Pope Benedict XVI faced growing Muslim anger on Friday over remarks in which he linked Islam with violence, with the Pakistani Parliament calling on him to retract the statement.
In India, the head of the minorities commission said the Pope sounded like medieval crusader.
In a university lecture in Regensburg, Germany, on Tuesday, the Pope implicitly denounced connections between Islam and violence, particularly with regard to jihad, or ”holy war”.
The pope’s official spokesperson later issued a response, saying that Benedict respected Islam but rejected violence motivated by religion.
Muslim leaders in several countries have strongly criticised the remarks.
On Friday, the Pakistani Parliament unanimously called on the pontiff to retract his remarks, while the foreign office accused him of ”ignorance”.
”This House demands that the pope should retract his remarks in the interest of harmony between religions,” said the resolution passed by the overwhelmingly Muslim country’s National Assembly.
”The derogatory remarks of the Pope about the philosophy of jihad and Prophet Muhammad have injured sentiments across the Muslim world and pose the danger of spreading acrimony among the religions,” the resolution said.
The Pakistani foreign office also waded into the row, saying that the Roman Catholic leader’s comments would undermine international efforts for peace between religions.
”Anyone who says that there is anything inherently evil or inhuman about Islam only shows his own ignorance of this great religion,” foreign ministry spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said.
The comments also stirred anger in India with the head of the National Commission for Minorities saying the Pope sounded like a medieval crusader.
”The language used by the Pope sounds like that of his 12th-century counterpart who ordered the crusades,” said Hamid Ansari, chairperson of the National Commission for Minorities.
The commission’s role includes maintaining harmony between officially secular India’s majority Hindu population and other groups, including Muslims, who number 130-million in the country of 1,1-billion.
A member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board also slammed the pope’s comments, saying that ”What he said was nothing but blasphemy”, and called on Muslims to ”exercise restraint and not lose their cool”.
The Pope’s comments, made during a visit to his native Bavaria in southern Germany, were couched in an historical reference to a 14th century Byzantine emperor.
”He said, I quote, ‘Show me just what Muhammad 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,,” Benedict said, quoting the Byzantine source on the Prophet Muhammad, founder of the Muslim faith.
In Indian Kashmir, where an Islamic separatist insurgency has raged since 1989, the Muslim League group called a day-long strike on Friday.
And in Britain, the Ramadan Foundation, based in the northern town of Rochdale, reacted angrily to the comments, comparing the Pope unfavourably to his predecessor John Paul II.
”The Ramadan Foundation is disappointed that the current Pope has not followed the example of his predecessor,” it said in a statement.
”The late Pope John Paul II spent over 25 years to build bridges and links with the Muslim community. He showed the world that its perception of Islam was false and that we are peace-loving people.”
The head of Turkey’s state-run religious affairs directorate, Ali Bardakoglu, on Thursday described the pope’s remarks as ”a statement full of enmity and grudge”. He also expressed opposition to the pontiff’s planned visit to Turkey in November.
And senior Islamic officials in Kuwait and Egypt demanded an immediate apology by the head of the Roman Catholic Church. — Sapa-AFP