Context is a Bitch

Unlike some – perhaps most – I've actually read Pope Ratzi's lecture wherein the now-notorious words

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman,..."

may be found, in the middle of page two of a seven-page document — the third paragraph of said document, and the first substantive paragraph: what might fairly (from a pedagogical view) be called the "introduction".

In fact, Ratzi himself explains, in the final sentence of the second paragraph, why he used those words:

here I would like to discuss only one point – itself rather marginal to the dialogue [from which the quotation was taken] as a whole – which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

So this is what Ratzi did: he quoted a ca. A.D. 1400 deduction from observations such as the one that immediately (in both the original and in Ratzi's quotation thereof) followed:

"...such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".

In the original, that observation was used to make an assertion about the nature of God. Read for yourself:

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he [a 14th c. Byzantine emperor] addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "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 emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature.

Ratzi then used that 14th c. assertion about the nature of God to pose a thesis that

not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature,

which he proceeded to examine for the remaining five-and-one-half pages of the seven-page document.

In other words: Ratzi quoted a 14th c. deduction made from a 14th c. observation leading to a 14th c. assertion that he used to pose a thesis which he then evaluated. And he got into a P.R. nightmare for quoting the deduction. Talk about six degrees of Kevin Bacon [for the record, there is one person between K. B. and me].

I am no great fan of Pope Ratzi; I have basically a slightly unfavorable lack of opinion about him. But as a former anthropologist, I am a great fan of context, and context has been suffering forced prostitution for years. I am also a fan of critical thought, of which there is entirely too great a dearth.

Ratzi quoted the controversial deduction because it was part of the observation that gave rise to his intellectual argument. By the rules of intellectual argument, you don't argue decontextualized points. He made the quotation out of an obligation to provide context, so from that perspective, slamming him for it is truly an instance of taking his words out of context.

Does he have any sympathy with the deduction that he quoted? I don't know. One could argue that he had an ethical, if not intellectual, obligation to disavow the deduction, so that his failure to do so was an ethical failure. But it can't be an ethical failure merely to quote stupid 600-year-old statements.