Pope, Citing Islam, Criticizes Holy Wars and Fanaticism

Speaking to academics at the University of Regensburg, where he taught theology in the 1970s, the pope traversed centuries of Islamic, Greek and Christian philosophy to decry holy wars and forced conversions, and to hold up Christianity as the "profound encounter of faith and reason."

The pontiff's lecture was long, dense and subject to wide interpretation. Rather than criticize Islam directly, he cited a Byzantine emperor's harsh condemnation of Islam, its founder Muhammad and holy war.

Benedict used the word jihad, choosing the emotionally and politically loaded Arabic term for holy war or struggle.

"Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul," Benedict said. "Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature."

In contrast to fanatic abuse of religion, the pope said, in Christianity "the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself."

Ultimately, the pope's long exposition was not about Islam but about his favored themes: the dangers of secularism in the Christian West and the need to better know God, as well as the wish to open "genuine dialogue" among faiths and cultures.

But the remarks on Islam, however couched, were likely to draw the most attention.

Benedict's disdain for radical Islam, and the use of religion to justify terrorism, is well known. Last year, during his inaugural trip as pope -- to Cologne, Germany -- he chastised Muslim community leaders for failing to steer young people from "the darkness of a new barbarism," and he has asserted the fundamental importance of Europe's Christian roots and character.

In November, Benedict is scheduled to travel to Turkey, a Muslim nation and a candidate to join the European Union, in what promises to be a prickly expedition.

At the university in this medieval city, on the fourth day of a six-day tour of his native Bavaria, the pope quoted Byzantine Emperor Manuel II in conversation with "an educated Persian": "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."