Pope 'didn't mean to offend Muslims'

The Vatican has scrambled to defend the Pope after a top Turkish cleric asked him to apologise for his comments on Islamic holy war.

The Pope did not mean to offend Muslim sensibilities, the Vatican said, as anger built in the Islamic world over some of his remarks during his pilgrimage in Germany

The Pope made his remarks on Islam in a speech in which he quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and an educated Persian on the truths of Christianity and Islam.

“The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war,” the Pope said.

“He said, I quote, ’Show me just what Mohammed 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,”’ he quoted the emperor as saying.

Benedict added, “I quote,” twice before pronouncing the phrases on Islam and described them as “brusque,” while neither explicitly agreeing with nor repudiating them.

“It certainly wasn’t the intention of the Pope to carry out a deep examination of jihad (holy war) and on Muslim thought on it, much less to offend the sensibility of Muslim believers,” Vatican spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi said in a statement after Pope Benedict returned to Rome.

Yesterday, Turkey’s top Islamic cleric asked the Pope to apologise about the remarks and unleashed a string of accusations against Christianity, raising tensions before the pontiff’s planned visit to Turkey in November on what would be his first papal pilgrimage in a Muslim country.

Religious Affairs Directorate head Ali Bardakoglu, a cleric who sets the religious agenda for Turkey, said he was deeply offended by remarks about Islamic holy war made on Tuesday during the pilgrimage to the pontiff’s homeland, and called the remarks “extraordinarily worrying, saddening and unfortunate.”

Bardakoglu said that “if the Pope was reflecting the spite, hatred and enmity” of others in the Christian world, then the situation was even worse.

In Egypt, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, the leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, also called for an apology.

“The remarks do not express correct understanding of Islam and are merely wrong and distorted beliefs being repeated in the West,” Mr Akef said in a statement last night. Akef said he was “astonished that such remarks come from someone who sits on top of the Catholic church which has its influence on the public opinion in the West.”

The 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference, based in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia said it regretted “the Pope’s quote and for the other falsifications.”

Militant Islamic websites also launched a scathing campaign against the Pope.

Lombardi insisted that the pontiff respects Islam.

Benedict wants to “cultivate an attitude of respect and dialogue toward the other religions and cultures, obviously also toward Islam,” Lombardi said in a statement released by the Vatican.