Muslims Lash Out at Pope's Remarks

Muslim clerics and community leaders from Europe to the Middle East and beyond condemned the pope's comments made this week. In Turkey, the first Muslim country the pope is scheduled to visit, the nation's leading religious official demanded an apology and told the pontiff to "look in the mirror" when he assails religious violence.

The furor may jeopardize Benedict's trip, scheduled for Nov. 28, in what would be an embarrassing contretemps for the Vatican.

"I do not see any use in somebody visiting the Islamic world who thinks in this way about the holy prophet of Islam," the Turkish official, Ali Bardakoglu, told the news channel NTV. "He should first rid himself of feelings of hate."

The reactions follow a speech by the pope Tuesday at the University of Regensburg in which he attacked the Muslim concept of holy war as a violation of God's will and nature. He used the word "jihad," a politically and emotionally charged Arabic term for holy war or struggle. And he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who derided Islam and its founder, the prophet Muhammad.

The emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, said, according to Benedict, that Muhammad had introduced "things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Benedict, in the same speech, held up Christianity as the "profound encounter of faith and reason."

As the backlash grew, the Vatican issued a statement Thursday evening defending the pope and saying he did not intend to offend Islam.

"It is clear that the Holy Father's intention is to cultivate respect and dialogue toward other religions and cultures, and that clearly includes Islam," said the statement by chief Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi.

"What is in the Holy Father's heart is a clear and radical rejection of religious motives for violence," Lombardi said.

Critics, such as Aiman Mazyek, head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, offered a litany of brutalities in Christianity's history, saying Catholicism too has a bloodstained past.