BASRA, Sept 18: Pope Benedict XVI’s apology for remarks seen as critical of Islam have failed to quell anger in the Muslim world as Iraqis burned him in effigy. Despite appeals for calm from Islamic and western leaders, protests were held from Indonesia to Iraq on Monday over the pope’s citing of a medieval text last week that criticised the concept of jihad.
The leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics said on Sunday he was ‘deeply sorry’ for the offence caused by his remarks and the Vatican launched a diplomatic offensive to explain to Muslim countries his position on Islam.
A handful of Muslim groups welcomed the 79-year-old pope’s apology, but it failed to stem the tide of anger in many Muslim nations.
Mohammed Habib of Egypt’s opposition Muslim Brotherhood said his group considered the apology a retraction of the pope’s statement, but some Egyptian lawmakers demanded diplomatic ties with the Vatican be suspended.
The powerful All India Muslim Personal Law Board, based in Lucknow, called for an end to protests against the Vatican but demonstrations were held elsewhere.
In Jakarta, some 100 hardliners rallied outside the Holy See’s mission in the Indonesian capital.
The pope was burned in effigy in the southern Iraqi port city of Basra, where hundreds of people staged a demonstration and called for an apology.
The 500 protesters, followers of Ayatollah Mahmud al-Hassani, a mystical Shia leader, also burned German and American flags and called for the pope to be tried in an international court.
Al Qaeda in Iraq warned in an Internet statement it would wage jihad until the West is defeated.
“We say to the servant of the cross (the pope): wait for defeat... We say to infidels and tyrants: wait for what will afflict you. We continue our jihad and will capture Rome,” said the statement attributed to the Mujahedeen consultative council.
In Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei compared the pope’s remarks to caricatures published in a Danish newspaper last year ridiculing the Holy Prophet (pbuh).
“The issue of insulting cartoons and remarks of some politicians about Islam are different links in the conspiracy of the crusaders and the pope’s remarks are the latest links in this,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.
In Jordan, a government spokesman said the pope’s apology was a ‘positive step in the right direction’ but ‘we expect more steps’.
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI, who recalled his ambassador to the Vatican last week, called on the pontiff to demonstrate his respect for Muslim beliefs. “I’m speaking to you as head of the Catholic Church to ask you to have the same respect for Islam that you vow to other beliefs,” he said.
In the Gulf, newspapers continued to slam the pope with Saudi Arabia’s Al-Yom saying his comments were more than ‘an ordinary blunder requiring an apology’.
VATICAN MOVE: The Vatican sought to reach out to Muslims.
Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone told the Corriere della Sera that Vatican ambassadors had been asked to explain to political and religious authorities in Muslim countries the full text of the pope’s speech, which they said had been taken out of context and ‘heavily manipulated’.
Other appeals for calm came from the European Commission, which condemned ‘disproportionate’ reaction to the pope’s remarks, and French President Jacques Chirac, who warned against ‘anything that increases tensions between peoples or religions’.—AFP
