Muslim world still seething at pope

Keith Miller Senior foreign correspondent • Profile

CAIRO, Egypt — From the West Bank and Gaza to Pakistan and Malaysia, thousands of Muslims demonstrated against Pope Benedict on Friday, calling him, among other things, a “coward” and an “agent of the Americans.”

The protests came as the pope invited ambassadors of Muslim nations to a meeting at his summer residence on Monday to discuss inter-faith relations. 

NBC News’ Keith Miller reports from Cairo on the continued anger on the Arab street over the pope’s remarks last week citing a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman.”

Muslim leaders across the Arab world had called for a “day of rage” on Friday. What was the scene like in Cairo today?
There was still a lot of anger at the mosque that we visited in Cairo — a lot of people are still upset. We are not seeing the violent reaction that we were immediately after the remarks made their way around the world, but the Islamic street is still angry. We saw it at the mosque in Cairo and there were demonstrations in Pakistan, the West Bank, Gaza, and Turkey. So, the issue has not died down, although the violence that has been associated with it has certainly dropped off significantly. 

The grand sheik at the mosque we visited went so far as to say that they will boycott any conversations with the pope until they get a retraction of his remarks. The pope said he was sorry on Saturday and he offered his regrets on Wednesday, but a lot of Islamic leaders — especially on the more radical side — are not accepting this at all.

What they were asking for from here on Friday was that the pope retract the specific statement that he made quoting a 14^th century Byzantine emperor who said that Muhammad had spread the faith through the sword. 

The pope has invited representatives of Muslim countries to meet with him next week. How was that conciliatory move received? Does it seem that it will help at all?
It will certainly be well-attended — there are a lot of Islamic nations that are not radical and understand that dialogue and diplomacy have a major part to play in controversy. So, it is likely that he’ll have good attendance at the meeting. We see afterwards whether these ambassadors to the Vatican representing Muslim countries are satisfied with the pope’s position.

But it should be borne in mind that Benedict was known to be very conservative before he was elected pope. He spent the last 20 some-odd years of his life as the principle defender of the Catholic faith under Pope John Paul II and he is clearly still embracing that role.

There is no doubt that he sees radical Islam as a threat to Christianity. I don’t see him backing down much. He may be willing to say that particular quote was inappropriate, but I think his core concerns are very serious to him, and the Catholic Church, and that he’ll continue to raise them  

Given the fact that the Muslim leaders are asking for something like a retraction, which it is very difficult to imagine happening, is it possible that the two sides will ever be able to see eye to eye?
We seem to be reaching a stalemate in terms of diplomacy. The pope has expressed three times now his regret for the remarks. He certainly feels that there has been a misunderstanding here.

Retracting that particular graph, how do you do that? The grand sheik here in Cairo was asking that it be withdrawn from the document so that future generations do not see this.

But, it’s highly unlikely that anybody would have ever seen it anyway since it was sort of an obscure lecture that wasn’t even particularly well covered.  It was a lecture on “faith and reason,” which is sort of inside baseball for religious scholars.

The pope can only go so far. What he has done already has to be called unprecedented.

Popes don’t apologize for things. It seems almost that on the radical fringes of Islam, you have people basically asking the pope to ask for forgiveness, and popes don’t do that and Benedict is certainly not going to do that.

He said he was misunderstood and he was sorry that the comments caused pain to the faithful. And I think there was perhaps to some degree a misunderstanding within the Vatican itself over just how volatile the reaction to his comments was going to be.

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