CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, 18 September 2006 — Pope Benedict XVI said yesterday he was “deeply sorry” about the angry reaction to his recent remarks about Islam and jihad, saying the text he quoted did not reflect his personal opinion.
“These (words) were in fact a quotation from a medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thought,” Benedict told Christians at his summer palace outside Rome during his first public appearance since returning from a trip to Germany.
“I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims,” he said.
The pope, quoting Tuesday from an obscure medieval text, had cited the words of a Byzantine emperor who characterized the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as “evil and inhuman.”
There was mixed reaction to the pontiff’s latest gesture. The deputy leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Habib, initially said it was “a sufficient apology,” but later said: “It does not rise to the level of a clear apology and, based on this, we’re calling on the Pope of the Vatican to issue a clear apology that will decisively end any confusion.”
A leading British Muslim group said it was now satisfied that Benedict had not intended to offend Muslims. “All the while we’ve been asking the pope to make it clear he did not share the views of the Christian emperor, which he had in his address at Regensburg University,” Muslim Council of Britain spokesman Inayat Bunglawala said. “Now the Pope has made that clear, we hope things will calm down. It is exactly what we wanted to hear,” he said.
A section of Indian Muslims welcomed the pope’s expression of sorrow. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board based in the northern city of Lucknow called for a cessation of all protests. “We welcome the apology tendered by the Pope Benedict,” Maulana Khalid Rashid, a member of the board said.
The head of Turkey’s religious affairs directorate welcomed the statement from the Vatican. Ali Bardakoglu had previously called the pope’s comments “extremely regrettable.” The uproar had raised questions about whether a papal visit to Turkey in November could go ahead, but the Turkish government, while calling his remarks “ugly,” said there were no plans to call it off.
But anger and violence against the pope’s Regensburg remark continued elsewhere. In Somalia, gunmen killed an Italian nun and her bodyguard at the entrance of a hospital where she worked.
In the West Bank, two churches — in Tulkarm and Tubas — were set afire early yesterday. Neither church is Catholic, officials said. The head of the Hamas-led Palestinian government, Ismail Haniyeh, denounced the spate of attacks on churches. “This is totally rejected,” Haniyeh told reporters. “Any Palestinian citizen should stop attacking Christian churches in the Palestinian territories. The Christian brothers are a part of the Palestinian people and I heard the highest Christian authority in Palestine denouncing the statements against Islam and against Muslims.” Other senior Palestinian officials echoed Haniyeh’s calls.
Russian President Vladimir Putin urged world religious leaders to show “responsibility and restraint” — an apparent reference to Benedict’s Regensburg remarks.
