The Linux Extremist

Today, September 17th, two gunmen shot and killed an elderly Italian nun who was working in a hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. Apparently, she and her bodyguard were shot several times in the back by her assailants, who then ran off.

This follows several days of violent outbursts from the Islamic world to an academic lecture given by the Pope in his native Germany; he was stating that violence and religion should never go hand in hand. In the course of that lecture, he quoted a Byzantine emperor who had some very strong criticisms of Islam because of its adherence to violence.

Let’s re-examine this situation for a moment. The Pope says that violence and religion should never go hand in hand; as part of this lecture, he quotes an emperor who in his critique of Islam, states the same. The reaction of the Islamic world can be largely encapsulated by the statement of Sheikh Abubukar Hassan Mali, a Somali imam, who told his congregation: “Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim.”

The word “irony” springs to mind. It is obvious to anyone who anyone with reason and logic that the reaction of the Islamic world proved the statement of the Byzantine Emperor correct. The irony deficiency in parts of the Muslim world is staggering.

Let’s spell it out, since they obviously have problems understanding this: if they wanted to prove that Islam is a non-violent religion and thus the Emperor wrong (remember, the Pope’s lecture was not a critique of Islam in particular, he was criticising religions that endorse violence), they should have protested with calm, tranquility, and dignity. Rather, the public is assaulted with images of burning effigies of Pope Benedict, the raised fists, the angry shouts of crowds in Jakarta, Karachi and elsewhere. Islam looks extremely poor in this light; it also makes Islam look like a faith for the thin skinned.

The Pope did try to do a service by raising interfaith discussions to an academic level; he wanted to talk about de-linking violence from religion; he said such a link goes against the “nature of God”. Quite so; the good shepherd seeks to guide his flock away from the wolves. The Islamic world missed an opportunity to prove that the rhetoric about their faith being a “religion of peace” was not so much marketing; rather, this episode has diminished Islam in the eyes of the West. A Sky News poll of the British public on the morning of September 17th asking if the Pope should apologise further had a resounding 91% No result. This is all the more astonishing because the poll was taken before the Pope made his additional apology during his Sunday blessing.

The death of the Italian nun will only add more fuel to the flames. It is one thing to burn an effigy; killing a harmless nun, whose primary concern in life was tending to the ill and injured, is an entirely new category of depravity. Islamic leaders should step up and condemn this brutal act, quickly. So far, however, there has been silence on this subject.

This is a pity, because the Pope’s good intentions and high hopes can only now appear to be misplaced. If we are to achieve his noble aim of delinking religious faith and violence, there has to be an understanding of the rightness of this concept. However, it is quite clear that those who gunned down the nun, burned the effigies and raised their fists in anger do not agree. The sad result is that only more violence is likely to follow.

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