Barry Healy
Pope Benedict XVI, when known as Cardinal Ratzinger, was notorious as "the Pope's Rottweiler", the theological enforcer who silenced progressives. On September 12, he began a new role - "dog whistler" for Islamophobia.
Dog whistle politics uses coded inflammatory references embedded in careful language for deniability. The labyrinthine nature of Vatican statements lends itself perfectly to such layers of meaning. Benedict gave a presentation on "faith and reason" at Germany's University of Regensburg, drawing on a 1391 dialogue between the obscure Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a Persian Muslim. Manuel considered that Mohammed brought "only evil" to the world and, by extension, Islam is "inhuman". Benedict said that Islam is not "bound up with ... rationality", while Christianity is.
Within days, Middle Eastern Christian churches began going up in flames, and demonstrations erupted across the Muslim world. Criticism came not only from groups hostile to the West, but also from secular Muslim officials who are normally friendly with Western governments and the Vatican.
On September 17, Benedict clarified his statement. Avoiding an outright apology, he said the Byzantine quote didn't express his own opinions and that he was "deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address ... which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims". Three days later, Benedict said he had wanted to spark a "self-critical dialogue both among religions and between modern reason and Christian faith".
George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard are working hard to fan Islamophobia to justify their "war on terror". They are also trying to drive a wedge into the Muslim community between so-called "mainstream" and "reactionary" Islam.
Benedict, who is considered one of the great intellectuals of the Catholic Church, said he accidentally blundered into quoting a Christian emperor ticking off an Iranian about Islam's deficiencies.
In fact, Benedict's hostility to Islam goes back a long way. In 1997, in an interview in the Jesuit-published book Salt of the Earth, he said that Islam is organised in a way "that is opposed to our modern ideas about society". "One has to have a clear understanding that it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of a pluralistic society", he said.
In September 2005, at an annual meeting with former students, Benedict told them that Islam can adapt to democracy only if the Koran is radically reinterpreted. The Vatican denied the report, which a student had leaked to the media, and the informant withdrew his claims.
After that, Australia's Cardinal George Pell, well known for his Vatican loyalty, began his attack on Islam, putting the line from which Benedict had officially distanced himself. In February, Pell launched a ferocious broadside against Islam.
The Koran is riddled with "invocations to violence", he said, in a speech to US Catholic business people. Pell said he saw the light about the inner workings of Islam after the 9/11 terror attacks. "Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited", he claimed.
After Benedict's September 17 clarification, Pell again became the stalking horse, saying on September 18 that the violent reaction to the Pope's words proved the validity of the insult that the Pope said he didn't intend!
This soft cop, hard cop behaviour has sordid roots within the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II, Benedict's mentor, cooperated with the Reagan administration's slaughter of Liberation Theology Catholics in central America. John Paul II slammed the theologians, while Reagan armed the death squads trying to bring down the Sandinista Nicaraguan government in the 1980s. Benedict XVI is now providing shifty theological cover for Bush's imperial crusade in the Middle East.