Through Force or Faith? — Page 96
?— A Reply to Pope Benedict XVI 96 choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. ( Reflections on History and Religion: Muhammad’s Sword, Uri Avnery, Baltimore Chronicle 23 September 2006) The opinions attributed to Ibn H azm that the Pope referred to were also held by Don Scotus and in the last section of his speech, the Pope briefly mentioned that too. Then why did he not confine his lecture to Christianity? Here, it begs the question: ‘Why did the Pope level these base- less objections at Islam in the first place?’ One possible reason could be that, by this approach, he wanted to divert the attention of his audience from the painful Church history of religious persecution so as to prove the con- cordance between rationality and Christianity. This is so because Church dogmas, especially the doctrine of Trinity; the Church’s coercion in the name of religion; countless killings and burnings alive do not concur with human rationality. Rationality and Authentic Christian Authors What has been written by Christians in contravention to ration- ality is well illustrated by the book of the well-known philos- opher Augustine of Hippo (A. D. 430) who was recognized by the Church as a pious and honourable man. In it, Augustine has undertaken, in exchange of letters with Simplician who later became the Bishop of Mailand, a philosophical discussion on the Christian concept of forgiveness. Augustine published these letters in A. D. 398 and these are