Pope Benedict XVI and the Islamic Reactio

Pope Benedict and the Islamic Reaction

By

Gabriel Sawma


In a meeting with representatives of science in Germany on September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI quoted a short segment of a dialog between Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian. The Pope said:

“In the seventh conversation, from an edition by Professor Theodore Khoury, the emperor must have known that Surah 2: 256 reads: There is no compulsion in religion.” According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Muhammad was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the di View the rest of this article