“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
These words, expressed six centuries ago by a Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, in dialogue with an Iranian scholar, spur three reflections.
Pope Benedict XVI offered the quotation, neither endorsing nor condemning it, in his academic speech “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections,” delivered in German last week in Germany. It served to introduce his erudite critique of the Western concept of reason since the Enlightenment.
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