Cairo, Egypt - Muslims deplored on Friday remarks on Islam by Pope Benedict and many of them said the Catholic leader should apologize in person to dispel the impression that he had joined a campaign against their religion.
"The Pope of the Vatican joins in the Zionist-American alliance against Islam," said the leading Moroccan daily Attajdid, the main Islamist newspaper in the kingdom.
"We demand that he apologizes personally, and not through (Vatican) sources, to all Muslims for such a wrong interpretation," said Beirut-based Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, one of the world's top Shi'ite Muslim clerics.
In his speech in Germany on Tuesday, the Pope appeared to endorse a Christian view, contested by most Muslims, that the early Muslims spread their religion by violence.
He repeated criticism of the Prophet Mohammad by the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who is recorded as saying that everything Mohammad brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
Most of the Pope's speech was about faith and reason but his historical references suggested that he shared the emperor's view that the Islamic concept of jihad showed that Islam was irrational and incompatible with God's nature.
Muslim clerics and leaders in many countries criticized his remarks as a sign of ignorance about Islam. But many also said they continued to value dialogue and harmony between faiths.
"While we strongly condemn and reject this talk ... we call for Muslim-Christian relations based on an in-depth scientific understanding of the mutual points of view, leaving aside sensational words," said Fadlallah.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab world's largest group of political Islamists, demanded an apology from the Pope and called on the governments of Islamic countries to break relations with the Vatican if he does not make one.
The Jordanian branch of the Egyptian-based movement said the Pope's remarks would only widen a rift between Muslims and the West and revealed deep hatred toward Muslims.
The rift is already deep because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Lebanon.
Sheikh Hamza Mansour, who heads the Shura Council of the Islamic Action Front, Jordan's largest opposition party, said only a personal apology could rectify the "deep insult made by the provocative comments" to over 1 billion Muslims.
USE OF VIOLENCE
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi defended the Pope's lecture and said he did not mean to offend Muslims.
"It was certainly not the intention of the Holy Father to undertake a comprehensive study of the jihad and of Muslim ideas on the subject, still less to offend the sensibilities of Muslim faithful," Lombardi told Vatican Radio.
The Egyptian government, which opposes political Islamism and is friendly with Western governments, said it was worried about the effect the Pope's speech might have.
"He (Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit) said he looked forward to intensifying efforts to strengthen the dialogue between civilizations and religions and to avoid anything that is likely to exacerbate confessional and ideological differences," a foreign ministry statement said.
Syria's mufti, or senior exponent of Islamic law, said he hoped reports of the Pope's speech were wrong and Syrians wanted to cooperate to propagate divine values.
As the Pope's historical reference showed, the dispute between Muslim and Christian religious leaders over the conditions for the use of violence is an ancient one.
The Koran endorses the concept of jihad, often translated as holy war, but there is a wide range of opinion among Muslims on the conditions for declaring and waging jihad.
Some say it applies only in cases of self-defense against external attack, as in the "just war" concept endorsed by St Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and other mainstream Christians.
Aiman Mazyek, head of Germany's Muslim council, said he found it hard to believe that the Pope really saw a difference between Islam and Christianity in attitudes toward violence.
"One only need think of the Crusades or the forced conversions of Jews and Muslims in Spain," he said.
Pakistan's National Assembly, parliament's lower house, unanimously passed a resolution condemning the Pope's comments.
"This statement has hurt sentiments of the Muslims," the resolution said. "This house demands the Pope retract his remarks in the interest of harmony among different religions."