Supreme pontiff infuriates Muslim world

The mea culpa season continues: Pope Benedict fans the flames of World War III by making harsh remarks about Islam. Muslim leaders and media across Europe and the Middle East are predictably enraged. The Vatican scrambled to issue a clarification-cum-apology:

As the criticisms gathered force, the Vatican worked quickly to quell a potentially damaging confrontation with Muslims. It issued a statement saying that the church seeks to “cultivate an attitude of respect and dialogue toward other religions and cultures and obviously also toward Islam.” [...]

“It was certainly not the intention of the Holy Father to do an in-depth study of jihad and Muslim thinking in this field and still less so to hurt the feelings of Muslim believers.”

Mea maxima culpa!

Let's pare it down to the highlights:

“I do not think any good will come from the visit to the Muslim world of a person who has such ideas about Islam’s prophet,” Ali Bardakoglu, a cleric who is head of the Turkish government’s directorate of religious affairs, said in a television interview there. “He should first of all replace the grudge in his heart with moral values and respect for the other.” [...]

“I don’t think the church should point a finger at extremist activities in other religions, Aiman Mazyek, president of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, told the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, recalling the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Vatican’s relations with Nazi Germany. [...]

The French Council for the Muslim Religion demanded that Benedict “clarify” his remarks. “We hope that the Church will very quickly give us its opinion and clarify its position so that it does not confuse Islam, which is a revealed religion, with Islamism, which is not a religion but a political ideology,” Dalil Boubakeur, the council’s president, told Agence France-Presse. [...]

In Kuwait, the leader of the Islamic Nation Party, Haken al-Mutairi, demanded an apology for what he called “unaccustomed and unprecedented” remarks.

“I call on all Arab and Islamic states to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican and expel those from the Vatican until the pope says he is sorry for the wrong done to the prophet and to Islam, which preaches peace, tolerance, justice and equality,” Mr. Mutairi told Agence France-Presse. [...]

The criticism from Mr. Bardakoglu, the Islamic leader in Turkey, was especially strong, and carries with it particular embarrassment if Benedict is forced to cancel or delay his visit to Turkey. Many Turks are already critical of Benedict, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had in 2004 opposed Turkey’s entry into the European Union.

The official, Mr. Bardakoglu, demanded an apology, saying that the remarks “reflect the hatred in his heart — it is a statement full of enmity and grudge.” [...]

In Morocco, the newspaper Aujourd’hui questioned whether Benedict’s call for a real dialogue between religions was made in good faith.

“Pope Benedict XVI has a strange approach to the dialogue between religions,” the paper wrote in an editorial. “He is being provocative.”

Religion. It heals the world.

(Cross-posted.)