Regensburg Lecture

Murray: What do you suspect Pope Benedict hoped to achieve by referring to the discussion between the Byzantine Emperor and his Persian interlocutor? What is Pope Benedict's vision for dialogue with Muslims, and what are the merits of his vision?

Fr. Schall: This reference was very precise. It was bravely asked. It served to pose a question almost everyone is asking: "Can religion sanction violence?" By placing it in this historic context, during a period when Constantinople itself was under siege from Muslim forces, the Pope wanted to remind us that our current problem was not formulated in this manner for the first time in our tradition. It is one that has been asked again and again for over some twelve centuries.

I think the Pope wanted to use a very simple method that we find in the Gorgias, namely, do not give us long and convoluted answers, but simply "Yes" or "No" to these basic questions: "Is violence legitimate to use to expand religion?" and "If not, do you oppose its use?"

Schall: Remember, the purpose of the Regensburg lecture was to pose the question in its most radical form: "Is it true that Islam holds violence to be a religious act to spread its faith?" Simply asking that question, especially in the light of history and contemporary events, is not a crime. If the answer is, "Islam does not hold this," the Pope would be delighted. We would all be delighted, except, presumably, those within Islam who hold this violence is legitimate. What Benedict wants to hear and why he so formulated the question in a Muslim context, was that negative answer was correct.
But if the answer is affirmative, as not a few Muslim thinkers and politicians, ancient and modern, have indeed thought and frankly told us so, then the Pope must speculate on what is the philosophic reason for this view? This is why he mentions the voluntarist intellectual tradition within Islam (and the West). This is one possible explanation of it. That is, if Allah is pure will and that will is not bound by anything but itself, there is no "reason" why it could not make wrong right and right wrong.

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2006/schall_stateofthewest_nov06.asp