It's never enough

The Pope has issued another apology for his controversial lecture linking the Islamic faith with violence. No prizes for correctly guessing it failed to satisfy radical Muslims:

Pope Benedict XVI yesterday said he was ``deeply sorry" that his use of a quotation from a medieval text critical of the prophet Mohammed has stirred outrage across the Islamic world, insisting the words did not represent his personal opinion.

Benedict, in his first public remarks since igniting the furor in a lecture at Germany's University of Regensburg on Tuesday, was plainly hoping to soothe Muslims infuriated by his use of a 14th-century quotation that labeled some tenets of the Islamic faith as ``evil and inhuman."

But Benedict seemed to stop short of issuing the unqualified personal apology demanded by Muslim religious leaders and politicians in recent days, and many Islamic leaders indicated dissatisfaction with the papal response to their anger.

"The pope should fall on his knees before a senior Muslim cleric and try to understand Islam," said Ahmad Khatami, an influential cleric in the Iranian holy city of Qom, according to television and wire service reports.

Without a true apology, Khatami warned, ``Muslim outcries will continue until he fully regrets his remarks."

Sporadic violence and protests against the pope continued in Islamic lands, with a Catholic nun shot dead in Somalia, churches set ablaze in the Palestinian West Bank, and hard-line Muslim clerics denouncing Benedict as an enemy of Islam.

[...]

Muslim response to the pope's expression of regret were lukewarm at best.

"This is a good step toward an apology, but it is not a clear apology," said Mohammed Habib, a leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, an influential Islamist organization that is the country's main opposition force. [emphasis added]

This isn't about getting the Pope to realize he was wrong, or to realize he hurt Muslims' feelings. It's about making the world's most prominent Christian leader appear subservient to Islam. What do you think "Mr. Pope Be With In Your Limits" is supposed to mean?

Damian P.

Posted by damian at September 18, 2006 07:14 AM