordan ; Shaykh in the Shadhili Order, USA

19. Ahmad Al-Khalili, grand mufti of Oman

20. Ahmad Kubaisi, founder of the Ulema Organization, Iraq

21. Muhammad bin Muhammad Al-Mansouri, marja' of Zeidi Muslims, Yemen

22. Abu Bakr Ahmad Al-Milibari, secretary-general of the Ahl Al-Sunna Association, India

23. Abd Al-Kabir Al-Alawi Al-Mudghari, director-general of the Bayt Mal Al-Qods Al-Sharif Agency, former minister of religious affairs, Morocco

24. Ahmad Hasyim Muzadi, chairman of the Nahdat Al-Ulema, Indonesia

25. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic studies, George Washington University, Washington DC , USA

26. Sevki Omerbasic, grand mufti of Croatia

27. Mohammad Abd Al-Ghaffar Al-Sharif, secretary-general of the ministry of religious affairs, Kuwait

28. Muhammad Alwani Al-Sharif, head of the European Academy of Islamic Culture and Sciences, Brussels , Belgium

29. Iqbal Sullam, vice general-secretary, Nahdat Al-Ulema, Indonesia

30. Tariq Sweidan, director-general of the Risalah Satellite Channel, Saudi Arabia

31. Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, prince, chairman of the Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Jordan

32. Muhammad Ali Taskhiri, ayatollah, secretary-general of the World Assembly for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thoughts, Iran

33. Naim Trnava, grand mufti of Kosovo

34. Abd Al-Aziz Uthman Al-Tweijri, director-general of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Morocco

35. Muhammad Taqi Uthmani, vice president, Dar Al-Ulum, Karachi, Pakistan

36. Muhammad Al-Sadiq Muhammad Yusuf, grand mufti of Uzbekistan

37. Abd Al-Hakim Murad Winter, University of Cambridge, Divinity School, director of the Muslim Academic Trust, UK

38. Muamer Zukorli, mufti of Sanjak , Bosnia

 

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It is worthwhile to recall that even the most authoritative leader of Shiite Islam, the Iraqi grand ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, has expressed toward Benedict XVI the respect and attention that can also be found in the letter of the 38. And he did this much sooner. In the most violent days of the anti-papal protest that exploded in the Muslim world, representatives of Al-Sistani visited on two occasions the secretary of the Vatican nunciature in Baghdad , monsignor Thomas Hlim Sbib, to express his friendship toward Benedict XVI and his desire for a meeting with him in Rome .