Does Islam Flout Reason? Why the Pope's Case Is a Flimsy One

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Well, Benedict certainly knows a compelling "big idea" when he runs across it. To those of us (that is, everybody) who are trying to understand the behavior of the Islamic terrorist fringe, there is something almost theatrically satisfying, in a bone-chilling way, about the grand idea that irrational violence might be hard-wired into Islam. But like the Clash of Civilizations theory to which it is related, it's a huge accusation, and even if Benedict really wants to make it, Ibn Hazm is apparently a bad place to start.

My own authority on this point is Ingrid Mattson, professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut and president of the Islamic Society of North America. Her view: Not only is Ibn Hazm a dead branch on the Muslim theological tree; but that even Muslim suicide bombers would not recognize Benedict's supposed Islamic teaching. Mattson was audibly frustrated when she heard the Pontiff had cited Ibn Hazm, saying "It's completely selective!" She went on to explain that the medieval Cordoban belonged to a literalist legal school known as the Zahiri, which never developed a community or a seminary. Their thought was picked up by a few Muslim intellectuals whose influence she says was never great. (She says they include the theological predecessors of neither today's Wahhab fundamentalists nor suicide bombers.)

Muslim thinking is not monolithic on faith and reason. If one wants to talk about non-mainstream positions, Mattson claims that the Zahiri's opposite number, the school called the Mu'tazilites, are more influential. They occupy what might be called the more liberal side of Muslim theology—thus they don't represent a current majority—but they exist, and remain a global school. And they have a high view of human reason as an essential means to understand God's will—consistent, says Mattson, with the idea of Natural Law articulated by the Pope's own church.

If the Mu'tazilites are a minority, what does Islam's broad middle think? Mattson says that it tends to believe that reason should be invoked "to understand scripture, to make analogies, to adduce particular rulings from universal principles and values." She says that compared to the Mu'tazilites, the middle "is not as confident of the ability of reason to be an independent source of knowledge and would need proof that what's being reasoned has a basis in scripture." The Pope might want to explore the subtleties of this attitude. But it's nowhere near Ibn Hazm. (In fact, it sounds a little like some conservative Christians.)