Pope Benedict XVI is a little short on the likeability factor. Were there to be some kind of reality show where people phone in to elect a pope, he would be an unlikely winner. He lacks the approachable, gregarious charisma of his predecessor and he is rather short on the communication and presentation skills that make world leaders popular. There is also something old-fashioned and out of touch about him. He is the ascetic academic, the religious purist, all of which makes him less appealing. Unless you are a devout Catholic, the temptation is to reach for the remote control when he appears on TV.
However, since he is in Jordan and he has addressed Muslims, I felt I ought, for once, to listen to him. It is not an easy task. One has to actually concentrate in order to understand what he is saying. He does not do message delivery with catchy sound bites; quite the opposite. Neither does he do the populist gestures that televise so well. He did not take off his shoes as he entered the Mosque Al-Hussein bin Talal in Amman, nor did he kneel and start a prayer. There is nothing effusive about him. More important, he did not offer an unreserved apology for his comments of 2006 linking Islam to violence.
At first I was disappointed. His message seemed so sober and frankly, dull. But then I began to listen in earnest and I found that what he said resonated deeply. First it struck me that as a Muslim what I want to hear from the head of the Catholic Church, or the Holy See as it is called, is a message of reconciliation, one that is short on gimmicks and high on common values. I was brought up on the belief that Muslims and Christians, and for that matter Jews too, worship the same God and that our religions share the same core. So I wanted to hear the pope remind us of this and to some extent, he did.
Second, I was reminded that charm is not a pre-requisite for a religious leader. What we seek in those who lead us in faith is integrity, knowledge, compassion, wisdom and reason. In fact, the pope stressed the role of reason in faith, pointing out that faith does not weaken reason but on the contrary “widens the horizon of human understanding”.
The world is a little short of human understanding at the moment and this is particularly true in the relationship between people of different faiths. The pope made sober remarks that resonated deeply: Indeed some assert that religion is necessarily a cause of division in our world; and so they argue that the less attention given to religion in the public sphere the better. Certainly, the contradiction of tensions and divisions between the followers of different religious traditions, sadly, cannot be denied. However, is it not also the case that often it is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends, that is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society?
I am one of those people who has wondered whether we would be better off taking religion away from the public sphere and placing it more firmly in the more private domain of spiritual communion with God. I continue to resent the way religion is used for political ends and causes division rather than brings people together as it should. The ideological manipulation of religion, as the pope so rightly describes it, is a source of great anger for me and for many other so-called moderate Muslims.
But the pope is in the Middle East and though he may describe himself as simply a “Pilgrim of Peace”, the reality is that he is playing politics too. What is more, he is in the difficult position of having to make amends for having offended both Muslims and Jews since his election in 2005. For us Muslims, he has taken a rather light approach. He has spoken of his “deep respect” for Islam and made a couple of token gestures in his language to stress the commonalities of the two religions such as referring to God as Merciful and Compassionate. Making amends for offending Jews may take a greater priority in this Middle East visit. Already we have seen the pope speak of the “inseparable bond” between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people. This is a German pope who served in Hitler’s youth corps.
He has also angered the Jewish world by revoking the excommunication of a bishop who denied the Holocaust, all of this within a framework of continued anger about the role played by the Catholic Church and by Pope Pius XII in particular during World War II. Seeking reconciliation with Jews and Muslims is noble, but the politics of religion is real and he will have to be careful to balance out his comments so as not to appear to the Arab and Muslim world as biased in favor of Israel.
The pope’s main responsibility is to look after the followers of his faith and when he finds himself in the Middle East, a region where Catholics are a minority, he is quite right to call for the protection of religious minorities not just in terms of allowing them to practice their religion but also in terms of protecting them from discrimination. It cannot be denied that in many countries in the Middle East Catholics and other people from religious minorities are discriminated against and not given the freedom to practice their religion in the same way that Muslims enjoy religious freedom in the predominantly Christian countries of the developed world. There is a gap between what we Muslims expect when we live in a Christian country and what we are happy to provide for Christians living in Muslim countries. It is a little far from a quid pro quo and the pope is right to flag the issue as one of concern. I have disagreed rather violently with many comments the pope has made since his election. I cannot claim to be a member of his fan club, but on this occasion, on the first stage of his Middle East visit I find myself agreeing with several points he has made, in particular his argument that there is a “fundamental contradiction” in “resorting to violence or exclusion in the name of God.”
