Through Force or Faith? — Page 95
Chapter 1 — Analysis of the Papal Lecture 95 Hiding behind the words of others while accusing Islam and the founder of Islam, did the Pope forget those parts of the history of Christianity when Christians coerced people to change their religion? The Pope, in the course of his lecture, accused the Holy Prophet Muhammad s as of the abomination that he preached peace when he was in a state of weakness. Commenting on this lecture of the Pope, famous German philosopher Professor Kurt Flasch writes: When Christianity gained power in 313, it adopted, within a short period, the same ways of coercion that it had suffered from. While it remained weak, it preached religious freedom. When it became the state religion, it displayed fundamentalist rigidity against the heretics. Even in the nineteenth century when it was in majority, it kept itself busy with polemics against the idea of toler- ance. ( Süddeutsche Zeitung, no. 239, on October 17 2006, about Church Fathers and other Fundamentalists, by Kurt Flasch) It is hard to find any parallels with the atrocities committed against Muslims and Jews by the Christian rulers during the Spanish Inquisition. Renowned Jewish peace activist and columnist Uri Avnery writes: When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel