Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Violence in opposition to criticism of faith is unreasonable

Pope Benedict is trying to engage Muslims in a dialogue about the unreasonableness of spreading their faith through violence. As he stated in his address and along with the Byzantine emperor he quotes, he believes that,

The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God," he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats."

I, along with the Pope, believe that Muslims who express opposition to any criticism of their faith or practice of their faith through violence and threats are being unreasonable.

Greg Strange in this Opinion piece from September 16 at Blogcritics.org, echoes my sentiments:

Muslims Worldwide Outraged by Pope Benedict's Comments; Here We Go Again

Here we go again with another outburst from the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. Muslims worldwide are angry again, this time at (Can you guess who? Drum roll, please. . .) the Pope!

Muslims are angry over some remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI during a lecture at a German university. The Vatican later said that the Pope did not intend the remarks to be offensive, but you know how that goes. Anyway, here are some excerpts from the speech. As a sort of amusing exercise, see if you can pick out the parts that, once again, have Muslims worldwide having conniption fits.
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See also today's post, "Jihad: internal striving for righteousness or external violence against 'infidels'?" on my blog, "Crusaders for Truth".

posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 9:25 AM