REGENSBERG

The importance of the Pope's Regensburg speech can hardly be overstated. In asserting the divorce of reason and faith as the fatal flaw of both violent Islam and secularism -- and implicitly, Christianity itself over much of its history -- the Pope, as the chief representive of one of the world's great religions, unlike the call to political change (i.e., democracy and freedom) issued by the President, challenges Islam on religious terms. As instrumental as John Paul was in eviscerating the Soviet monster, so too, history may view Benedict's speech as a turning point in ultimately bringing about the "Reformation" which Islam so desperately needs. *

The Pope quotes an Islamic philosopher, Ibn Hazn, who states that "God is not bound even by his own word," much less reason, "and that [w]ere it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry."

Compare Rabbi David Hartman in Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest (JPS 1976), who states: "Regarding a 'prophet' commanding participation in idol worship, Maimonides writes:

... for the testimony of reason which denies his prophecy is stronger than the testimony of the eye which sees his miracles ...

According to Maimonides (at least through Hartman's lenses, and Hartman himself identifies multiple contradictory interpretations of Maimonides), as in apparently at least modern Catholicism, there is no conflict between reason and faith, and the ideal life is guided by both. By contrast, the Pope observes, secularists and Islamists converge, each taking the position that religion and reason are incompatible, tending toward "pathologies," when the fundamental relationship between reason and faith is severed.

Other than perhaps some of George W. Bush's addresses, is there another speech that has been more influential since 9/11? May the Pope's pen help vanquish the Islamic sword!
__________
* Query: has Judaism had or needed a "Reformation" -- in the sense of embracing rationality and religion, "Athens and Jerusalem," neither to the exclusion of the other? Has rationality been inherent in Judaism from inception (e.g., when Abraham, according to tradition, came to the realization that there is one God at least partly through the use of logic and deductive reasoning)?