Last update - 00:00 20/08/2006
The return of Manuel II
By Dan Rabinowitz
The wheel goes round and round. At the end of the 14th century, the declining Byzantine empire, the stronghold of Orthodox Christianity, came under growing pressure from the East. The Ottomans, an effective and highly mobile military force, were threatening the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, today's Istanbul. The Byzantine dynasty was fighting for its life and the life of the empire. At a certain stage, they were obliged to send the crown prince to the court of the Ottoman Sultan in Anatolia, where he remained as a kind of royal hostage for a few years to ensure that the Ottomans would not attack the capital.
In 1391, apparently, that same prince engaged in a polemic with a Persian man of religion, during the course of which he told his interlocutor that the theological value of Islam was waning because of its tendency to spread the faith preached by Mohammed through the sword. Some years later, that same prince became Emperor Manuel II, ruled for close to 30 years, but was unable to save the empire. In 1453, 28 years after his death, the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and the Byzantine empire ceased to exist.
Last week, Pope Benedictus XVI chose to include in an address he delivered at the University of Regensburg, where he had taught in his younger years, a quotation from Manuel II to that same Persian man of religion. The result has been tension between Christianity and Islam at a level not seen for centuries. The circumstances of the two remarks are, of course, very different. Manuel II was an Orthodox Christian who spoke about Islam from a desperately weak point of view. Benedictus XVI, a senior representative of the European cultural, economic and political metropolis that constantly gives the Muslims a feeling of rejection and marginality, breathed new life into these ancient Byzantine coals.
The pope forgot that the present era is "logocratic," an era in which life or death are determined by labels. The Holy See - like Mohammed, like the Catholic Church, like Islam - is a deep, complex and multi-layered historical institution. But in a world like ours, where ideas and values are constantly reduced to little packages that are easily identified and quickly digested, there is no longer a chance for complex messages.
One of the missions that Manuel's father imposed on his son during his youth was to wander among the capitals of Catholic Europe in a futile attempt to win over their support against the Ottomans. Someone in the pope's entourage should have warned him that ideas that were welded in the furnace of despair of that time are not suitable to be used, in today's world, as a theological scarecrow to promote a dialogue with Islam.
Benedictus XVI should have known better; he should have known that statements made by political figures are not isolated from political balances of power. He should have learned his latest lesson from the storm raised by the caricatures about the prophet Mohammed in the Danish press. Liberal circles in Europe presented the point of view of Islam as a threat to freedom of speech and stood firm by their right to create more and more provocations. The Muslims, for their part, saw this, with a great deal of justification, as oppression. True, the history of European freedom of expression began with the denial of the church's tremendous power and its messages, but the Muslims in Europe and the entire world are not the strong church of medieval times in Europe. They are weak, the underdogs, the outcasts. And when the powerful belittle them - or criticize their theology - they do not regard this as a struggle for freedom of expression or an invitation to a theological dialogue , but rather as the ridicule of persecutors that is degrading and humiliating.
Not only in Europe do religious labels have this effect. Here in Israel, too, there is the danger of a clerical "outbreak" thanks to zealots who know well how to brand and direct religious sensitivities. The head of the northern faction of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Raed Salah, with his apocalyptic declarations about the Temple Mount that deliberately ignore opposing traditions and the sensitivities of others, is stirring up a dangerous mixture that combines a worldly plan with a heavenly promise. On the Israeli side, the challenge is met by people with a messianic complex such as Effi Eitam. Eitam has neither learned nor forgotten a thing about the way in which he lost the National Religious Party leadership, and continues to sow the seeds of destruction for which many could pay with their lives.
The mistakes of Benedictus XVI indicate that not all wisdom is to be found in Europe, and the relatively mild reactions of some of the spokesmen of Islam indicate that not all harsh words are to be found in Islam. If there is one thing that Europe taught the world, it is the lesson about the cruelty and futility of religious wars. Unless politics are effectively removed from the false claims of those who enlist them, supposedly in the name of heaven, there is no chance for advancement and prosperity.