So apparently Pope Benedict XVI said something that annoyed a whole lot of Muslims. To be honest, I haven't really been paying much attention to this, because, well, it didn't sound all that surprising to me. But now, I've been asked to comment on the Wall Street Journal's editorial defending the Pope from the brouhaha.

First off, I do not condone the violent zealotry and hate-mongering (not to mention the effigy-burning) that is taking place in reaction to the Pope's comments, but I do think there is some cause for righteous indignation.

The WSJ editorial staff is being disingenuous when they imply that Benedict XVI was primarily addressing the issue of Muslim violence:

This is not an invitation to the usual feel-good interfaith round-tables. It is a request for dialogue with one condition--that everyone at the table reject the irrationality of religiously motivated violence. The pope isn't condemning Islam; he is inviting it to join rather than reject the modern world.

If you dig a little deeper and read the transcript, you will find that the Pope is attacking the core of Muslim theology. Here is the money quote, found in the third paragraph:

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.

Now, he is actually quoting fourteenth century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus. Benedict also sets up the quote very carefully so as to confirm that he is just as shocked as the listener to hear those words. It's not that he's saying Mohammed was evil, it's some obscure emperor who said that. So but then he blithely trips along to his thesis:

But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality...Ibn Hazm 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.

Oooh, those silly heathens! It is not Muslim violence that is irrational, it is Islam itself! Christianity, of course, does not suffer from this problem. Or it won't, once the Pope widens the scope of what reason entails.

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time...It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures.

The Pope is right to want to bring all parties to the table, but his appeal should not be to reason, or at least not reason as defined by his narrow positivism. For an alternative view, check out the recent Speaking of Faith podcast on hearing Muslim voices. On the broadcast, guest Seyyed Hossein Nasr observes that while the radical fundamentalists do not represent moderate Islam, neither do the secularists (presumably the kind of rational Muslim that Benedict would like to negotiate with).

Modern Islam does not mean secular Islam...The experience of secularism in the West is unique to Western Civilization...There is a tendency in America to want to convert the world to our view and not a long-term view, but our view of our immediate moment...Christianity resisted becoming simply a Sunday morning phenomenon for many, many centuries...and we expect the Muslims to jump from Dante to Karl Marx and then to President Bush in a five-year period.

The devout (not the fundamenatlist nor the secular) Muslims are the people we are going to need to learn to talk to. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. It would be nice if the pious, peaceful majority could speak up against the 10 million or so that are radicalized.

Benedict should be preaching tolerance instead of reason. And not tolerance of extremists, but tolerance of alternative perspectives. Of course, it's difficult to argue for tolerance when you illustrate your points with quotations from the Dark Ages.