Word: muslims
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...continued the tradition with a closed-door encounter in the Vatican's breezy summer residence, Castel Gandolfo. The topic chosen that first year with him as Pope was Islam, and the keynote speaker was Father Samir Khalil Samir, a soft-spoken, Cairo-born Jesuit and an expert on Muslim history and theology...
Thirteen months later, Benedict set off the most explosive moment of his papacy with a lecture at his old university in Regensburg, Germany, about faith and reason and the risk that Islamic theology makes the religion particularly prone to violence. Even as criticism of the speech spread in both Muslim and Catholic circles, Samir was among the first and most steadfast defenders of the Pope's message about Islam. Indeed, they were the same ideas Samir had been espousing for years. (See pictures from Pope Benedict XVI's first year...
Samir says that beyond resolving the political conflicts in the Muslim world, there is much hard intellectual work that needs to be done to combat violence and expand freedom within the religion's ranks. "Islam is living a moment of great intellectual weakness. There is a crisis of thought," he says. "Certain things must be cleared up, ambiguities must be removed to arrive at a reading of the Koran in light of the contemporary culture based on human rights." (Read about the Pope's relationship with Islam...
Samir sees as one of the great challenges facing Islam a lack of official leadership to certify or dismiss interpretations of what sacred texts say, notably on the question of violence. "There is a need for an authority, unanimously acknowledged by Muslims, that could say 'From now on, only this verse is valid.' But this does not - and probably will never - happen," he writes in response to Question No. 26. "This means that when some fanatics kill children, women and men in the name of pure and authentic Islam, or in the name of the Koran or of the Muslim...
...learn from history, if the United States is to salvage its international reputation, and if some kind of answer is to be given to the Muslim world, the Obama administration cannot simply absolve the Bush administration of its sins. There must be an investigation—both at the national level and at least some semblance of cooperation with the investigators appointed by the International Criminal Court. In any case, the Obama administration should remember that human rights and global counterterrorism are interconnected issues. After all, as New York Times writer Patrick Tyler stated at the onset of the invasion...