RIYADH: The Jeddah-based Organisation of the Islamic Conference called on the Vatican on Friday to clarify its ‘true position on Islam and its precepts’. Regretting the Pope’s statement, the OIC said there was no justification for such statements. It expressed the hope that the ‘surprising comments were not part of a new campaign against Islam, especially after decades of dialogue that brought scholars from the Islamic world together with scholars from Vatican.’
Describing the Pope as ‘a man who is supposed to be familiar with all religions’, the OIC press statement said such utterances only increase hatred between the Muslims and the Christian nations. “It will increase the gulf between the Muslims and the Christians, that many rational people from both sides are trying to bridge.”
The Secretary-General of the International Islamic Media Organisation, Dr Mohammad ibn Sibyan Al-Johani, in a statement urged the Pope to apologise and refrain from stoking the old embers of religious hatred and hostility. “Will such remarks serve Christian interests or will they widen the yawning gap between the Muslims and Christians, particularly the Catholics,” he asked.
Al-Johani found it strange that ignoring countless other passages from history, the Pope found it appropriate to quote from a Byzantine emperor. “The Pope should realise that if we were to turn to the books of history...we would find the Catholic church to be the biggest loser ... It would only bring to surface the history of the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition,” Al-Johani argued.
Dr. Jameel H. Al-Lowahiq, professor of Shariah at Taif University, said the remarks revealed ‘the enmity and grudge the new Pope harbours towards Islam and our Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him)’.
Sheikh Mohammad Al-Homaidi, a judge at the Court of Grievances in Jeddah, said: “The motive behind the provocative statement from such a high personality...is difficult to understand,” Al-Homaidi feared the remarks were an indication of the worsening relationship between different communities ‘as such venomous statements were reflective of the Middle Ages’.
British expatriate Sohail Nakhooda, editor-in-chief of the Islamica magazine of Amman, said he was not astonished to hear of the statement from Pope Benedict. Sohail, who has studied Christian theology at the Vatican, added: ‘In the days when the Pope Benedict was still known as Cardinal Ratzinger and as the Prefect of Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, he was well-known for his theological conservatism and combative attitude to many contemporary issues the Church faced. I don’t think he understands Islam or has the same concern to promote inter-faith relations as did the late Pope John Paul II, who took great steps in improving relations with Muslims.”
Ali Bardakoglu, head of the state-run religious affairs directorate in Turkey, said on Thursday that Pope Benedict was ‘full of enmity and grudge’ against Islam. He opposed the pontiff’s planned visit to Turkey in November.
In Kuwait, two high-ranking Islamist officials also called upon the Pope to apologise for his remarks.
Hakem al-Mutairi, secretary-general of Kuwait’s Ummah party, urged Muslim countries to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican until the pope apologised for what Mutairi called his ‘calumnies’ against Islam.
Demanding apology from the Pope, Mustapha Cherif, an Algerian expert on religious issues and co-founder of an Islamic-Christian friendship group, said Pope’s views should be ‘made explicit’. “If they are confirmed, that proves Islam is misunderstood,” Cherif said. He also called upon Muslims to help promote understanding of their faith.
A member of the Moroccan parliament, Abdelilah Benkirane, said in Rabat that Pope’s remarks were an offence to a billion Muslims. “The Pope of the Vatican joins in the Zionist-American alliance against Islam,” said the leading Moroccan daily Attajdid, the main Islamist newspaper of the country.
“We demand that he apologises personally, and not through (Vatican) sources, to all Muslims for such a wrong interpretation,” Reuters news agency quoted Beirut-based Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, one of the world’s top Shia clerics, as saying.
Muslims also objected to another part of the lecture, in which the Pope quoted a scholar’s assertion that the Muslim view of God, unlike the Christian’s, was not informed by the Greek-inspired western philosophical tradition of ‘rationality’.
Yussef al-Qardawi, a widely respected Qatar-based Islamic scholar, said: “This is not the first time this Pope has adopted a negative attitude towards Islam and Muslims.
“Does the Pope want to close the door on dialogue and new crusades to be readied?” said Qardawi.
The cleric defended ‘violence carried out by certain Muslims’, saying: “Some violence is legitimate in the eyes of both religion and law, such as resistance to the occupation in Palestine, Lebanon or in Iraq. We call for peace because our religion orders it, but if war is imposed on us we will take it to our hearts.”
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said he was worried the Pope’s statements might upset efforts to bring about a rapprochement between West and East.
An Egyptian foreign ministry statement quoted the minister as saying that he looked forward to intensifying efforts to strengthen the dialogue between civilisations and religions and to avoid anything that was likely to exacerbate confessional and ideological differences.
