Some Reason Brought to the Issue

What he really said

The Pope quoted only one verse from the Qur’an, the one that says that “There is no compulsion in religion” (2, 256). In the West, Muslims quote this verse all the time as proof that freedom of conscience and faith are part of Islam. If the Pope really wanted to attack Islam and show how bad it is, he could have picked any one of many dozens of verses like Sūrah 2, 191-193, in which Muslims re urged to kill those guilty of al-fitnah (sedition). For, in the name of Islam, thousands of people have been killed because as the Qur’an says, “Al-Fitnah is worse than killing”.

It was with this verse on their lips that people said they wanted to kill Abdul Rahman, an Afghan man who converted to Christianity.

To many, becoming Christian is seen as “sedition” (fitnah) from the community, an act that is better dealt with by killing the perpetrator.

Instead the Pope chose the most positive and more open verse and made a comment about its history. He told his audience that the verse came from Muhammad’s period in Madinah, a time when he was weak and under threat. Even the Saudi-published Qur’an, which is considered the most official, places Sūrah 2 in Muhammad’s early, Madinan period, when the prophet was a refugee, without an army...

Rather than criticising Islam, the Pope is actually offering it a helping hand by suggesting that it do away with the cycle of violence. He also asks Islam not to leave the cycle of “Reason” or better still, he urges it to engage Christianity in a dialogue for reasons related to ethics.