The Wake

The MacLaurin Institute is a Christian study center serving the University of Minnesota – “bringing God into the marketplace of ideas.” Dr. William Monsma, a physicist-theologian from the University of Colorado, founded it in 1982. Each year the institute brings 10 to 15 Christian scholars to the U of M campus, along with holding a conference each year presenting a distinctly Christian alternative.

The U of M’s latest speaker, Mustafa Akyol, is a Muslim writer based out of Istanbul, Turkey. Akyol, 34, graduated from Bosphorus University. He travels around the United States and the United Kingdom giving seminars relating to Islam and modernity. In Turkish “Akyol” means “the white path,” a theme present throughout his career.

On Friday, Oct. 20 Akyol spoke about the Pope and Islam. His lecture dealt with the Pope Benedict’s Sept. 12 comments about Islam, which said that the religion generally limits the use of reason and too often uses violence. “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,” the Pope said, referring to the almost 80 wars led by the Prophet Mohammad.

Jesus never picked up a sword, a member of the audience pointed out a passage from Matthew 26:50-52, which states: Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”

Akyol responded to the question of whether Muslims embrace violence and forget reason by demonstrating the number of different attitudes there are toward Islam. One includes those who reject reason and imitate the Prophet Mohammad, another use reason to interpret the Koran.

In the beginning, the Mutazili school of thought believed that one should use reason to understand the Koran. The Hanbali school believed that one should imitate everything in the Koran, never using reason to evaluate what’s written. Eventually middle ground was found – Ashari believed more in imitating Mohammad but still used reason.

The issue of reason, which aroused many Muslims, was the central issue of Pope Benedict’s September lecture. Akyol argued that the Pope, who is not an expert on Islam, focused on the works of Ibn Hazm. Hazm was a representative of the Hanbali (modern day Wahhabis) who strongly distrust reason and rely on the imitation of Mohammad. Akyol criticized the Pope for ignoring other Islamic interpretations.

Akyol acknowledges that Islam has been criticized for using violence or “spreading by sword.” He states that the violent expansion in the first century must be understood as a political act meant for the purpose of the survival of Islam. In later years it was used to advance Islamic rule, but was not meant to forcefully convert those who followed. Violence cannot be justified for those reasons, Akyol says.

He used Quranic verses noting that virtually all Islamic scholars today oppose violent conversions.

In a response given by Dr. Terry Nichols, Chair of Theology at the University of St. Thomas, it was noted that scholars who might have identified the problems never reviewed the text of the Pope’s address.

To attend future lectures through the The MacLaurin Institute visit their Web site at http://www.maclaurin.org/.