Istanbul, Turkey – Leaders across the Muslim world demanded Pope Benedict XVI apologize for remarks linking Islam and violence, but the Vatican stopped short of doing so Saturday, saying instead the pontiff “sincerely regrets” that Muslims were offended.
Benedict’s speech in Germany this week unleashed a torrent of rage among Muslims and stirred fears of violent anti-Western protests like those that followed the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
The new Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said Benedict’s position on Islam is in line with Vatican teaching that the church regards Muslims with “esteem.” Muslim leaders have been unappeased by previous overtures by Vatican officials.
“We do not accept the apology through Vatican channels … and ask him (Benedict) to offer a personal apology – not through his officials,” Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon’s most senior Shiite cleric, told worshippers Friday in Beirut.
Two churches in the West Bank were hit by firebombs Saturday, and a group claiming responsibility said it was protesting Benedict’s words.
In his speech, Benedict cited an obscure Medieval text that characterized some of the teachings of Islam’s founder as “evil and inhuman,” particularly “his command to spread by the sword the faith.” Some experts took the remarks as a signal that the Vatican was staking a more demanding stance for its dealings with the Muslim world.
Iraq’s main Sunni party warned that the pope’s comments could lead to violence between Muslims and Christians. The pope “should not be lured into returning to the Crusades,” the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party said in a statement.
“The world today needs all religious authorities to cooperate to curb the phenomenon of violence,” it said. “We urge all Christian religious authorities in both the Arab and Western world not to be involved in the confrontation against the Islamic world as it could lead to Muslim-Christian violence, God forbid.”
Notably, the strongest denunciations came from Turkey – a moderate democracy seeking European Union membership where Benedict is scheduled to visit in November as his first trip as pope to a Muslim country.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the pope must apologize for his “ugly, unfortunate statements,” and cast doubt on whether the pontiff’s trip would go ahead as planned.
Earlier Saturday, Turkish government officials said Ankara would not ask the pope to cancel the visit. But when asked later if Benedict’s remarks could affect the trip, Erdogan said: “I wouldn’t know,” leaving open the possibility it could be canceled.
Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted party, said Benedict’s remarks were either “the result of pitiful ignorance” about Islam and its prophet or, worse, a deliberate distortion.
“He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages,” Kapusuz told Turkish state media. “It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades.”
“He is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini,” he added.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said the pope made “a big mistake” and “contradicted his own leadership of a divine religion.”
At the Vatican, Bertone issued a statement saying the pope “sincerely regrets that certain passages of his address could have sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim faithful and should have been interpreted in a manner that in no way corresponds to his intentions.” Bertone said the comment came in a speech on the pope’s reflections about the relationship between religion and violence in general.
Benedict ended his speech with a “clear and radical rejection of the religious motivation for violence, from whatever side it may come,” Bertone said.
Malaysia’s prime minister said Benedict should apologize, echoing demands by the Pakistani parliament and Lebanon’s top Shiite cleric.
“The pope must not take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created,” Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was quoted as saying Saturday by the state-run Bernama news agency.
A Christian leader – the head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church – said the pope’s comments went “against the teachings of Christ.” Coptic Pope Shenouda III told Egypt’s pro-government Al-Ahram newspaper that “any remarks which offend Islam and Muslims are against the teachings of Christ.”
The last outpouring of Islamic anger at the West came in February over the prophet cartoons first published in a Danish newspaper. The drawings sparked protests – some of them deadly – in almost every Muslim nation in the world.
In the West Bank, firebombs left black scorch marks on the walls and windows of a Greek Orthodox and an Anglican church in the city of Nablus on Saturday. In a phone call to The Associated Press, a group calling itself the “Lions of Monotheism” claimed responsibility.
Clergy played down the attacks as isolated incidents, but said they’d worry if more Christian sites are targeted. “It is easy to worry,” said Father Yousef Saada, a Roman Catholic priest in Nablus. “The atmosphere is charged already, and the wise should not accept such acts.”
Police in India’s only Muslim majority state, Kashmir, detained nearly two dozen people protesting Benedict’s remarks in the second straight day of anti-pope rallies in the territory.
The pope quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and a Persian scholar on the truths of Christianity and Islam.
“The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war,” Benedict said. “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.”‘ The pope did not explicitly agree with nor repudiate the comment.
The Rev. Robert Taft, a specialist in Islamic affairs at Rome’s Pontifical Oriental Institute, said it was unlikely Benedict miscalculated how some Muslims would receive his speech.
“The message he is sending is very, very clear,” Taft said.
“Violence in the name of faith is never acceptable in any religion and that (the pope) considers it his duty to challenge Islam and anyone else on this.”
Associated Press writers Brian Murphy in Athens, Greece, Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad, Iraq, and Ali Daraghemeh in Nablus, West Bank, contributed to this report.
