Through Force or Faith? — Page 234
?— A Reply to Pope Benedict XVI 234 Christianity and Rationality The Pope has presented the example of Imam Ibn H azm in his discourse on the subject of faith and reason while it is not obliga- tory for Muslims to follow him. But the Pope’s own statement on the subject of faith and reason is quite astonishing. On one hand, by quoting an extinct Islamic school of thought, he asserts that irrationality is attributed to God in Islam, but towards the end of his speech, he himself says that the term reason needs to be broad- ened. The question is, in this expansion, who will draw the line and where? By doing so, does he intend to declare such teachings which, to any sane person would seem completely illogical to be reasonable and sound? We wish to draw the Pope’s attention to Christian doctrines and ask him to explain what is their relation- ship to rationality? In Christianity we see such beliefs, from the creation of Adam to the Crucifixion of Jesus, which are impossible to understand rationally; such as inheritance of sin, atonement, the Trinity, etc. If, according to Christianity, God’s acts are not in conflict with reason, why is there such discordance between faith and reason? The views about coercion that the Pope has attrib- uted to Islam, by quoting the ‘Z a hiriyyah school of thought, in fact appear in certain injunctions of the Old Testament that the Pope himself supports. For example, Adam and Eve were chas- tised because they ate the fruit from the ‘Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,’ which allowed them to distinguish between good and evil. But before they ate that fruit, they knew no differ- ence between good and evil (Genesis 3:22-32). So, why were they punished? Not only were Adam and Eve punished, their entire progeny, till the Day of Judgment shall continue to be cursed due