Through Force or Faith? — Page 3
Refutation of the Allegations Made Against Islam 3 should always pray to this end and, with prayers, they should also respond to the questions that were raised in the lecture that the Pope delivered. We have only these two weapons that we can use, and no other reaction has ever been shown by an Ahmad i , nor will it ever be, God willing. I shall now read out the summary of the Pope’s objections that he raised against the Holy Quran and the Holy Prophet s as. 1 The proceedings were sent for from Germany. He says that he had read an old dialogue, the gist of which has been published by a profes- sor of a university. This old dialogue took place between an eru- dite Kaiser [Roman Emperor], Manuel, and an educated Persian in 1391 CE in Ankara, after which it was then put down in writing by the same Christian emperor. He [the Pope] did admit that, since this dialogue was recorded by the Christian emperor, it was presented more from his own viewpoint. It’s clear how honest [his intentions were] in that the discourse made little mention about what was said by the Muslim scholar, but was more of his [Kaiser Manuel’s] own viewpoint. Anyway, with regard to the questions that were raised, [the Pope] says that in this particular lecture he wants to talk about one point, which is that in his dialogue the Kaiser mentioned jihad whilst the Kaiser certainly knew that, in Islam, there is no compulsion in faith—referring to S u rah al-Baqarah, 2:257—he then further says that the Kaiser also knew the latter’s teachings about holy war, or jihad , in the Quran, and that there are details mentioned about jihad in the Quran where treatment is differ- ent for the People of the Book than for the infidels (he came up 1. This account has been obtained by Germany. [Publisher]