The Vatican on Saturday sought to quell the storm engulfing Pope Benedict XVI by claiming that the pontiff ”sincerely regrets” quoting remarks that Islam was ‘evil and inhuman’.
In a conciliatory statement, the Vatican’s ”prime minister” said the pope was sorry his comments had offended Muslims around the world. ”The Holy Father is very sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers,” Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, one of Pope Benedict’s closest associates, said.
The pope regarded Muslims with ”esteem”, the cardinal went on. But there was no hint on Saturday that the pope intended to retract his remarks.
Muslim leaders were divided on Saturday on whether the Pope had gone far enough. The deputy leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Habib, asked: ”Has he presented a personal apology for statements by which he clearly is convinced? No. We want a personal apology. We feel that he has committed a grave error.” On Saturday night Morocco recalled its ambassador to the Vatican in a sign of its disapproval.
British Muslims were more sympathetic. The Muslim Council of Britain said the Pope had made a ”good first step” in recognising the hurt he had caused. Ajmal Masroor of the Islamic Society of Britain added that it was ”greatly noble” of him to accept his ”mistake”.
On Saturday Cardinal Bertone, the highest-ranking official in the Vatican administration, insisted the pope’s comments made during a visit to Germany had been misinterpreted.
On Tuesday, Benedict cited a medieval text in which a Byzantine emperor is quoted as criticising teachings of the Prophet Muhammad that were ”evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”.
Cardinal Bertone stressed that the pontiff had been quoting the view of another. He added: ”The Holy Father did not mean, nor does he mean, to make that opinion his own in any way.” He said ”a complete and attentive reading of the text” made clear that Benedict was reflecting in general on the relationship between religion and violence.
Several German politicians led by Angela Merkel, Germany’s conservative chancellor, leaped to the Pope’s defence. ”Whoever criticises the Pope misunderstood the aim of his speech,” she told Bild newspaper. ”What Benedict XVI emphasised was a decisive and uncompromising renunciation of all forms of violence in the name of religion,” she said.
But there was little sign on Saturday that protests across the Middle East and Asia, which began last week, were about to fizzle out. In the West Bank town of Nablus protesters firebombed an Anglican and an Orthdox church. A group called the Lions of Monotheism said it had carried out the attacks. No one was hurt. In Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, students burned effigies of the pope and police broke up dozens of protests.
Pakistan’s leader Pervez Musharraf said the pope had confused Islam with violence. Speaking in Cuba, he said: ”Our strategy must clearly be to oppose the sinister tendencies to associate terrorism with Islam and discrimination against Muslims, which are giving rise to an ominous alienation between the West and the world of Islam.”
There are now grave doubts whether the pope will be able to travel to Turkey in November as planned. The trip would be the pope’s first to a large Muslim state.
Benedict has already irritated Turks by expressing his scepticism over Turkey’s application to join the European Union. Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday dubbed the pope’s comments ”ugly” and ”unfortunate”, telling Turkish TV: ”The Pope needs to take a step back to preserve inter-religious peace.”
Other Islamic leaders also waded into the debate. ”The pope must not take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created,” Malaysia’s Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said.
The Vatican, meanwhile, appears to have been caught off-guard by reaction to the Pope’s speech made to his old university in the Bavarian town of Regensburg. Although the speech was made on Tuesday, it was 48 hours before anybody noticed its inflammatory content. – Guardian Unlimited Â