Pope's `regrets' fail to calm Muslims

BERLIN -- The Vatican expressed regret yesterday for remarks by Pope Benedict XVI that enraged Muslims by implicitly linking Islamic tenets to violence, but the pontiff stopped short of issuing a personal apology.

In a statement, the Vatican's new secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said the pope ``sincerely regrets that certain passages" of a speech delivered Tuesday in Germany ``could have sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim faithful."

The statement failed to soothe Muslim religious and political leaders, much less calm the anger felt by rank-and-file followers of the world's second-largest religion, after Christianity.

Palestinian gunmen fired shots and hurled fire-bombs at five Christian churches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip yesterday, causing no injuries but leaving them scorched and pocked by bullets. A Muslim group called Lions of Monotheism said it carried out the attacks in response to Benedict's remarks.

Even moderate Muslim heads of state voiced outrage at the pope's comments, while also urging calm. Turkey's prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, slammed portions of a lecture given by Benedict at a German university last week as ``ugly and unfortunate. The pope should take a step backward to ensure inter religious peace."

Benedict is scheduled to visit Turkey in November, but the controversy has raised doubts about whether the trip could proceed.

Morocco's King Mohammed formally recalled his ambassador to the Vatican, and the Egyptian government warned that the pope must ``move quickly to contain the situation."

The uproar has triggered the first major crisis for the 79-year-old German-born Benedict since he became pope in April 2005 after the death of John Paul II. It also has raised fears of deadly protests like those that erupted earlier this year after a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

During a lecture at the University of Regensburg on Tuesday, Benedict quoted from an obscure medieval text that described Islamic ideas of jihad, or holy war, as ``evil and inhuman." The text cited by the pope specifically denounced Prophet Mohammed, the seventh-century founder of the faith, for ``his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Peaceful Muslims maintain that jihad refers to the eternal struggle of good against evil -- or to defense of the faith against aggressors. But the notion of holy war has also been used as justification for violence against nonbelievers by Islamic conquerors in the past and modern-day religious terrorists.

The Vatican said Benedict was merely trying to make the point that war should not be waged in the name of religion. The pope's comments, Bertone said in the Vatican statement, represented a ``clear and radical rejection of the religious motivation for violence, from whatever side it may come."

Few Muslims interpreted his remarks that way, seeing them instead as provocative and deliberate slurs against their faith.

``These remarks pour oil on the fire raging between the West and Islam," columnist Hussein Shobokshi wrote in the London Arab-language newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.

``We want a personal apology," Mohammed Habib, a leader of the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood, an influential Islamist organization, told reporters in Cairo. ``We feel he has committed a grave error against us and that this mistake will only be removed through a personal apology."

In Libya, the government-supported office for religious affairs issued a statement calling Benedict's remarks ``an insult [that] pushes us back to the era of crusades against Muslims led by Western political and religious leaders."

In Iraq, the government implored Muslims not to vent their anger against the country's small Christian minority.

``We call on all those who love God not to carry out actions that will harm our Christian brothers here," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Iraqi television. ``The pope's remarks reflect his misunderstanding of Islam and its teachings."

There was speculation the pope might offer an apology during today's Angelus blessing, when he sometimes comments on world affairs.

In Somalia, radical cleric Sheik Abubakar Hassan Malin suggested to worshipers in Mogadishu that Muslims might have a holy duty to assassinate the pope, Agence France-Presse reported. ``Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim," Malin was quoted as saying.

But calmer voices were also raised. Turkey's largest English-language newspaper, the Daily News, said in an editorial that the pope's latest expressions of regret should be taken at face value.

``We just disagree with this vendetta-like approach of continuing to abuse the pope after his spokesman made a statement saying that he respected Islam and did not intend to offend Muslims," the paper said.