I am grateful to Prof. Shamir who shared his brief commentary on Pope's speech:
While most attention is given to the quote concerning Muhammad's inhuman and evil legacy, other parts of the speech are no less revealing. Please take a moment to read the excerpt below, where the Pope analyzes what earlier in the speech he described as 'a profound harmony': "This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions but also from that of world history… Given that convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant development in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe."Note that the above statement is not made in order to deconstruct the ethno-centric character of Christianity but rather the opposite: the whole speech is geared towards celebrating it. So it seems to me that while attention is given to the comments about Islam, it is worthwhile to read the lecture as a whole. It is revealing in many senses. For critical readers, this lucid speech offers an opportunity to probe into the type of conservatism that we are dealing with here. This is not a wild-eyed form of right-wing politics, grounded in xenophobic rhetoric or empty populist slogans. This is a serious academic approach, in fact an intellectual one, that recruits the heavy artillery of Western philosophy, science, reason and morality to make a case for grounding Christian theology within that tradition and, moreover, for grounding both IN Truth. I find it most illuminating that in order to do that, the logic of argument practically simulates aspects of Edward Said's Orientalism, in that in the last instance, the Creation of Europe is inherently tied to its theological and moral distancing from the East. I wonder what this all means for the Pope's position on the process of incorporating Turkey into the EU. It all sounds a bit frightening. Better still, I wonder how the Pope is going to defend this position while visiting Turkey in November. Frightening, but also fun.
In the mean time: Merkel defends Pope amid protests
* The Guardian: Papal fallibility
* The unmistakable whiff of Christian triumphalism; This was no casual slip. Beneath his scholarly rhetoric, the Pope's logic seemed to be that Islam is dangerous and godless by Giles Fraser
* Turkish media focus on protests against Pope