ISLAMABAD, 19 September 2006 — A senior leader of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) yesterday urged his Muslim nation to take Pope Benedict XVI’s words of regret over his controversial references to Islam in stride and calm down.
“Better not agitate the issue any more,” said Sen. Mushahid Hussain, secretary-general of the party, in a talk show on the state-run television channel PTV. “But question marks remain why a person of the pope’s standing would make such references,” he added, echoing the reaction in the street that the pope had not disowned the controversial remarks but only felt sorry for the misunderstandings they caused in the Muslim world.
Mushahid Hussain, who is also chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the pope’s use of quotes of a Byzantine emperor, linking Islam and its Prophet (pbuh) with violence and irrationality, reflected certain “thinking.” Two years ago the pontiff had opposed Turkey’s admission into the European Union, he recalled.
Except for the English-language The Post saying in its editorial yesterday that “not even a belated apology from the pope has served to defuse the furor,” no major newspaper in Pakistan has commented editorially on the apology.
Meanwhile, people in the quake-battered capital of Pakistani Kashmir burned an effigy of the pope yesterday to protest his remarks.
Separately a radical group that is banned in Pakistan accused the Roman Catholic leader of blasphemy, despite the pontiff saying that he was sorry for the outrage the row had caused.
Around 150 protesters from a Kashmiri youth party marched through the Kashmiri capital Muzaffarabad chanting slogans including “Death to Pope” and “Those (who) show disrespect to the Holy Prophet (pbuh) deserve death.”
“We do not accept the pope’s apology. He should offer an unconditional apology and say that what he had said was wrong,” Aziz Ahmed Ghazali, the chief of the Pasban-e-Hurriyat Jammu Kashmir party, told the rally.
The organization’s name means Defender of Independence of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir was devastated by a massive earthquake last year that killed more than 73,000 people.
Pakistan’s Parliament last week condemned the pope’s comments and its Foreign Ministry summoned the Vatican’s envoy in Islamabad to lodge a protest, while there were several small rallies. The group Hizbut-Tahrir rejected the pope’s efforts to calm the situation. “The pope’s apology for his blasphemous statement against the messenger of Allah is not acceptable,” Naveed Butt, the group’s official spokesman, said in a statement.
