Leaders come to pope's defense over Islam remarks
POSTED: 12:02 p.m. EDT, September 19, 2006
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -- Western leaders and churchmen are trying to defuse the crisis over papal remarks about Islam as Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday faced a growing chorus of demands for an unequivocal apology.
Even President Bush got involved, saying Monday that the pope had been "sincere" when he said he was sorry to Muslims and that his words had been misunderstood.
But for many Muslims, Benedict's attempt to explain himself Sunday did not go far enough and observers were waiting to see if he would speak about it again at his general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday.
The pope enraged Muslims in a speech a week ago in Germany quoting 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who said everything the Prophet Mohammed brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
The leader of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics said on Sunday he was "deeply sorry" for the reaction caused -- but stopped short of apologizing for his words or retracting them.
In a telegram to the order of an Italian nun killed in Somalia who may be the crisis' first victim, the pope hoped her sacrifice would help build "real fraternity among people with reciprocal respect of everyone's religious convictions."
But the deluge of criticism and threats continued. Italian media said an al Qaeda group in Egypt called for the German-born pope, who is 79, to be punished by strict Islamic Shariah law for insulting their religion.
An al Qaeda umbrella group in Iraq has also vowed war on "worshippers of the cross."
Workers at Turkey's Directorate General for Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, petitioned for the arrest of the pontiff when he makes a scheduled visit to Turkey in November.
They held banners saying, "Either apologize or don't come."
Benedict's comments annoyed the Turkish government, but there are no plans to cancel the trip.
In Iraq, where an effigy of the pope was burned Monday, parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani called his apology "inadequate and not commensurate with the moral damage caused to Muslims' feelings."
The grand mufti of the Palestinian territories, Sheikh Mohammad Hussein, said the pope must make "a personal and clear apology to 1.5 billion Muslims in this world for the insult caused by his lecture. ..."
But the cleric asked for an end to attacks on churches in the area after seven were vandalized this weekend.
The president of mostly Catholic Slovenia, Janez Drnovsek, said on his Web site that Muslims were justifiably upset and that the pope should be big enough to learn from his error.
In Italy, politicians and churchmen defended the pope and said his words were taken out of context and his explanation was quite clear. Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano published it in Arabic on its front page to try to clarify his meaning.
But while some Muslim clerics say the alleged insults are the latest skirmish in a new Western "crusade" against Islam, some Catholic churchmen say the pontiff's words have been purposefully twisted by militant Muslims.
"We pray for the pope whose words have been maliciously interpreted," Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe said in Naples at the annual "miracle" of fourth-century St. Gennaro, whose blood turns from powder to liquid in what is seen as a good omen.
The head of Australia's 5.1 million-strong Catholic Church went as far as to say that violent reaction "justified one of Pope Benedict's main fears" about Islam.
Cardinal George Pell said this showed "the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats and actual violence."
Local Muslims called Pell's comments "unhelpful." |
