Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (43 page)

Once again, Muslim government entities spoke alongside clerics in condemning a perceived insult to their faith. While some merely called the remarks ignorant or offensive, others characterized the speech as an effort to foster conflict among civilizations or even as a flashback to the Crusades. On September 14, 2006, the OIC stated that it “regrets the quotations cited by the pope on the Life of the Honorable Prophet Mohammed, and what he referred to as ‘spreading’ Islam by the sword,” which show “deep ignorance of Islam and Islamic history.”
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The Gulf Cooperation Council demanded an apology and expressed its displeasure that the pope could make such remarks “at a time of multiple campaigns hostile towards Muslims.”

Yemen’s president denounced the pope. Malaysia’s prime minister said the pope should apologize, withdraw his remarks, and “not take slightly the spread of outrage that has been created.”
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Hamas leader Minister Ismail Haniyah demanded that the pope “revise his comments and stop attacking Islam.” Libya’s General Instance of Religious Affairs stated that the alleged slander on Islam “pushes us back to the era of crusades against Muslims led by Western political and religious leaders.” Jordan’s Minister of Religious Affairs called for an immediate explanation, as did Egypt’s Foreign Minister, and an Egyptian foreign ministry spokesperson said the comments worked to “reinforce calls for a war of the civilizations.”
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Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei described the pope’s comments as “the latest chain of the crusade against Islam started by America’s Bush.”
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Pakistan’s government complained to the Vatican’s diplomatic representative, and its Parliament said that Benedict “should retract his remarks” since they “have injured sentiments across the Muslim world and pose the danger of spreading acrimony between religions.”
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In Turkey, the prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, said that the pope’s “ugly and unfortunate” remarks should be taken back.
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Senior religious official Ali Bardakoglu claimed that Benedict’s comment represented an “abhorrent, hostile and prejudiced point of view” that reflected the mind-set “of the Crusades” and called for the pope to apologize.
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Bardakoglu asserted, “We also criticize the Christian world for its wrongs, but we never defame either Christ or the Bible or the holiness of Christianity.”
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Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of the governing Justice and Development Party, said the pope had “a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages,” was attempting to “revive the mentality of the Crusades,” and, as “the author of such unfortunate and insolent remarks,” would be “going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.” Opposition leaders, although secularist, also said the pope should apologize before visiting Turkey in November.
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In response to allegations of a “war on Islam,” violence against indigenous Christians—whether Roman Catholic or not—promptly erupted. In Gaza on September 15, 2006, a Hamas official proclaimed to 2,000 protesters, “This is
another Crusader war against the Arab and Muslim world.” That same day, four improvised bombs exploded outside a Greek Orthodox compound in Gaza City, fortunately causing no injuries.
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On September 16, gunmen targeted an Orthodox church; a caller from the Islamic Organization of the Swords of Righteousness claimed to have “carried out this shooting because of the pope’s statement” and demanded a papal apology. Others armed with guns and Molotov cocktails assaulted four churches of various denominations in the West Bank city of Nablus; one gunman fired inside a fifth Nablus church, which was, in fact, Catholic. A group calling itself the Lions of Monotheism, which linked its action to the pope’s lecture, firebombed Anglican and Greek Orthodox churches. Police were dispatched to the besieged churches, a Hamas parliamentarian denounced the attacks, and a leading Palestinian Muslim cleric called for Palestinian Christians to be protected. But at the same time, he called for “our Muslim and Arab countries not to receive the Pope so that he does not make any comments that may ignite fire and in order to avoid any assault on him that may ignite a religious war.”
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In Iraq, a bomb went off at an Assyrian Catholic church in Basra on September 15, and an unknown militant group posted statements in mosques threatening to attack Iraqi Christians if the pope did not apologize. Islamic militants murdered two Assyrian Christians in the days following the speech, and Christian leaders warned Iraqi Christians to remain at home.
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In Egypt, Coptic leader Pope Shenouda III, very attuned to the precarious position of the Mideast’s Christian minorities, said that he had not heard the pope’s actual words but that “any remarks which offend Islam and Muslims are against the teachings of Christ,” which “instruct us not to hurt others, either in their convictions or their ideas, or any of their symbols—religious symbols.” He later stated that he “wish(ed) the Catholic pope had considered the reaction to his remarks” and that “criticizing others’ faith breeds enmity and divisions.”
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On September 16, newly appointed Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, stated that the pope “did not mean, nor does he mean, to make [the Byzantine emperor’s] opinion his own in any way” but, “as is evident from a complete and attentive reading of the text,” simply meant to issue “a clear and radical rejection of the religious motivation for violence, from whatever side it may come.” He continued: “The Holy Father thus sincerely regrets that certain passages of his address could have sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim faithful, and should have been interpreted in a manner that in no way corresponds to his intentions. Indeed it was he who, before the religious fervor of Muslim believers, warned secularized Western culture to guard against ‘the contempt for God and the cynicism that considers mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom.’”
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This statement failed to satisfy many critics. Morocco withdrew its ambassador from the Vatican, effective September 17, due to the pope’s “offensive remarks.”
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A threat from the Mujahedeen Army of Iraq, perpetrators of numerous terror attacks, “to send you people who adore death as much
as you adore life” led the Vatican to increase the pope’s security.
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Another Iraqi insurgent group, Ansar al-Sunnah, declared that it would attack Christians. Security for churches in several countries was tightened for the Sunday services to be held on September 17.
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Their fears were realized when gunmen murdered a sixty-five-year-old Italian nun working in an Austrian-funded hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia; Sister Leonella Sgorbita was shot seven times, and her bodyguard was also killed. As she lay dying, the nun said she forgave her killers. The pope wrote that Sister Leonella’s forgiveness of her attackers represented “the most authentic Christian witness, a peaceful sign of contradiction which shows the victory of love over hate and evil.”
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On the day of these attacks, Benedict personally stated that he was “deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address” and noted that they “do not in any way express my personal thought.” Such a statement of personal regret from the pope is a highly unusual event. The pontiff’s comments were printed in Arabic in the Vatican newspaper
L’Osservatore Romano
.
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The response was mixed.
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On September 20, the pope again expressed his “profound respect” for Muslims and said that “the negative words pronounced by the medieval emperor” do not “reflect my personal conviction.” Again, the Muslim Brotherhood expressed dissatisfaction, although Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that there was “no problem” now that Benedict had made it clear he did not endorse Manuel’s remark. Meanwhile Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who had attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981, warned Benedict from jail that his life would be in danger if he visited Turkey.
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Amidst this barrage of threats and denunciations, a number of voices in the West supported the pope’s comments and the right to speak freely about Islam generally. German chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, and Australian prime minister John Howard came to his defense.
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On October 3, a plenary assembly of German bishops declared that “the Catholic Church and all people who, in Germany and throughout the world, respect and defend freedom of speech, will never allow themselves to be intimidated.”
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They also expressed concern over attacks against Christian minorities and particularly the murder of Sister Leonella, stressing the urgency for dialogue between Christianity and Islam and calling for Muslim governments to show reciprocity with regard to the religious freedom enjoyed by Muslims living in Germany.
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In a further effort to calm the controversy, on September 25, the pope met with ambassadors from twenty-one Muslim-majority countries—all those, except Sudan, that had diplomatic ties to the Vatican—as well as an Arab League representative. Once again, Benedict reaffirmed his respect for Muslims and the need for Christian-Muslim dialogue.
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The pope’s speech was broadcast live on Al Jazeera, and a representative of the Muslim World League, Mario Scialoja, expressed his approval.
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However, the following day, an OIC summit declared that the pope should still “retract or redress” his Regensburg statement to prevent
“tension between the Muslim world and the Vatican, to the detriment of the real interests of the two parties.”
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Despite the pope’s repeated attempted clarifications of his statements, there was continuing violence against Christians in Iraq. On October 4 and 5, gunmen opened fire on a Chaldean Catholic church in Mosul and injured one guard in an attack believed to be linked to outrage over the pope’s speech. On October 9, a Syrian Orthodox priest, Father Amer Iskender of the St. Ephrem Church in Mosul, was kidnapped by militants who gave the priest’s church two options: either to pay a $350,000 ransom or to provide $40,000 plus a statement denouncing Benedict’s comments. The church, which had already clarified that it did not support the pope’s comment, posted thirty billboards throughout the city criticizing the statement; and family members sought to raise the ransom money. In spite of these efforts, the body of Fr. Iskender, who appeared to have been tortured, was found beheaded and dismembered on October 11.
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The papal comments remained in the minds of Islamic militants as late as March 2008, when Osama bin Laden released an audio tape. Besides calling for Palestinians to take up holy war, bin Laden charged Pope Benedict XVI with facilitating a “new Crusade” against Islam. He also warned of repercussions for the republication of the Danish cartoons.
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In a more reasonable effort, on October 15, 2006, a group of thirty-eight Muslim scholars published an open letter to Pope Benedict in the U.S.-based
Islamica
magazine, which suggested an actual discussion of Benedict’s views. This letter criticized a number of Pope Benedict’s implications about Islam but also commended the pope’s criticism of materialism, as well as his statements of regret and respect for Muslims following the controversy. The signatories told the pope, “We share your desire for frank and sincere dialogue and recognize its importance in an increasingly interconnected world.” They also declared the murder of Sister Leonella and “any other similar acts of wanton individual violence” to be “completely un-Islamic.” Several grand muftis, including that of Egypt, were among the signatories.
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In August 2007, Scandinavian cartoons once again made it back into the headlines. This time, the artist-provocateur was Lars Vilks from Sweden, whose caricature depicted Muhammad’s head on a dog’s body. Along with two similar drawings, it had been removed from a dog-themed art exhibition and rejected by several other art institutions on security grounds. However, public protests and international criticism began when regional newspaper
Nerikes Allehanda
published one of the dog drawings alongside an August 18 editorial on “the right to ridicule a religion.” The op-ed stated: “A liberal society must be able to do two things at the same time. On the one hand, it must be able to defend Muslims’
right to freedom of religion and their right to build mosques. However, on the other hand, it is also permissible to ridicule Islam’s most foremost symbols—just like all other religions’ symbols.… The right to freedom of religion and the right to blaspheme religions go together.” The editorial also linked the galleries’ wariness to host Vilks’s drawings with the 2006 Danish cartoon crisis.
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Nerikes Allehanda
’s publication provoked a small, peaceful protest by about sixty Swedish Muslims. It also inspired a broader international controversy that took the editors by surprise, given that a number of other Swedish papers had previously published the cartoon.
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On August 27, the Iranian foreign ministry summoned Sweden’s
charge d’affaires
in Tehran to complain about the cartoon.
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Iran’s president also chimed in to blame the cartoons on “Zionists” who “do not want the Swedish government to be a friend of other nations” since “they thrive on conflict and war.”
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On August 30, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry condemned
Nerikes Allehanda
’s “offensive and blasphemous sketch of the Holy Prophet (PBUH)” and warned, “Regrettably, the tendency among some Europeans to mix the freedom of expression with an outright and deliberate insult to 1.3 billion Muslims in the world is on the rise.”
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