VATICAN: Muslims worldwide yesterday deplored Pope Benedict's reported remarks on Islam, with many saying he should apologise in person for joining a campaign against their religion.
In a speech in Germany on Tuesday, the Pope appeared to endorse the view, contested by most Muslims, that the early Muslims spread their religion by violence.
"The Pope of the Vatican joins in the Zionist-American alliance against Islam," said the leading Moroccan daily Attajdid, the main Islamist newspaper in the kingdom. "We demand that he apologises personally, and not through [ Vatican] sources, to all Muslims for such a wrong interpretation," said Beirut-based Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, one of the world's top Shia Muslim clerics.
The Sheikh of al-Azhar, one of the Sunni Muslim world's most prestigious seats of religious studies, said: "The Azhar asserts that these statements indicate clear ignorance of Islam. They attribute to Islam what it does not contain," said the sheikh, Mohamed Sayed Tantawi.
Egypt's foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told Cairo's ambassador to the Vatican to seek clarifications of the Pope's remarks.
Sheikh Hamza Mansour, who heads the Shura Council of the Islamic Action Front, Jordan's largest opposition party, said only a personal apology could rectify the "deep insult made by the provocative comments" to over one billion Muslims.
And in Iraq, the Pope's comments were condemned at Friday prayers by followers of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Sheikh Salah al-Ubeidi condemned "the offence to Islam and the character of the prophet. This is the second time such an offence has been given before Ramadan," he said, referring to last year's publication of cartoons in a Danish newspaper of the Prophet Muhammad.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi defended the Pope's lecture and said he did not mean to offend Muslims. "It was certainly not the intention of the Holy Father to undertake a comprehensive study of the jihad and of Muslim ideas on the subject, still less to offend the sensibilities of Muslim faithful," he said.
A high-ranking church source expressed fears for the Pope's safety, saying: "While I think the controversy will go away, it has done damage and if I were a security expert I'd be worried."
As the Pope's historical reference showed, the dispute between Muslim and Christian religious leaders over the conditions for the use of violence is an ancient one.
The Koran endorses the concept of jihad, often translated as holy war, but Muslims differ on conditions for it, with some saying it applies only for self-defence against external attack.
Aiman Mazyek, head of Germany's Muslim council, said he found it hard to believe that the Pope really saw a difference between Islam and Christianity in attitudes towards violence.
"One only need think of the Crusades or the forced conversions of Jews and Muslims in Spain," he said.