Muslim leaders call for apology: Pope’s remarks on jihad
PARIS, Sept 14: Pope Benedict XVI faced sharp reactions on Thursday to a lecture in which he linked Islam with violence, with Muslim leaders in several countries demanding he apologise.
“We hope that the Church will very quickly... clarify its position so that it does not confuse Islam, which is a revealed religion, with Islamism, which is not a religion but a political ideology,” the head of the French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM), Dalil Boubakeur, said.
The pope provoked the outcry with comments on Tuesday in a theological lecture to staff and students at the University of Regensburg, in the most political part of a largely personal visit to his native Bavaria, southern Germany.
Couching his criticism in a historical reference to a 14th century Byzantine emperor, the pope said there were connections between Islam and violence, particularly with regard to jihad.
Using the words, ‘jihad’ and ‘holy war’ in his lecture, the pope quoted criticisms of the concept of jihad by Christian emperor, Manuel II.
“The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable,” said Pope Benedict, during his 32-minute lecture on the relationship between faith and reason.
“Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul,” he added.
The comments provoked an outcry among Muslims in several countries.
Turkey’s top Muslim religious leader described the pontiff’s remarks as hateful, prejudiced and biased.
“It is a statement full of enmity and grudge,” said Ali Bardakoglu, the head of Turkey’s state-run religious affairs directorate. He also expressed opposition to the pope’s planned visit to Turkey in November.
Senior religious officials in Kuwait demanded an immediate apology from the pope to the Muslim world.
Haken al-Mutairi, secretary general of the Umma Party, urged him to apologise for ‘calumnies against the Holy Prophet Mohammed (pbuh)and Islam. Sayed Baqer al-Mohri, head of the assembly of Shia ulema, echoed the call.
The speech at Regensburg University explored the historical and philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity, and the relationship between violence and faith.
“Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul,” Benedict said.
Justo Balda Lacunza, a Vatican-based priest specialising in Islamic affairs, said the speech was not intended to look unfavourably on Islam, but was an ‘examination’ of this relationship.
His reaction followed that of Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, who said earlier that he did not believe the pope’s words were meant as a severe criticism of Islam.
“He certainly doesn’t want to give... an interpretation of Islam as violent,” he said.
But in Morocco, the daily Aujourd’hui warned of the possible damage done by Pope Benedict’s words. It called on him to ‘prove that his ambition is not to spark a war of religions by pointlessly upsetting almost a billion faithful’.
The president of Germany’s Central Council of Muslims, Aiman Mazyek, responded to the comments by recalling violent chapters in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Thursday.
“After the bloodstained conversions in South America, the crusades in the Muslim world, the coercion of the Church by Hitler’s regime, and even the coining of the phrase ‘holy war’ by Pope Urban II, I do not think the Church should point a finger at extremist activities in other religions,” he said.
Pope Benedict had also drawn criticism on Wednesday from a leading Muslim figure in Italy. Ejaz Ahmad, a member of a governmental consultative committee on Islam, called on him to retract his comments.
“The Muslim world is currently undergoing a deep crisis,” Ejaz Ahmad was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency. “Any attack from the West can aggravate this crisis.”—AFP
