MB Civic

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/opinion/19allen.html?pagewanted=print

Re the Pope’s alleged anti-Islamic comment, I could not agree more with the statement in this piece that, “The uproar in the Muslim world over the comments is thus to some extent a case of ‘German professor meets sound-bite culture,’ with a phrase from a tightly wrapped academic argument shot into global circulation, provoking an unintended firestorm.”

Anyone who has read the entirety of the Pope’s address at the University of Regensburg would know that he was citing a 600-year-old conversation in which one of the people made a disparaging remark about Islam. Yet the Pope never suggested, either directly or indirectly, that he agreed with the speaker of the quote, and, indeed, it was used in a very specific context – one that, ironically, was the opposite of the quote.