Pavens forelesning gikk ut på å bevise sammenhengen mellom gresk fornuft/ratio og at Gud og rasjonalitet ikke er motsetninger, men at rasjonalitet tvertom er i overensstemmelse med gudstroen.

Så brukte han eksemplet om den bysantinske keiseren som fører en debatt med en perser om tro, slik man pleide i middelalderen:

he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: «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 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 is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably (F×< 8`(T) 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... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

Hadde paven nevnt at også kristne har omvendt med sverdet, hadde kontrasten vært mindre.

Men retorikken til ledende muslimer er skremmende.

Notably, the strongest denunciations came from Turkey — a moderate democracy seeking European Union membership where Benedict is scheduled to visit in November as his first trip as pope to a Muslim country.

Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted party, said Benedict’s remarks were either «the result of pitiful ignorance» about Islam and its prophet or, worse, a deliberate distortion.

«He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world,» Kapusuz told Turkish state media. «It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades.»

«Benedict, the author of such unfortunate and insolent remarks, is going down in history for his words,» Kapusuz added. «He is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.»

Muslimske talsmenn krever at paven personlig ber om unnskyldning. Det holder ikke at utsendingene hans gjør det.

En ekspert på islamisme i Kairo tror det kan bli en protest – og voldsbølge som under karikaturstriden.

«The declarations from the pope are more dangerous than the cartoons, because they come from the most important Christian authority in the world — the cartoons just came from an artist,» said Diaa Rashwan, an analyst in Cairo, Egypt, who studies Islamic militancy.

kilde: AP