The Pope and the Koran
by Daniel Pipes

Islam and Muslims are expected to be a priority for Pope Benedict XVI, but he has been publicly quite muted on these topics during his first nine months in office. One report, however, provides important clues to his current thinking.

Father Joseph D. Fessio, SJ, recounted on the Hugh Hewitt Show the details of a seminar he attended with the pope in September 2005 on Islam. Participants heard about the ideas of Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani-born liberal theologian (1919-88) who held that if Muslims thoroughly reinterpret the Koran, Islam can modernize. He urged a focus on the principles behind Koranic legislation such as jihad, cutting off thieves’ hands, or permitting polygyny, in order to modify these customs to fit today’s needs. When Muslims do this, he concluded, they can prosper and live harmoniously with non-Muslims.

Pope Benedict reacted strongly to this argument. He has been leading such annual seminars since 1977 but always lets others speak first, waiting until the end to comment. But hearing about Fazlur Rahman’s analysis, Fr. Fessio’s recalled with surprise, the pope could not contain himself:

This is the first time I recall where he made an immediate statement. And I’m still struck by it, how powerful it was. … the Holy Father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said well, there’s a fundamental problem with that [analysis] because, he said, in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Muhammad, but it’s an eternal word. It’s not Muhammad’s word. It’s there for eternity the way it is. There’s no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it.

This basic difference, Pope Benedict continued, makes Islam unlike Christianity and Judaism. In the latter two religions, “God has worked through His creatures. And so, it is not just the word of God, it’s the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark. He’s used His human creatures, and inspired them to speak His word to the world.” Jews and Christians “can take what’s good” in their traditions and mold it. There is, in other words, “an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations.”

Whereas the Bible is, for Benedict, the “word of God that comes through a human community,” he understands the Koran as “something dropped out of Heaven, which cannot be adapted or applied.” This immutability has vast consequences: it means “Islam is stuck. It’s stuck with a text that cannot be adapted.”

Fr. Fessio’s striking account prompts two reactions. First, these comments were made at a private seminar with former students, not in public. As “Spengler” of Asia Times points out, even the pope “must whisper” when discussing Islam. It’s a sign of the times.

Second, I must register my respectful disagreement. The Koran indeed can be interpreted. Indeed, Muslims interpret the Koran no less than Jews and Christians interpret the Bible, and those interpretations have changed no less over time. The Koran, like the Bible, has a history.

For one indication of this, note the original thinking of the Sudanese theologian, Mahmud Muhammad Taha (1909-85). Taha built his interpretation on the conventional division of the Koran into two. The initial verses came down when Muhammad was a powerless prophet living in Mecca, and tend to be cosmological. Later verses came down when Muhammad was the ruler of Medina, and include many specific rulings. These commands eventually served as the basis for the Shari‘a, or Islamic law.

Taha argued that specific Koranic rulings applied only to Medina, not to other times and places. He hoped modern-day Muslims would set these aside and live by the general principles delivered at Mecca. Were Taha’s ideas accepted, most of the Shari‘a would disappear, including outdated provisions concerning warfare, theft, and women. Muslims could then more readily modernize.

Even without accepting a grand schema such as Taha proposed, Muslims are already making small moves in the same direction. Islamic courts in reactionary Iran, for example, have broken with Islamic tradition and now permit women the right to sue for divorce and grant a murdered Christian equal recompense with that of a murdered Muslim.

As this suggests, Islam is not stuck. But huge efforts are needed to get it moving again.

Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).

The Pope and the Koran: A clarification
by The Rev. Joseph Fessio

I think it is important for me to give context to and clarify the remarks I made recently in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, reported in Diana West's column in The Washington Times ("Silence that speaks volumes," Op-Ed, Friday).

The most important clarification is that the Holy Father did not say, nor did I, that "Islam is incapable of reform." What I did say - and it contains an unfortunate ambiguity - is that "in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Mohammed, but it's an eternal word.

It's not Mohammed's word. It's there for eternity the way it is. There's no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it, whereas in Christianity, and Judaism, the dynamism's completely different, that God has worked through His creatures."

Note first that it was the Koran that was referred to, not Islam. The comparison was between the Christian Bible and the Koran, not between Christianity and Islam. I said, paraphrasing the Holy Father, that "there's an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted to new situations."

Then I maladroitly alluded to this comparison, referring to "that distinction when the Koran, which is seen as something dropped out of Heaven, which cannot be adapted or applied, even, and the Bible, which is a word of God that comes through a human community." I made a serious error in precision when I said that the Koran "cannot be adapted or applied" and that there is "no possibility of adapting or interpreting it." This is certainly not what the Holy Father said.

Of course the Koran can be and has been interpreted and applied. I was making a (too) crude summary of the distinction that the Holy Father did make between the inner dynamism of the Koran as a divine text delivered as such to Mohammed, and that of the Bible, which is both the Word of God and the words of men inspired by God, within a community that contains divinely appointed authorized interpreters (the bishops in communion with the pope).

The meeting was an informal one of the Holy Father and his former students. The presentation and the discussion were in German, and the Holy Father was not speaking from a prepared text. My German is passable but not entirely reliable. My later remarks in a live radio interview were extemporaneous. I think I paraphrased the Holy Father with general accuracy, but it was an indiscretion for me to mention what he said at all, and my impromptu paraphrase in another language should not be used for a careful exegesis of the mind of the Holy Father.

The Rev. Joseph Fessio Provost, Ave Maria University Editor, Ignatius Press Naples, Fla.

This appeared as a letter to the editor, January 21, 2006, Washington Times,