Pope Benedict on Islam

The following  comments by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger were published in 1997 in the book "Salt of the Earth" Ignatius Press, San Fransisco, and quoted in
http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=45084&eng=y

”Shari’a shapes society from beginning to end...”



by Joseph Ratzinger





I think that first we must recognize that Islam is not a uniform
thing. In fact, there is no single authority for all Muslims, and for
this reason dialogue with Islam is always dialogue with certain groups.
No one can speak for Islam as a whole; it has, as it were, no commonly
regarded orthodoxy. And, to prescind from the schism between Sunnis and
Shiites, it also exists in many varieties. There is a noble Islam,
embodied, for example, by the King of Morocco, and there is also the
extremist, terrorist Islam, which, again, one must not identify with
Islam as a whole, which would do it an injustice.


An important point, however, is [...] that the interplay of
society, politics, and religion has a completely difference structure
in Islam as a whole. Today's discussion in the West about the
possibility of Islamic theological faculties, or about the idea of
Islam as a legal entity, presupposes that all religions have basically
the same structure, that they all fit into a democratic system with its
regulations and the possibilities provided by these regulations. In
itself, however, this necessarily contradicts the essence of Islam,
which simply does not have the separation of the political and
religious sphere which Christianity has had from the beginning. The
Koran is a total religious law, which regulates the whole of political
and social life and insists that the whole order of life be Islamic.
Sharia shapes society from beginning to end. In this sense, it can
exploit such partial freedoms as our constitution gives, but it can't
be its final goal to say: Yes, now we too are a body with rights, now
we are present just like the Catholics and the Protestants. In such a
situation, it would not achieve a status consistent with its inner
nature; it would be in alienation from itself.


Islam has a total organization of life that is completely different
from ours; it embraces simply everything. There is a very marked
subordination of woman to man; there is a very tightly knit criminal
law, indeed, a law regulating all areas of life, that is opposed to our
modern ideas about society. One has to have a clear understanding that
it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm
of a pluralistic society. When one represents the situation in those
terms, as often happens today, Islam is defined according to the
Christian model and is not seen as it really is in itself. In this
sense, the question of dialogue with Islam is naturally much more
complicated than, for example, an internal dialogue among Christians.


The consolidation of Islam worldwide is a multifaceted phenomenon.
On the one hand, financial factors play a role here. The financial
power that the Arab countries have attained and that allows them to
build large Mosques everywhere, to guarantee a presence of Muslim
cultural institutes and more things of that sort. But that is certainly
only one factor. The other is an enhanced identity, a new
self-consciousness.


In the cultural situation of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, until the 1960s, the superiority of the Christian countries
was industrially, culturally, politically, and militarily so great that
Islam was really forced into the second rank. Christianity – at any
rate, civilizations with a Christian foundation – could present
themselves as the victorious power in world history. But then the great
moral crisis of the Western world, which appears to be the Christian
world, broke out. In the face of the deep moral contradictions of the
West and of its internal helplessness – which was suddenly opposed by a
new economic power of the Arab countries – the Islamic soul reawakened.
We are somebody too; we know who we are; our religion is holding its
ground; you don't have one any longer.


This is actually the feeling today of the Muslim world: The Western
countries are no longer capable of preaching a message of morality, but
have only know-how to offer the world. The Christian religion has
abdicated; it really no longer exists as a religion; the Christians no
longer have a morality or a faith; all that's left are a few remains of
some modern ideas of enlightenment; we have the religion that stands
the test.


So the Muslims now have the consciousness that in reality Islam has
remained in the end as the more vigorous religion and that they have
something to say to the world, indeed, are the essential religious
force of the future. Before, the shariah and all those things had
already left the scene, in a sense; now there is a new pride. Thus a
new zest, a new intensity about wanting to live Islam has awakened.
This is its great power: We have a moral message that has existed
without interruption since the prophets, and we will tell the world how
to live it, whereas the Christians certainly can't. We must naturally
come to terms with this inner power of Islam, which fascinates even
academic circles.
"