ITALY: Al-Qaeda militants in Iraq yesterday pledged war on "worshippers of the Cross", while more protesters there burned a papal effigy following Pope Benedict's quotations on Muhammad at Regensburg university in Germany last Tuesday.
Meanwhile, western churchmen and politicians are continuing to try to calm the situation.
The Vatican has instructed its papal nuncios in Muslim countries to explain the Pope's address. Yesterday also the Vatican website altered its English-language version of the Pope's Regensburg address, which was delivered in German and was more emphatic in its critical observations on the style of the quoted Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus.
In the original English translation, on the Vatican website until yesterday, the Pope was quoted as saying the emperor "addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general. . ."
Yesterday that became, "addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness which leaves us astounded . . ." which is understood to be closer to what the Pope actually said last Tuesday.
Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei joined the chorus of Muslim criticism of the Pope yesterday, calling his address "the latest chain of the crusade against Islam started by America's [ George] Bush".
Last Sunday Pope Benedict said he was was deeply sorry Muslims had been offended by his use of the quotation, which did not reflect his personal views. Some Muslims accepted his statement on Sunday as adequate, but others were not satisfied.
"We tell the worshipper of the Cross [ the Pope] that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya," said a web statement yesterday by the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group led by al-Qaeda in Iraq.
"We shall break the Cross and spill the wine . . . God will help Muslims to conquer Rome . . . May God enable us to slit their throats and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen," said the statement, posted on an internet site used by al-Qaeda and other militant groups. In Iraq's southern city of Basra, up to 150 demonstrators burned an effigy of the Pope and chanted "No to aggression," and "We gagged the Pope".
In Dublin yesterday Imam Hussein Halawa, chairman of the Irish Council of Imams, called on the Pope to complete the medieval dialogue he quoted. The Pope had "only presented half the dialogue with its negative words on Islam", he said. The council's secretary general, Selim Ali, felt the Pope had yet to complete his apology. Clarification was still required, he said, adding "what he said [ on Sunday] is not precisely clear."
It is expected the Pope will return to the matter in his weekly public audience tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the European Commission has called for his remarks not to be "deliberately taken out of context" and for freedom of speech to be respected.
French president Jacques Chirac refused to criticise the Pope, but said: "We must avoid making any link between Islam, which is a great, respected and respectable religion, and radical Islamism, which is a totally different activity and one of a political nature."
Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams also defended the Pope. He said all faiths could be distorted and the Pope was simply giving an example of that. "There are elements in Islam that can be used to justify violence, just as there are in Christianity and Judaism," he said. - Additional reporting by Reuters.
