Challenging the status quo

While watching Benedict live on television news coverage today the story broke that al-Qaeda in Iraq had just posted a denouncement of the Pope’s visit on its website. It was given little coverage, and then attention turned back to the great good Benedict is doing in this visit to Turkey.

It occurred to me then that Benedict probably represents to the jihadists what John Paul represented to communists on that infamous visit to Poland — a threat to their dominance by calling publicly for the dignity and rights of all people, and most of all, their freedom found in those rights.

MSNBC is carrying this account:

Pope Benedict XVI held an intimate Mass under a flower-covered canopy at one of the holiest Christian places in this predominantly Muslim country Wednesday, as riot police and soldiers toting submachine guns patrolled a hillside nearby.

Hours into Benedict’s trip, al-Qaida in Iraq denounced Benedict XVI’s visit to Turkey, calling it part of a “crusader campaign” against Islam.

In Istanbul, Vatican officials said the remark shows the need for faiths to fight “violence in the name of God.”

The Mass was held next to the ruins of a house where the Virgin Mary is thought to have spent her last years.

This is a special site visited by a great many Muslims every year, because they honor Mary so highly, and she is the woman mentioned most often in the Quran.

Benedict held the Mass as part of his efforts to reach out to the Christian minority in Turkey, even as he seeks dialogue with Muslims who were angered over a speech he made in September in which he cited a medieval text that linked Islam and violence.

“I have wanted to convey my personal love and spiritual closeness, together with that of the universal church, to the Christian community here in Turkey, a small minority which faces many challenges and difficulties daily,” the pope said.

In response, Al-Qaida in Iraq issued its statement on an Islamic militant Web site it often uses to post messages.

“The pope’s visit, in fact, is to consolidate the crusader campaign against the lands of Islam after the failure of the crusader leaders … and an attempt to extinguish the burning ember of Islam inside our Turkish brothers,” it said.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said “neither the pope nor his entourage are worried” by the statement.

“This type of message shows once again the urgency and importance of a common commitment of all forces against violence,” Lombardi said. “It also shows the need of various faiths to say ’no’ to violence in the name of God.”

Sandro Magister has a good piece of analysis on the Pope’s consistency in defending freedom and denouncing violence. Like yesterday, his first day in Turkey, speaking to the diplomatic corps in Ankara.

Benedict XVI recalled that “the Turkish Constitution recognizes every citizen’s right to freedom of worship and freedom of conscience.”

And then he asked that these freedoms be respected in practice, without constraints and violence:

“The civil authorities of every democratic country are duty bound to guarantee the effective freedom of all believers and to permit them to organize freely the life of their religious communities. […] This assumes, of course, that religions do not seek to exercise direct political power, as that is not their province, and it also assumes that they utterly refuse to sanction recourse to violence as a legitimate expression of religion.”

In these last words as well, the reference to the lecture in Regensburg is clear. There, too, the pope indicated “human dignity” as the terrain of common action for Christians and Muslims, and more precisely “a human point of reference, when it relates to birth, education, manner of life or work, of old age, or death,” explaining that “the extraordinary development of science and technology” is directed toward this end.

The pope concluded by quoting the letter of Paul to the Galatians (5:13): “You were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.”

If that’s a “campaign against Islam”, one has to wonder what Islam stands for, and why this message is seen as a threat to that.