Pope Apologized

Several days ago, in a speech to the academics, Pope quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor, who said:"show me just what Mohammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." In short, he said:"Mohammad brought ... only evil and inhuman".

So, many Islamic organizations criticized Pope's speech. The text in 14th century 14th century text apparently is not suitableappropriate now. At that time, Christian world was in cruisade with Muslim world.

Today, Pope apologized in person for causing offense to offensing Muslims:"I am truly sorry for the reactions caused by a brief passage of my speech, These were quotations from a medieval text that do not express in any way my personal opinion."

Before his apology, some Islamist groups threatened to attack the Pope. An Italian numnun was shot and killed in the capital of Somalia, although no clear motivemotivation for the attack is given. Italian police has increased national security level. Iran schools are closed today in order to allow students to join rallies protesting (xj: this is the origin tex from the news) against the pope's remarks.

Pakistan's parliament condemed the pope and seeked an apology. The Foreign Ministry summoned the Vatican's ambassador to express regret over Benedict's remarks.

A spokeman of Muslim Brotherhood said this apology iswas a good step, while urging Pope to clarify his personal view of Islam. He also said, the problem is about the racist view from Vantican toward the Muslim world, and such religion statement "will be used in politics to justify the Western policies in the region that are biased against Muslims and Arabs".


It is ironic that Muslim's angry over Pope's statement has led to violence, which prove Pope's statement is not totally wrong. Last year, a cartoon about Prophet Muhammad was published in Danish, and it creates chaos when it was put in public through BBC. Several death threats and reward offers for killing those responsible for the cartoons have been made, the Danish Embassy in Beirut was set fire.

The relation between Christian world and Muslim world is so fragile that it can be easily broken by a quoting in an academic lecture. The Christian world has been changing since 1980s, and the last Pope has led Vantican to reform, but after the September 11, 2001, a lot of things changed, and the trust between Muslim and Western is weaken. More effort and strengh are needed to fix the the relation and create harmony of religions.