Nazri Bahrawi makes a great point, pointing out that the approach Christians took to the Da Vinci Code is a much better model for religious protest than the current reaction in the Muslim world against the comments of Benedict XVI. He writes:
Ironically, Muslims can perhaps take credence from the Christians who also faced an equally damaging controversy with the launch of Dan Brown's bestseller The Da Vinci Code, which alleges that Jesus Christ was only a mortal, that he married Mary Magdelene who later conceived his child.
Although the book's thesis challenged the very foundation of the Christian faith, the world did not witness widespread pandemonium in the form of bombings or death threats to the author. In comparison, reactions from the Pope's comments resulted in violence like the attacks on churches in the West Bank, and possibly the killing of an Italian nun in Mogadishu, Somalia.
Not that Mr Brown's book lacked strong disagreements from the Christian community. But instead of brute force, the world saw a flurry of books, forums and documentaries by Christians that countered point by point what its practitioners hailed as fallacies about their faith.
Such measured, intellectual neutralism against controversies arguably works far better than taking to the streets and burning effigies of Western symbolism, as Muslims did.
He goes on to point out that the Pope's speech, in which he spoke in favour of the western tradition of welding Greek rationalism to religious faith, has counterparts in Islam; Abdullah Badawi, Prime Minister of Malaysia, made a similar argument for Islam last year.
The rest of the article is here.
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