Or why I defended Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 against the
thoughtlessly irascible Muslims
When
a Muslim writes an Obituary for the Catholic Church's sole Pope Emeritus…
Table
of Contents
I. From Joseph
Ratzinger to Pope Benedict XVI
II. The theoretical
concerns of an intellectual Pope
III. Benedict XVI: A
Pope against violence and wars
IV. Manuel II
Palaeologus and the Eastern Roman Empire between the Muslim Ottoman brethren
and the Anti-Christian Roman enemies
V. The unknown (?)
Turkic mystic interlocutor and the Islamic centers of science and reason that
Benedict XVI ignored
VI. Excerpt from
Benedict XVI's lecture given on the 12th September at the University of
Regensburg under title 'Faith, Reason and the University–Memories and
Reflections'
VII. The problems of
the academic-theological background of Benedict XVI's lecture
VIII. Benedict XVI's
biased approach, theological mistakes, intellectual oversights and historical
misinterpretations
IX. The lecture's most
controversial point
X. The
educational-academic-intellectual misery and the political ordeal of today's
Muslim states
Of all the Roman popes
who resigned the only to be called 'Pope Emeritus' was Joseph Ratzinger Pope
Benedict XVI (also known in German as Prof. Dr. Papst), who passed away on 31st
December 2022, thus sealing the circle of world figures and heads of states whose
life ended last year. As a matter of fact, although being a head state, a pope
does not abdicate; he renounces to his ministry (renuntiatio).
Due to lack of
documentation, conflicting sources or confusing circumstances, we do not have
conclusive evidence as regards the purported resignations of the popes St.
Pontian (235), Marcellinus (304), Liberius (366), John XVIII (1009) and
Sylvester (105). That is why historical certainty exists only with respect to
the 'papal renunciation' of six pontiffs; three of them bore the papal name of
'Benedict'. The brief list includes therefore the following bishops of Rome:
Benedict V (964), Benedict IX (deposed in 1044, bribed to resign in 1045, and
resigned in 1048), Gregory VI (1046), St Celestine (1294), Gregory XII (1415)
and Benedict XVI (2013).
I. From
Joseph Ratzinger to Pope Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI (18 April
1927 – 31 December 2022) was seven (7) years younger than his predecessor John
Paul II (1920-2005), but passed away seventeen (17) years after the Polish
pope's death; already on the 4th September 2020, Benedict XVI would have been
declared as the oldest pope in history, had he not resigned seven (7) years
earlier. Only Leo XIII died 93, back in 1903. As a matter of fact, Benedict XVI
outlived all the people who were elected to the Roman See.
Benedict XVI's papacy
lasted slightly less than eight (8) years (19 April 2005 – 28 February 2013).
Before being elected as pope, Cardinal Ratzinger was for almost a quarter
century (1981-2005) the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, which was the formal continuation of the Office of the Holy Inquisition,
and therefore one of the most important sections ('dicasteries'; from the
Ancient Greek term 'dikasterion', i.e. 'court of law') of the Roman
administration ('Curia').
A major step toward
this position was his appointment as archbishop of Munich for four years
(1977-1981); Bavaria has always been a Catholic heavyweight, and in this
regard, it is easy to recall the earlier example of Eugenio Pacelli (the later
pope Pius XII), who was nuncio to Bavaria (and therefore to the German Empire),
in Munich, from 1917 to 1920, and then to Germany, before being elected to the
Roman See (in 1939). Before having a meteoric rise in the Catholic hierarchy,
Ratzinger made an excellent scholar and a distinct professor of dogmatic
theology, while also being a priest. His philosophical dissertation was about
St. Augustine and his habilitation concerned Bonaventure, a Franciscan
scholastic theologian and cardinal of the 13th c.
II.
The theoretical concerns of an intellectual Pope
During his ministry, very
early, Benedict XVI stood up and showed his teeth; when I noticed his
formidable outburst against the 'dictatorship of relativism', I realized that
the German pope would be essentially superior to his Polish predecessor. Only
in June 2005, so just two months after his election, he defined relativism as
"the main obstacle to the task of education", directing a tremendous
attack against the evilness of ego and portraying selfishness as a
"self-limitation of reason".
In fact, there cannot
be more devastating attack from a supreme religious authority against the
evilness of Anglo-Zionism and the rotten, putrefied society that these
criminals diffuse worldwide by means of infiltration, corruption, mendacity,
and simulation. Soon afterwards, while speaking in Marienfeld (Cologne),
Benedict XVI attacked ferociously all the pathetic ideologies which
indiscriminately enslave humans from all spiritual and cultural backgrounds. He
said: "absolutizing what is not absolute but relative is called
totalitarianism". This is a detrimental rejection of Talmudic Judaism,
Zohar Kabbalah, and Anglo-Zionism.
It was in the summer
2005 that I first realized that I should study closer the pre-papal past of the
Roman Pontiff whom St Malachy's illustrious Prophecy of the Popes (12th c.)
described as 'Gloria olivae' (the Glory of the olive). I contacted several
friends in Germany, who extensively updated me as regards his academic
publications, also dispatching to me some of them. At the time, I noticed that
my Christian friends already used to question a certain number of Cardinal
Ratzinger's positions.
But, contrarily to
them, I personally found his prediction about the eventuality of Buddhism
becoming the principal 'enemy' of the Catholic Church as quite plausible. My
friends were absolutely astounded, and then I had to narrate and explain to
them the deliberately concealed story of the Christian-Islamic-Confucian
alliance against the Buddhist terrorism of the Dzungar Khanate (1634-1755); actually,
it took many Kazakh-Dzungar wars (1643-1756), successive wars between Qing
China and the Dzungar Khanate (1687-1757), and even an alliance with the
Russian Empire in order to successfully oppose the ferocious Buddhist extremist
threat.
Finally, the
extraordinary ordeal of North Asia {a vast area comprising lands of today's
Eastern Kazakhstan, Russia (Central Siberia), Northwestern and Western China
(Eastern Turkestan/Xinjiang and Tibet) and Western Mongolia} ended up with the
systematic genocide of the extremist Buddhist Dzungars (1755-1758) that the
Chinese had to undertake because there was no other way to terminate once
forever the most fanatic regime that ever existed in Asia.
Disoriented, ignorant,
confused and gullible, most of the people today fail to clearly understand how
easily Buddhism can turn a peaceful society into a fanatic realm of lunatic
extremists. The hypothetically innocent adhesion of several fake Freemasonic
lodges of the West to Buddhism and the seemingly harmless acceptance of
Buddhist principles and values by these ignorant fools can end up in the
formation of vicious and terrorist organizations that will give to their
members and initiates the absurd order and task to indiscriminately kill all of
their opponents. But Cardinal Ratzinger had prudently discerned the existence
of a dangerous source of spiritual narcissism in Buddhism.
III.
Benedict XVI: A Pope against violence and wars
To me, this foresight
was a convincing proof that Benedict XVI was truly 'Gloria olivae'; but this
would be troublesome news! In a period of proxy wars, unrestrained iniquity,
and outrageous inhumanity, a perspicacious, cordial, and benevolent pope in
Rome would surely be an encumbering person to many villainous rascals, i.e. the
likes of Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Nicolas Sarkozy, and many others so-called
'leaders'. The reason for this assessment of the situation is simple: no one
wants a powerful pacifier at a time more wars are planned.
At the time, it was
ostensible to all that a fake confrontation between the world's Muslims and
Christians was underway (notably after the notorious 9/11 events); for this
reason, I expected Benedict XVI to make a rather benevolent statement that evil
forces would immediately misinterpret, while also falsely accusing the pacifist
Pope and absurdly turning the uneducated and ignorant mob of many countries against
the Catholic Church.
This is the foolish plan
of the Anglo-Zionist lobby, which has long served as puppets of the Jesuits,
corrupting the entire Muslim world over the past 250 years by means of
intellectual, educational, academic, scientific, cultural, economic, military
and political colonialism. These idiotic puppets, which have no idea who their
true and real masters are, imagine that, by creating an unprecedented havoc in
Europe, they harm the worldwide interests of the Jesuits; but they fail to
properly realize that this evil society, which early turned against Benedict
XVI, has already shifted its focus onto China. Why the apostate Anglo-Zionist
Freemasonic lodge would act in this manner against Benedict XVI is easy to
assess; the Roman pontiff whose episcopal motto was 'Cooperatores Veritatis' ('Co-workers
of the Truth') would apparently try to prevent the long-prepared fake war
between the Muslims and the Christians.
IV.
Manuel II Palaeologus and the Eastern Roman Empire between the Muslim Ottoman brethren
and the Anti-Christian Roman enemies
And this is what truly
happened in the middle of September 2006; on the 12th September, Benedict XVI
delivered a lecture at the University of Regensburg in Germany; the title was 'Glaube,
Vernunft und Universität – Erinnerungen und Reflexionen' ('Faith, Reason and
the University – Memories and Reflections'). In the beginning of the lecture,
Prof. Dr. Ratzinger eclipsed Pope Benedict XVI, as the one-time professor
persisted on his concept of 'faith', "which theologians seek to correlate
with reason as a whole", as he said. In a most rationalistic approach (for
which he had been known for several decades as a renowned Catholic theologian),
in an argumentation reflecting views certainly typical of Francis of Assisi and
of Aristotle but emphatically alien to Jesus, Benedict XVI attempted to portray
an ahistorical Christianity and to describe the Catholic faith as the religion
of the Reason.
At an early point of
the lecture, Benedict XVI referred to a discussion that the Eastern Roman
Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (or Palaiologos; Μανουήλ Παλαιολόγος; 1350-1425; reigned after 1391) had
with an erudite Turkic scholar (indiscriminately but mistakenly called by all
Eastern Roman authors at the time as 'Persian') most probably around the end of
1390 or the first months of 1391, when he was hostage at the Ottoman court of
Bayezid I. In the historical text, it is stated that the location was 'Ancyra
of Galatia' (i.e. Ankara).
This Eastern Roman
Emperor was indeed a very controversial historical figure; although undeniably
an erudite ruler, a bold diplomat, and a reputable soldier, he first made
agreements with the Ottomans and delivered to them the last Eastern Roman city
in Anatolia (Philadelphia; today's Alaşehir, ca. 140 km east of Izmir / Smyrna)
and then, after he took control of his ailing kingdom thanks to the sultan, he
escaped the protracted siege of Constantinople (1391-1402) only to travel to
various Western European kingdoms and ask the help of those rather reluctant
monarchs (1399-1403).
At the time, all the Christian
Orthodox populations, either living in the Ottoman sultanate or residing in the
declined Eastern Roman Empire, were deeply divided into two groups, namely
those who preferred to be ruled by Muslims (because they rejected the pseudo-Christian
fallacy, evilness and iniquity of the Roman pope) and the fervent supporters of
a Latin (: Western European) control over Constantinople (viewed as the only
way for them to prevent the Ottoman rule); the former formed the majority and
were called Anthenotikoi, i.e. 'against the union' (: of the Orthodox Church with
the Catholics), whereas the latter constituted a minority group and were named
'Enotikoi' ('those in favor of the union of the two churches').
V.
The unknown (?) Turkic mystic interlocutor and the Islamic centers of science
and reason that Benedict XVI ignored
Manuel II Palaeologus'
text has little theological value in itself; however, its historical value is
great. It reveals how weak both interlocutors were at the intellectual,
cultural and spiritual levels, how little they knew one another, and how poorly
informed they were about their own and their interlocutor's past, heritage,
religion and spirituality. If we have even a brief look at it, we will
immediately realize that the level is far lower than that attested during
similar encounters in 8th- 9th c. Baghdad, 10th c. Umayyad Andalusia, Fatimid
Cairo, 13th c. Maragheh (where the world's leading observatory was built) or
14th c. Samarqand, the Timurid capital.
It was absolutely clear
at the time of Manuel II Palaeologus and Bayezid I that neither Constantinople
nor Bursa (Προύσα
/ Prousa; not anymore the Ottoman capital after 1363, but still the most
important city of the sultanate) could compete with the great centers of
Islamic science civilization which were located in Iran and Central Asia.
That's why Gregory Chioniades, the illustrious Eastern Roman bishop, astronomer,
and erudite scholar who was the head of the Orthodox diocese of Tabriz, studied
in Maragheh under the guidance of his tutor and mentor, Shamsaddin al Bukhari (one
of the most illustrious students of Nasir el-Din al Tusi, who was the founder
of the Maragheh Observatory), before building an observatory in Trabzon
(Trebizond) and becoming the teacher of Manuel Bryennios, another famous
Eastern Roman scholar.
The text of the
Dialogues must have been written several years after the conversation took
place, most probably when the traveling emperor and diplomat spent four years
in Western Europe. For reasons unknown to us, the erudite emperor did not
mention the name of his interlocutor, although this was certainly known to him;
if we take into consideration that he was traveling to other kingdoms, we can
somehow guess a plausible reason. His courtiers and royal scribes may have
translated the text partly into Latin and given copies of the 'dialogues' to
various kings, marshals, chroniclers, and other dignitaries. If this was the
case, the traveling emperor would not probably want to offer insights into the
Ottoman court and the influential religious authorities around the sultan.
Alternatively, the 'unknown'
interlocutor may well have been Amir Sultan (born as Mohamed bin Ali; also
known as Shamsuddin Al-Bukhari; 1368-1429) himself, i.e. none else than an
important Turanian mystic from Vobkent (near Bukhara in today's Uzbekistan),
who got married with Bayezid I's daughter Hundi Fatema Sultan Hatun. Amir Sultan
had advised the sultan not to turn against Timur; had the foolish sultan heeded
to his son-in-law's wise advice, he would not have been defeated so shamefully.
Benedict XVI made a
very biased use of the historical text; he selected an excerpt of Manuel II
Palaeologus' response to his interlocutor in order to differentiate between
Christianity as the religion of Reason and Islam as the religion of Violence.
Even worse, he referred to a controversial, biased and rancorous historian of
Lebanese origin, the notorious Prof. Theodore Khoury (born in 1930), who spent
his useless life to write sophisticated diatribes, mildly formulated forgeries,
and deliberate distortions of the historical truth in order to satisfy his
rancor and depict the historical past according to his absurd political
analysis. Almost every sentence written Prof. Khoury about the Eastern Roman
Empire and the Islamic Caliphate is maliciously false.
All the same, it was
certainly Benedict XVI's absolute right to be academically, intellectually and
historically wrong. The main problem was that the paranoid reaction against him
was not expressed at the academic and intellectual levels, but at the profane
ground of international politics. Even worse, it was not started by Muslims but
by the criminal Anglo-Zionist mafia and the disreputable mainstream mass media,
the likes of the BBC, Al Jazeera (Qatari is only the façade of it), etc.
I will now republish
(in bold and italics) a sizeable (600-word) excerpt of the papal lecture that
contains the contentious excerpt, also adding the notes to the text. The link
to the Vatican's website page is available below. I will comment first on the
lecture and the selected part of Manuel II Palaeologus' text and then on the
absurd Muslim reaction.
VI.
Excerpt from Benedict XVI's lecture given on the 12th September at the
University of Regensburg under title 'Faith, Reason and the University–Memories
and Reflections'
I was reminded of
all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury
(Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter
barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus
and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth
of both.[1] It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue,
during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would
explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian
interlocutor.[2] The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith
contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image
of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship
between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of
life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my
intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to
discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole -
which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found
interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on
this issue.
In the seventh
conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor
touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2,
256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to some of
the experts, this is probably one of the suras of the early period, when
Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also
knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning
holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment
accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels",
he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that
we find unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between
religion and violence in general, saying: "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.”[3] The
emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, 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", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting
reasonably (σὺν λόγω) 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...".[4]
The decisive
statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in
accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature.[5] 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.[6] Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R.
Arnaldez, who points out that 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 practice idolatry.[7]
Notes
1 to 7 (out of 13)
[1] Of the total number
of 26 conversations (διάλεξις – Khoury translates this as “controversy”) in the
dialogue (“Entretien”), T. Khoury published the 7th “controversy” with
footnotes and an extensive introduction on the origin of the text, on the
manuscript tradition and on the structure of the dialogue, together with brief
summaries of the “controversies” not included in the edition; the Greek text is accompanied by a French
translation: “Manuel II Paléologue,
Entretiens avec un Musulman. 7e
Controverse”, Sources Chrétiennes n.
115, Paris 1966. In the meantime, Karl
Förstel published in Corpus Islamico-Christianum (Series Graeca ed. A. T. Khoury and R. Glei) an edition of
the text in Greek and German with commentary:
“Manuel II. Palaiologus, Dialoge mit einem Muslim”, 3 vols.,
Würzburg-Altenberge 1993-1996. As early
as 1966, E. Trapp had published the Greek text with an introduction as vol. II
of Wiener byzantinische Studien. I shall
be quoting from Khoury’s edition.
[2] On the origin
and redaction of the dialogue, cf. Khoury, pp. 22-29; extensive comments in this regard can also be
found in the editions of Förstel and Trapp.
[3] Controversy
VII, 2 c: Khoury, pp. 142-143; Förstel, vol. I, VII. Dialog 1.5, pp.
240-241. In the Muslim world, this
quotation has unfortunately been taken as an expression of my personal
position, thus arousing understandable indignation. I hope that the reader of my text can see
immediately that this sentence does not express my personal view of the Qur’an,
for which I have the respect due to the holy book of a great religion. In quoting the text of the Emperor Manuel II,
I intended solely to draw out the essential relationship between faith and
reason. On this point I am in agreement
with Manuel II, but without endorsing his polemic.
[4] Controversy
VII, 3 b–c: Khoury, pp. 144-145; Förstel vol. I, VII. Dialog 1.6, pp. 240-243.
[5] It was purely
for the sake of this statement that I quoted the dialogue between Manuel and
his Persian interlocutor. In this
statement the theme of my subsequent reflections emerges.
[6] Cf. Khoury, p. 144, n. 1.
[7] R. Arnaldez, Grammaire et théologie chez Ibn Hazm de
Cordoue, Paris 1956, p. 13; cf. Khoury,
p. 144. The fact that comparable positions
exist in the theology of the late Middle Ages will appear later in my
discourse.
VII.
The problems of the academic-theological background of Benedict XVI's lecture
It is my conviction that
Benedict XVI fell victim to the quite typical theological assumptions that
Prof. Dr. Ratzinger had studied and taught for decades. However, the problem is
not limited to the circle of the faculties of Theology and to Christian
Theology as a modern discipline; it is far wider. The same troublesome
situation permeates all the disciplines of Humanities and, even worse, the
quasi-totality of the modern sciences as they started in Renaissance. The
problem goes well beyond the limits of academic research and intellectual
consideration; it has to do with the degenerate, rotten and useless mental
abilities and capacities of the Western so-called scholars, researchers and
academics. The description of the problem is rather brief, but its nature is
truly ominous.
Instead of perceiving,
understanding, analyzing and representing the 'Other' in its own terms, conditions
and essence and as per its own values, virtues and world conceptualization, the
modern Western European scholars, researchers, explorers and specialists view,
perceive, attempt to understand, and seek to analyze the 'Other' in their own
terms, conditions and essence and as per their own values, virtues and world
conceptualization. Due to this sick effort and unprecedented aberration, the
Western so-called scholars and researchers view the 'Other' through their eyes,
thus projecting onto the 'Other' their view of it. Consequently, they do not
and actually they cannot learn it, let alone know, understand and represent it.
Their attitude is inane, autistic and degenerate. It is however quite
interesting and truly bizarre that the Western European natural scientists do
not proceed in this manner, but fully assess the condition of the object of
their study in a rather objective manner.
In fact, the Western
disciplines of the Humanities, despite the enormous collection and publication
of study materials, sources and overall documentation, are a useless
distortion. Considered objectively, the Western scientific endeavor in its
entirety is a monumental nothingness; it is not only a preconceived conclusion.
It is a resolute determination not to 'see' the 'Other' as it truly exists, as
its constituent parts obviously encapsulate its contents, and as the available
documentation reveals it. In other words, it consists in a premeditated and
resolute rejection of the Truth; it is intellectually barren, morally evil, and
spiritually nihilist. The topic obviously exceeds by far the limits of the
present obituary, but I had to mention it in order to offer the proper context.
It is therefore
difficult to identify the real reason for the magnitude of the Western
scholarly endeavor, since the conclusions existed in the minds of the explorers
and the academics already before the documentation was gathered, analyzed,
studied, and represented. How important is it therefore to publish the unpublished
material (totaling more than 100000 manuscripts of Islamic times and more than
one million of cuneiform tablets from Ancient Mesopotamia, Iran, Canaan and
Anatolia – only to give an idea to the non-specialized readers), if the evil Western
scholars and the gullible foreign students enrolled in Western institutions (to
the detriment of their own countries and nations) are going to repeat and
reproduce the same absurd Western mentality of viewing an Ancient Sumerian, an
Ancient Assyrian, an Ancient Egyptian or a Muslim author through their own eyes
and of projecting onto the ancient author the invalid and useless measures,
values, terms and world views of the modern Western world?
As it can be easily
understood, the problem is not with Christian Theology, but with all the
disciplines of the Humanities. So, the problem is not only that a great Muslim
scholar and erudite mystic like Ibn Hazm was viewed by Benedict XVI and Western
theologians through the distorting lenses of their 'science', being not evaluated
as per the correct measures, values and terms of his own Islamic environment,
background and civilization. The same problem appears in an even worse form,
when Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian-Babylonian, Hittite, Iranian and
other high priests, spiritual masters, transcendental potentates, sacerdotal
writers, and unequaled scientists are again evaluated as per the invalid and
useless criteria of Benedict XVI, of all the Western theologians, and of all the
modern European and American academics.
What post-Renaissance
popes, theologians, academics, scholars and intellectuals fail to understand is
very simple; their 'world' ( i.e. the world of the Western Intellect and
Science, which was first fabricated in the 15th and the 16th c. and later enhanced
progressively down to our days) in not Christian, is not human, and is not
real. It is their own delusion, their own invalid abstraction, their abject paranoia,
and their own sin for which first they will atrociously disappear from the
surface of the Earth (like every anomalous entity) and then flagrantly perish
in Hell.
Their dangling system
does not hold; they produced it in blood and in blood it will end. Modern
sciences constitute a counter-productive endeavor and an aberration that will terminally
absorb the entire world into the absolute nothingness, because these evil
systems were instituted out of arbitrary bogus-interpretations of the past,
peremptory self-identification, deliberate and prejudicial ignorance, as well
as an unprecedented ulcerous hatred of the 'Other', i.e. of every 'Other'.
The foolish Western European
academic-intellectual establishment failed to realize that it is absolutely preposterous
to extrapolate later and corrupt standards to earlier and superior
civilizations; in fact, it is impossible. By trying to do it, you depart from
the real world only to live in your delusion, which sooner or later will
inevitably have a tragic end. Consequently, the Western European scholars' 'classics'
are not classics; their reason is an obsession; their language and jargon are hallucinatory,
whereas their notions are conjectural. Their abstract concepts are the
manifestation of Non-Being.
VIII.
Benedict XVI's biased approach, theological mistakes, intellectual oversights
and historical misinterpretations
Benedict XVI's
understanding of the Eastern Roman Empire was fictional. When examining the
sources, he retained what he liked, what pleased him, and what was beneficial
to his preconceived ideas and thoughts. In fact, Prof. Dr. Papst did not truly
understand what Manuel II Palaeologus said to his Turkic interlocutor, and even
worse, he failed to assess the enormous distance that separated the early 15th
c. Eastern Roman (not 'Byzantine': this is a fake appellation too) Emperor from
his illustrious predecessors before 800 or 900 years (the likes of Heraclius
and Justinian I) in terms of Christian Roman imperial ideology, theological
acumen, jurisprudential perspicacity, intellectual resourcefulness, and
spiritual forcefulness. Benedict XVI did not want to accept that with time the
Christian doctrine, theology and spirituality had weakened.
What was Ratzinger's
mistake? First, he erroneously viewed Manuel II Palaeologus as 'his' (as
identical with the papal doctrine), by projecting his modern Catholic mindset
and convictions onto the Christian Orthodox Eastern Roman Emperor's mind,
mentality and faith. He took the 'Dialogues' at face value whereas the text may
have been written not as a declaration of faith but as a diplomatic document in
order to convince the rather uneducated Western European monarchs that the
traveling 'basileus' (βασιλεύς)
visited during the period 1399-1403.
Second, he distorted the
'dialogue', presenting it in a polarized form. Benedict XVI actually depicted a
fraternal conversation as a frontal opposition; unfortunately, there is nothing
in the historical text to insinuate this possibility. As I already said, it is
quite possible that the moderate, wise, but desperate Eastern Roman Emperor may
have discussed with someone married to a female descendant of the great mystic
Jalal al-Din Rumi (namely Bayezid's son-in-law, adviser and mystic Emir
Sultan). Why on Earth did the renowned theologian Ratzinger attempt to stage
manage a theological conflict in the place of a most peaceful, friendly and
fraternal exchange of ideas?
This is easy to explain;
it has to do with the absolutely Manichaean structure of thought that was first
diffused among the Western Fathers of the Christian Church by St Augustine (in
the early 5th c.). As method of theological argumentation, it was first effectively
contained, and it remained rather marginal within the Roman Church as long as
the practice introduced by Justinian I (537) lasted (until 752) and all the
popes of Rome had to be selected and approved personally by the Eastern Roman
Emperor. After this moment and, more particularly, after the two Schisms (867
and 1054), the Manichaean system of thinking prevailed in Rome; finally, it culminated
after the Renaissance.
Third, Benedict XVI
tried to depict the early 15th c. erudite interlocutor of the then hostage
Manuel II Palaeologus as a modern Muslim and a Jihadist. This is the repetition
of the same mistakes that he made as regards the intellectual Eastern Roman
Emperor. In other words, he projected onto the 'unknown', 15th c. Muslim mystic
his own personal view of an Islamist or Islamic fundamentalist. Similarly, by
bulldozing time in order to impose his wrong perception of Islam, he fully
misled the audience. As a matter of fact, Islam constitutes a vast universe
that Prof. Dr. Papst never studied, never understood, and never fathomed in its
true dimensions.
In fact, as it happened
in the case of the Eastern Roman Emperor, his interlocutor was intellectually
weaker and spiritually lower than the great figures of Islamic spirituality,
science, wisdom, literature and intuition, the likes of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Al
Qurtubi, Mohyi el-Din Ibn Arabi, Ahmed Yasawi, Al Biruni, Ferdowsi, Al Farabi,
Tabari, etc., who preceded him by 150 to 500 years. But Benedict XVI did not
want to accept that with time the Islamic doctrine, theology and spirituality
had weakened.
The reason for this
distortion is easy to grasp; the Manichaean system of thinking needs terminal,
crystallized forms of items that do not change; then, it is convenient for the
Western European abusers of the Manichaean spirit to fully implement the deceitful
setting of fake contrasts and false dilemmas. But the 15th c. decayed Eastern
Roman Orthodoxy and decadent Islam are real historical entities that enable
every explorer to encounter the multitude of forms, the ups and downs, the
evolution of cults, the transformation of faiths, and the gradual loss of the initially
genuine Moral and vibrant Spirituality. This reality is very embarrassing to
those who want to teach their unfortunate students on a calamitous black &
white background (or floor).
All the books and
articles of his friend, Prof. Theodore Khoury, proved to be totally useless and
worthless for the Catholic theologian Ratzinger, exactly because the Lebanese specialist
never wrote a sentence in order to truly represent the historical truth about
Islam, but he always elaborated his texts in a way to justify and confirm his
preconceived ideas. Prof. Khoury's Islam is a delusional entity, something like
the artificial humans of our times. Unfortunately, not one Western Islamologist
realized that Islam, at the antipodes of the Roman Catholic doctrine, has an
extremely limited dogmatic part, a minimal cult, and no heresies. Any opposite
opinion belongs to liars, forgers and falsifiers. As a matter of fact, today's
distorted representation of Islam is simply the result of Western colonialism. All
over the world, whatever people hear or believe about the religion preached by Prophet
Muhammad is not the true, historical, religion of Islam, but the colonially,
academically-intellectually, produced Christianization of Islam.
Fourth, in striking
contrast to what the theologian Ratzinger pretended through use of this example
or case study (i.e. the 'discussion'), if Benedict XVI shifted his focus to the
East, he would find Maragheh in NW Iran (Iranian Azerbaijan) and Samarqand in
Central Asia. In those locations (and always for the period concerned), he would
certainly find great centers of learning, universities, vast libraries, and
enormous observatories, which could make every 15th c. Western European
astronomer and mathematician dream. But there he would also find, as I already
said, many Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and other scholars working one next to the
other without caring about their religious (theological) differences. This
situation is very well known to modern Western scholarship, but they viciously
and criminally try to permanently conceal it.
This situation was due
to the cultural, intellectual, academic, mental and spiritual unity that
prevailed among all those erudite scholars. Numerous Western European scholars
have published much about Nasir el-Din al Tusi (about whom I already spoke
briefly) and also about Ulugh Beg, the world's greatest astronomer of his time
(middle of the 15th c.), who was the grandson of Timur (Tamerlane) and, at the
same time, the World History's most erudite emperor of the last 2500 years. However,
post-Renaissance Catholic sectarianism and Western European/North American
racism prevented the German pope from being truthful at least once, and also
from choosing the right paradigm.
IX.
The lecture's most controversial point
Fifth, if we now go
straight to the lecture's most controversial point and to the quotation's most
fascinating sentence, we will find the question addressed by Manuel II
Palaeologus to his erudite Turkic interlocutor; actually, it is rather an
exclamation:
- «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»!
This interesting excerpt
provides indeed the complete confirmation of my earlier assessments as regards
the intellectual decay of both, Christian Orthodoxy and Islam, at the time.
Apparently, it was not theological acumen what both interlocutors were lacking
at the time; it was historical knowledge. Furthermore, historical continuity,
religious consciousness, and moral command were also absent in the discussion.
The first series of points
that Manuel II Palaeologus' Muslim interlocutor could have made answering the
aforementioned statement would be that Prophet Muhammad, before his death,
summoned Ali ibn Abu Taleb and asked him to promise that he would never diffuse
the true faith by undertaking wars; furthermore, Islam was diffused peacefully
in many lands outside Arabia (Hejaz), notably Yemen, Oman, Somalia, and the
Eastern Coast of Africa. In addition, there were many Muslims, who rejected the
absurd idea of the Islamic conquests launched by Umar ibn al-Khattab and
actually did not participate.
We have also to take
into consideration the fact that, in spite of the undeniable reality of the
early spread of Islam through invasions, there has always been well-known and
sufficient documentation to clearly prove that the Aramaeans of Mesopotamia,
Syria and Palestine, the Copts of Egypt, and the Berbers of Africa, although fully
preserving their Christian faith, preferred to live under the rule of the
Caliphates and overwhelmingly rejected the Eastern Roman imperial
administration, because they had been long persecuted by the Constantinopolitan
guards due to their Miaphysite (Monophysitic) and/or Nestorian faiths.
On another note, the
Eastern Roman Emperor's Muslim interlocutor could have questioned the overall
approach of Manuel II Palaeologus to the topic. In other words, he could have
expressed the following objection:
- «What is it good for
someone to pretend that he is a follower of Jesus and evoke his mildness, while
at the same time violently imposing by the sword the faith that Jesus preached?
And what is it more evil and more inhuman than the imposition of a faith in
Jesus' name within the Roman Empire, after so much bloodshed and persecution
took place and so many wars were undertaken»?
Last, one must admit
that the sentence «Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new!» would have
been easily answered by an earlier Muslim mystic of the Golden Era of Islam.
Actually, this statement is islamically correct and pertinent. The apparent
absence of a spectacular response from the part of Manuel II Palaeologus'
Muslim interlocutor rather generates doubts as regards the true nature of the
text. This is so because he could have immediately replied to Bayezid I's
hostage that not one prophet or messenger was sent by God with the purpose of 'bringing
something new'; in fact, all the prophets from Noah to Jonah, from Abraham to
Jonah, from Moses to Muhammad, and from Adam to Jesus were dispatched in order
to deliver the same message to the humans, namely to return to the correct path
and live according to the Will of God.
Related to this point
is the following well-known verse of the Quran (ch. 3 - Al Imran, 67): "Abraham
was neither a Jew nor a Christian but he was (an) upright (man), a Muslim, and
he was not one of the polytheists". It is therefore odd that a response in
this regard is missing at this point.
It is also strange
that, at a time of major divisions within Christianity and more particularly
among the Christian Orthodox Eastern Romans, the 'unknown' imperial
interlocutor did not mention the existing divisions among Christians as already
stated very clearly, explicitly and repeatedly in the Quran. Examples:
"You are the best
community ever raised for humanity—you encourage good, forbid evil, and believe
in Allah. Had the People of the Book believed, it would have been better for
them. Some of them are faithful, but most are rebellious". (ch. 3 - Al Imran,
110)
"Yet they are not
all alike: there are some among the People of the Book who are upright, who
recite Allah’s revelations throughout the night, prostrating in prayer".
(ch. 3 - Al Imran, 113):
To conclude I would add
that elementary knowledge of Roman History, Late Antiquity, and Patristic
Philology would be enough for Benedict XVI to know that
- in its effort to
impose Christianity on the Roman Empire,
- in its determination
to fully eradicate earlier religions, opposite religious sects like the
Gnostics, and theological 'heresies' like Arianism,
- in its resolve to
exterminate other Christian Churches such as the Nestorians and the Miaphysites
(Monophysites),
- in its obsession to
uproot Christian theological doctrines like Iconoclasm and Paulicianism, and
- in its witch hunt
against Manichaeism, …
… the 'official' Roman
and Constantinopolitan churches committed innumerable crimes and killed a far
greater number of victims than those massacred by Muslim invaders on several
occurrences during the early Islamic conquests.
So, when did the
Christian Church encounter Reason and when did it cease to be 'unreasonable'
according to the theologian Pope Ratzinger?
One must be very
sarcastic to duly respond to those questions: most probably, the Roman Church
discovered 'Reason' after having killed all of their opponents and the
so-called 'heretics' whose sole sin was simply to consider and denounce the
Roman Church as heretic!
If Benedict XVI forgot
to find in the Quran the reason for the Turkic interlocutor's mild attitude
toward the hostage Manuel II Palaeologus, this is a serious oversight for the
professor of theology; he should have mentioned the excerpts. In the surah
al-Ankabut ('the Spider'; ch. 29, verse 46), it is stated: "And do not
argue with the followers of earlier revelation otherwise than in a most kindly
manner".
Similarly, the German
pope failed to delve in Assyriology and in Egyptology to better understand that
the Hebrew Bible (just like the New Testament and the Quran) did not bring anything
'new' either; before Moses in Egypt and before Abraham in Mesopotamia, there
were monotheistic and aniconic trends and traits in the respective religions.
The concept of the Messiah is attested in Egypt, in Assyria, and among the
Hittites many centuries or rather more than a millennium before Isaiah
contextualized it within the small Hebrew kingdom. Both Egypt and Babylon were
holy lands long before Moses promised South Canaan to the Ancient Hebrew
tribes, whereas the Assyrians were the historically first Chosen People of the
Only God and the Assyrian imperial ideology reflected this fact in detail. The
Akkadian - Assyrian-Babylonian kings were 'emperors of the universe' and their
rule reflected the 'kingdom of Heaven'.
If Etana and Ninurta
reveal aspects of Assyrian eschatology, Horus was clearly the Egyptian Messiah,
who would ultimately vanquish Seth (Satan/Antichrist) at the End of Time in an
unprecedented cosmic battle that would usher the mankind into a new era which
would be the reconstitution of the originally ideal world and Well-Being (Wser),
i.e. Osiris. There is no Cosmogony without Eschatology or Soteriology, and
nothing was invented and envisioned by the Hebrews, the Greeks and the Romans
that had not previously been better and more solemnly formulated among the
Sumerians, the Akkadians - Assyrian-Babylonians, and the Egyptians. There is no
such thing as 'Greco-Roman' or 'Greco-Christian' or' Greco-Judaic'
civilization. Both, Islam and Christianity are the children of Mesopotamia and
Egypt.
And this concludes the
case of today's Catholic theologians, i.e. the likes of Pope Benedict XVI or
Theodore Khoury; they have to restart from scratch in order to duly assess the
origins and the nature of Christianity before the serpent casts "forth out
of his mouth water as a river after the woman, that he may cause her to be
carried away by the river". All the same, it was certainly Prof.
Ratzinger's full right to make as many mistakes as he wanted and to distort any
textual reference he happened to mention.
X.
The educational-academic-intellectual misery and the political ordeal of
today's Muslim states
Quite contrarily, it
was not the right of those who accused him of doing so, because they expanded
rather at the political and not at the academic level; this was very
hypocritical and shameful. If these politicians, statesmen and diplomats dared
speak at the academic level, they would reveal their own ignorance,
obscurantism, obsolete educational system, miserable universities, nonexistent
intellectual life, and last but not least, disreputable scientific
institutions.
The reason for this is
simple: not one Muslim country has properly organized departments and faculties
endowed with experts capable of reading historical sources in the original texts
and specializing in the History of the Eastern Roman Empire, Orthodox
Christianity, Christological disputes and Patristic Literature. If a Muslim
country had an educational, academic and intellectual establishment similar to
that of Spain or Poland, there would surely be serious academic-level objection
to Benedict XVI's lecture. It would take a series of articles to reveal, refute
and utterly denounce (not just the mistakes and the oversights but) the
distorted approach which is not proper only to the defunct Pope Emeritus but to
the entire Western academic establishment; these people would however be
academics and intellectuals of a certain caliber. Unfortunately, such
specialists do not exist in any Muslim country.
Then, the unrepresentative
criminal crooks and gangsters, who rule all the countries of the Muslim world, reacted
against Pope Benedict XVI at a very low, political level about a topic that was
not political of nature and about which they knew absolutely nothing. In this
manner, they humiliated all the Muslims, defamed Islam, ridiculed their own countries,
and revealed that they rule failed states. Even worse, they made it very clear
that they are the disreputable puppets of their colonial masters, who have
systematically forced all the Muslim countries to exactly accept as theirs the
fallacy that the Western Orientalists have produced and projected onto them
(and in this case, the entirely fake representation of Islam that theologians
like Ratzinger, Khoury and many others have fabricated).
If Ratzinger gave this
lecture, this is also due to the fact that he knew that he would not face any
academic or intellectual level opposition from the concerned countries. This is
so because all the execrable puppets, who govern the Muslim world, were put in
place by the representatives of the colonial powers. They do not defend their
local interests but execute specific orders in order not to allow
- bold explorers,
dynamic professors, and impulsive intellectuals to take the lead,
- proper secular
education, unbiased scientific methodology, intellectual self-criticism, free
judgment, and thinking out of the box to grow,
- faculties and
research centers to be established as per the norms of educationally advanced
states, and
- intellectual
anti-colonial pioneers and anti-Western scholars to demolish the racist
Greco-centric dogma that post-Renaissance European universities have
intentionally diffused worldwide.
That is why for a Muslim
today in Prof. Ratzinger's lecture the real problem is not his approach or his
mistake, but the impermissible bogus academic life and pseudo-educational
system of all the Muslim countries. In fact, before fully transforming and duly
enhancing their educational and academic systems, Muslim heads of states, prime
ministers, ministers and ambassadors have no right to speak. They must first go
back to their countries and abolish the darkness of their ridiculous
universities; their so-called professors are not professors.
Here you have all the
articles that I published at the time in favor of Benedict XVI; the first
article was published on the 16th September 2006, only four days after the
notorious lecture and only one day after the notorious BBC report, which called
the Muslim ambassadors to shout loud:
https://www.academia.edu/24775355/Benedictus_XVI_may_not_be_right_but_todays_Muslims_are_islamically_wrong_By_Prof_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis
https://www.academia.edu/24779064/What_Benedict_XVI_should_say_admonishing_Muslim_Ambassadors_by_Prof_Dr_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis
https://www.academia.edu/24779960/Can_Benedict_XVI_bring_Peace_and_Concord_-_by_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis
https://www.academia.edu/24778178/Lord_Carey_Benedictus_XVI_and_todays_decayed_Islam_Prof_Dr_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis
https://www.academia.edu/25317295/Benedict_XVI_between_Constantinople_and_Istanbul_by_Prof_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis
https://www.academia.edu/25317609/Benedictus_XVI_between_Istanbul_and_Nova_Roma_-_by_Prof._Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis
Related articles
published in 2005 and 2013:
https://www.academia.edu/43053199/Muslims_welcoming_Third_Jewish_Temple_on_the_Temple_Mount_Israel_2005
https://megalommatis.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/muslims-welcome-the-election-of-cardinal-jorge-mario-bergoglio-as-pope-francis-i/
About Benedict XVI:
https://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/papst/benedikt-xvi-prof-dr-papst_id_1505077.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_renunciation
https://gloria.tv/share/1txNGosD4V3UCWBEP9N3umNbu
https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/la/speeches/2013/february/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20130211_declaratio.html
https://vaticantips.com/the-oldest-popes-in-history/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicastery_for_the_Doctrine_of_the_Faith
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicastery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Archdiocese_of_Munich_and_Freising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bishops_of_Freising_and_archbishops_of_Munich_and_Freising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII#Archbishop_and_papal_nuncio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolic_Nunciature_to_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunciature_of_Eugenio_Pacelli
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology_of_Pope_Benedict_XVI
https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2005/august/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20050820_vigil-wyd.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_Popes
https://www.osservatoreromano.va/en/news/2021-11/ing-047/to-be-cooperatores-veritatis.html
http://www.fondazioneratzinger.va/content/fondazioneratzinger/en/news/notizie/_cooperatores-veritatis--lomaggio-della-fondazione-ratzinger-per.html
https://cooperatores-veritatis.org/ratzingers-library/a-dio-benedetto-xvi-1927-2022/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#Islam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI_and_Islam#Concerning_the_Islam_controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regensburg_lecture
(audio recording)
https://www.horeb.org/xyz/podcast/papstbesuch/2006-09-12_Vortrag_Uni_Regensburg.mp3
(in German) https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/de/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html
(in English) https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html
15 September 2006: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5348456.stm
17 September 2006: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5353208.stm
About Manuel II
Palaeologus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_II_Palaiologos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Philadelphia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ala%C5%9Fehir
https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/manuel_paleologus_dialogue7_trans.htm
Seventh Dialogue:
chapters 1–18 only (of 26 'Dialogues')
https://books.google.ru/books?id=Ax8RAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=ru#v=onepage&q&f=false (starting page 125)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Sultan
https://islamsci.mcgill.ca/RASI/BEA/Shams_al-Din_al-Bukhari_BEA.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maragheh_observatory#Nasir_al-Din_al-Tusi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasir_al-Din_al-Tusi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Chioniades
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Bryennios
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basileus
About the Dzungar
Buddhist extremists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungaria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar_Khanate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar_conquest_of_Altishahr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh%E2%80%93Dzungar_Wars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar%E2%80%93Qing_Wars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar_genocide
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