Amman, Jordan - Despite Pope Benedict XVI's recent steps in Turkey to remake his battered image among Muslims, many religious leaders in the Arab world said Sunday that he still needed to make amends for his remarks about Islam's Prophet Muhammad before relations could fully be restored.
This, despite Benedict's favorable reception in Turkey, where the country's top Muslim cleric Mustafa Cagrici, waxed lyrical about "a spring ahead for this world" after praying alongside the 79-year-old pope in the direction of Mecca at Istanbul's famed Blue Mosque.
Cagrici called the moment "even more meaningful than an apology."
But a spokesman for Jordan's influential Muslim Brotherhood chapter labeled the pope's visit last week to Muslim Turkey as "futile," saying the Roman Catholic pontiff had yet to apologize completely to Muslims for his statements.
"We have never stood against dialogue between Muslims and Christians, but the Pope's positions, his statements and his determination not to apologize clearly make any such attempts futile," Jamil Abu-Bakr said, referring to a controversial lecture the pontiff delivered in September, when he quoted a medieval Christian emperor describing the teachings of Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman."
Although Benedict later expressed regret for the remarks, many Arab Muslims said he has still failed to adequately apologize for statements that caused an explosion of outrage among their numbers.
"This visit didn't diminish the frustration in the Muslim world and other measures are required to rectify the matter," Abu Bakr argued.
In Kuwait, Shiite cleric Abdul-Hussein Qazwini said he believed the pope's visit would have been more meaningful "if had it been made to a Muslim country such as Saudi Arabia or Iran," rather than to Turkey, Benedict's first visit to a predominantly Muslim country.
In entering the mosque, he became only the second Roman Catholic pope to do so since the groundbreaking visit of his predecessor John Paul II to the Ummayad Mosque in Damascus, Syria in May 2001.
But Qazwini called Turkey "a secular country, and said that the pope's visit there "had no effect on anything."
He criticized Benedict calling him "an extremist Christian," and said he hoped that the pope would have said "something to Muslims showing he had changed his mind" about the quotation.
Ibrahim Zayed al-Kilani of Jordan's Islamic Action Front, the country's largest political opposition party, said Arab Muslims are still smarting from the pain of the Pope's remarks.
"We cannot forget them," he said. This visit (to Turkey) did not in any way erase the pain or the frustrations for us because this pope is well-known for sympathizing with the Zionist movement and the Jews. When he was elected Pope, he expressed his empathy for Israel," al-Kilani alleged.
"When he attacked the Prophet, he violated Christian principles," he argued without elaborating.
But these Muslim leaders may in fact be missing the main purpose of Benedict's trip to Turkey and a priority of his papacy — seeking reconciliation between the Western and Eastern rites of Christianity.
In Istanbul, Pope Benedict met with Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of some 150 million Orthodox faithful, and celebrated mass on Saint Andrew's Day — a tribute to the Orthodox Church's patron saint who was a disciple of Jesus Christ and the brother of Saint Peter, considered the first Catholic pope.
But a former Islamic law scholar at Qatar University said Benedict's actions in Turkey have more than compensated for his past mistakes.
"The pope prayed at the Blue Mosque and faced Mecca, this was a message of friendship and love to the Islamic world," Abdul-Hamid al-Ansari said.
"It showed that he has honest intentions and seriously cares for stressing the common values between religions," he added.
"The pope should not be blamed for a quotation that he doesn't necessarily agree with," the former teacher said.
Al-Ansari said the pope also welcomed Turkey's bid to join the European Union, often dubbed a Christian club.
"What do Muslims want more than that?" he asked.
"As a Muslim and teacher of Sharia (Islamic law) .... I find it a good, positive and appreciated effort, and he should not be asked for more," Al-Ansari said.