Don't Know Nothin' 'Bout History

From Remarks by Pope Prompt Muslim Outrage by Anthony Shadid on A1:

The criticism of the pope's remarks was often twofold: at the reference of the prophet Muhammad's legacy as "evil and inhuman" and at the idea that Islam was spread by the sword. Much of the conversion that followed the prophet's life in the 7th century was a gradual, centuries-long process that left a remarkable degree of diversity -- albeit faded -- in parts of the Muslim world.

That's a nice weird paean to multiculturalism or something, but the history of Islam's rapid and effective growth is the history of conquest. Must we pretend otherwise? Does Shadid? Do Muslims? 

History professor Thomas Madden at Crisis magazine, writing in 2002:

With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed’s death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt—once  the most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian  since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East....

Mohammed himself wielded the sword. This is elementary. It is the foundation of the problem: The Koran is filled with appeals for jihad intended in a very non-symbolic, sword-wielding way and modeled after the example of, what's his name, Mohammed.

Catholic blogger Amy Welborn quotes Italian Muslim commentator Magdi Allam:

To deny the historical reality is simply foolish, and it can generate nothing but foolishness....

The considerations referred to by the Pope, citing the Byzantine emperor Manuel Paleologus II, concerning the spread of Islam by the sword, whether on the part of Mohammed within the Arabian Peninsula or on the part of his successors in the rest of the world (with just a few exceptions), are an incontrovertible historical fact. Testimony to the fact comes from the Koran itself and from the reality that the entire Byzantine empire to the East and South of the Mediterranean passed to Islam, plus the successive expansion northward into Europe and eastward into Asia...

"Passing to Islam" and "expansion northward" in the sense of victorious armies.

This just in: Two West Bank Churches Hit By Firebombs Over Pope Comments.

Firebombs after comments. That about sums it up.

What was the point of Pope Benedict's address, by the way? We can safely assume that virtually none of the deeply offended outraged protesters read his address, and if the Post's Shadid did, he shows no signs of having absorbed it.

Faith, Reason and the University examines the damage that results when the first is divorced from the second. Most of it dwells on the results of divorcing faith and reason in Christianity and the West. Maybe the central part of this argument is the indispensable role of Greek (Hellenic) thought on the formation of Christianity. Faith and reason are not merely compatible, Benedict is saying; their compatibility is essential to truth. Benedict references three stages of "de-hellenization," falsely divorcing Christianity from both the stamp of hellenistic reason and the truth of Jesus Christ as the revealed Son of God. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a [merely] humanitarian moral message. Here endeth my brief layman's gloss on an address written by the Vicar of Christ for an assembly at the University of Regensburg.

Shadid boils this down to the following:

The pope began his lecture at the University of Regensburg by quoting from a 14th-century dialogue between the Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologos, and a Persian scholar. In a passage on the concept of holy war, Benedict recited a passage of what he called "startling brusqueness," in which Manuel questioned the teachings of Islam's prophet, Muhammad.

"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached," Benedict quoted the emperor as saying.

Adding helpfully that Benedict "neither endorsed nor denounced the emperor's words." Thanks.

But Manuel was doing something more specific than "questioning the teaching of Islam's prophet." Benedict:

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he [emperor Manuel] addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". 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.

Conversion through violence being an affront against reason. Agreed? Hello?

Oh, and when was the emperor Manuel writing this down? As Benedict says, but Shadid does not, during a siege of Constantinople. Not even the allegedly offensive Benedict underlines the plot: A siege against the crown of eastern Christianity by the Muslim Sultan Bayezid I.

Imagine that.

UPDATE: Thanks for the link from Christopher Blosser of Ratzinger Fan Club fame at Against The Grain, who has a mega-roundup of headlines and commentary. Amy Welborn has been blogging up a storm, and though you could profit by randomly reading any of her posts, I recommend Saturday Afternoon Wrap-Up, in addition to my link above. Amy examines Benedict's remarks with the eye of an accomplished Catholic apologist, unlike, er, me.

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