Pope’s Push for `Frank’ Dialogue With Muslims Meets Resistance

c. 2006 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Pope Benedict XVI’s push for “frank and sincere dialogue” in the wake of his remarks on Islam and his subsequent apology to Muslims ran aground Tuesday (Sept. 19) as a number of top Muslim clerics questioned the sincerity of the pontiff’s apology. As Vatican officials scrambled to […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope Benedict XVI’s push for “frank and sincere dialogue” in the wake of his remarks on Islam and his subsequent apology to Muslims ran aground Tuesday (Sept. 19) as a number of top Muslim clerics questioned the sincerity of the pontiff’s apology.

As Vatican officials scrambled to rekindle talks across the Islamic world, Muslim leaders demanded that Benedict clarify whether he considered it a mistake to quote a medieval text that described the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman.”


The Iraqi parliament rejected Pope Benedict’s statement that he was “deeply sorry” for the reaction his remarks provoked, saying the pontiff needed to make a more “clear-cut apology.”

The grand sheik of Egypt’s Al-Azhar Mosque, one of the most influential institutions among Sunni Muslims, told a papal delegation that the pope’s apology had not gone far enough.

“The pope has to apologize frankly and justify what he said,” Grand Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi said in a statement following the meeting. Tantawi called the pope’s remarks “a religious and scientific mistake” that was “insulting to Islam and Muslims.”

In Rome, Benedict’s top mediator with Islam, Cardinal Paul Poupard, struggled to rekindle dialogue with the city’s top Muslim cleric during a tense joint press conference at City Hall. Although the meeting with Sami Salem, imam of the Grand Mosque of Rome, ended in a handshake, both clerics indicated that little had been settled.

“Dialogue must be a fact, not an empty word,” Salem said, noting that he remained “ready for dialogue” even if the pope’s remarks had left Muslim’s feeling “wounded.”

Earlier in the day, the Vatican’s No. 2 official, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, issued a telegram expressing Benedict’s condolences over the death of Leonella Sgorbati, an Italian nun who was gunned down in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Sunday.

The telegram noted that the nun had been “barbarously killed,” but did not link the slaying and Muslim reaction to Benedict’s remarks. The attack occurred hours after a top Muslim cleric urged Somalis to “hunt down” the pope and kill “whoever offends our Prophet Muhammad.”


“In reaffirming the firm denunciation for every form of violence, His Holiness hopes that the blood spilled by such a faithful disciple of the Gospel becomes the seed of hope to construct authentic brotherhood among peoples in the reciprocal respect for the religious convictions of each other,” the telegram stated.

The Vatican has stepped up security in recent days amid signs that the seat of Roman Catholicism has become a target for terrorist attacks. Protesters around the Muslim world have burned numerous effigies of Benedict. On Monday al-Qaida in Iraq threatened to “conquer Rome just like we conquered Constantinople,” the former capital of Christian Byzantium that is now Istanbul.

Although Benedict’s apology in many ways represented an unprecedented gesture from a pope, critics have said it didn’t go far enough. The pope said he was “deeply sorry for the reactions” provoked by his speech, rather than the words themselves.

Many of Benedict’s critics have seized upon his comments to underscore what they see as a shift in policy from the conciliatory gestures made by John Paul II. While John Paul often stressed the common theological roots of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Benedict has made terrorism and religiously inspired violence the centerpiece of his relations with Muslims.

A political cartoon recently posted on the Web site of Al Jazeera depicted the late John Paul II releasing a flock of doves symbolizing peace and Benedict gunning them down with a rifle.

Jerusalem’s top Muslim cleric, Grand Mufti Muhammad Hossein, called the pontiff’s personal apology “insufficient,” adding that Benedict must admit his comments were a mistake “if he wants to follow in the footsteps” of John Paul.


“It would have been better if he would have asked forgiveness for using those words,” Hossein said in an interview published Tuesday in Rome’s La Repubblica newspaper, “instead of regretting how they were understood.”

Reacting to the pope’s apology on Sunday, Anjem Choudary, a hard-line Muslim leader, told a demonstration gathered before Westminster Cathedral in London that Benedict XVI deserved execution.

Choudary, who leads the banned extremist group al-Muhajrioun, said “whoever insults the message of Muhammad is going to be subject to capital punishment,” adding that “there may be people in Italy or other parts of the world who would carry that out.”

Demonstrators waved placards reading “Pope go to hell” and, in an insult aimed at Christians, “Jesus is the slave of Allah.”

Moderate Muslim groups, however, have stepped forward to accept the pope’s apology. “The Vatican has moved quickly to deal with the hurt, and we accept that,” Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain.

Abdallah Redouane, secretary general of the Islamic Cultural Center of Rome, expressed “satisfaction” over the apology, adding: “As far as we’re concerned, we consider this chapter closed.”


_ Al Webb contributed to this story from London.

KRE/CM END MEICHTRYEditors: See related story, RNS-POPE-DIPLOMACY, transmitted Sept. 19.

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