The ongoing controversy about the Pope’s ill-judged statement on Islam and violence may not abate easily, as different Muslim populations across the world continue to react in different ways. One hopes that the spate of violent attacks on Christian places of worship end immediately. Governments must assume responsibility for stopping these attacks. It is not the Pope that is hurting, but fellow citizens and neighbours.

All citizens, whether Christian or Muslim or the majority who are neither, deserve and should enjoy the full rights to the protection of their lives, place of worship, and freedom of their consciences along with other rights.

The Pope’s statement may do long lasting damage to inter–faith dialogue and religious tolerance, something that his predecessor, Pope John Paul 11, was closely associated with.

Both the violent reactions from a minority of Muslims and the biased reporting from the dominant Western media suggesting that ‘Muslims are violent’ are not surprising. They fit a template only too familiar.

Not too long ago there were the Danish cartoons and the reactions to them. It is a rather simple ‘audience and cue’ circus: a western person or institution says or does something that is offensive to good taste but specifically offensive to the Muslim faith or Muslims. Then there is a spate of militant and sometimes violent reaction from people in virtually the same countries. The western media then turns on the reactions, suggesting that the Muslims are immature, unable to take criticism and unable to engage in rational debate. Some proceed to conclude that the reactions prove how violent Muslims are.

It is a case of someone slapping you and also dictating that you should not cry. It is not correct that every offended group in the world should be burning places down and killing people. However, those on global platforms must also learn to say and act in ways that do not inflame emotions.

The same pattern repeated itself after the Pope’s statement. The attention soon shifted away from what the Holy Father said, to the reaction of some of those he offended. It is true that the Pope gave an unprecedented apology and is taking very public steps to atone for the misjudgment.

Hopefully with time this may cool things down, but the bad blood generated may not easily subside. It is neither the worst statement ever nor would it be the last time such a statement will be made about Islam, however, it must be pointed out that the Pope is not just any other person. He is the closest the world has to a religious head.

Neither Islam nor other religions like Confucianism or Hinduism that have more adherents to their faith than Christianity (let alone just Catholics) have a head that is as globally influential as the Pope. There are no two Popes in the world. He is also a head of state with diplomatic relations with virtually all governments of the world. With this influence surely comes huge responsibilities.

What he says in private and public will be scrutinized; therefore, he has to weigh up his statements carefully. They carry both moral and political weight well beyond his tiny papacy and faith.

It was a rather evasive reaction to say that the Pope was only quoting an obscure writer. He has made that writer known to everybody now. Would the Pope have quoted many of the more obscure writers that wrote and are writing about Christianity, Hinduism, or the Jewish faith?

Could the Western Media be that understanding if the Pope had quoted a Nazi writer famous or infamous writing about Jews or the Jewish faith? Historians who question the holocaust are taken to court and convicted because Holocaust denial is deemed beyond the limits of academic debate and freedom of expression.

There is so much violence in the name of God that no religion, especially a monotheistic one, has a monopoly over violence and violent methods. That the Pope enjoys the political visibility that he does today is not because Catholics are the majority of the world’s population or that his city–state empire is of any indispensable strategic importance, but the result of historical powers of Rome and the Church.

These powers were built by conquest and pillage. The Roman Empire and the Roman Church were involved in slavery, colonialism, wars, and other forms of non-Christian activities.

More recently in Rwanda, the Church (even if it was not convicted of genocide) bears responsibility for keeping quiet while God’s children were butchered with the connivance of some of its clergy and even Bishops. If anyone is to condemn Christianity for all these crimes such a person will be descended upon. If the Church and all Christians cannot be held responsible why are Muslims always maligned as a group?

Islam and Christianity are both monotheistic religions with shared roots, built by evangelism, through empires that utilized peaceful and non-peaceful means to establish their hegemony. Once hegemonic they declared peace of the victorious!

Even though it is Muslims that gave vent to the offence caused by the Pope’s statement, Dr Jibo Ibrahim (one of very few people, including those reacting violently, who have bothered to read the full text of the paper) the Director of the CDD, a leading researcher on religion and interfaith relations based in Abuja, Nigeria noted that the Pope’s statement should be even more offensive to non-European Christians (the majority of all Christians) because of its Euro-centrist understanding of God, the church and Christianity.

It is not about which religious group(s) are offended but rather the responsibility of a political and religious leader like the Pope in these trying times. Why did the Pope say those things? If he wanted to promote dialogue, he chose a very strange way to do it.

In a world in which Muslims and the Islamic faith replaced Communism in the pantheons of Western phobias, the Pope’s statement is at best mischievous, and at worst deliberately provocative. Whether one is a Muslim or not, both reasons should be unacceptable. I am not sure whether it was a goof or a papal declaration of intent to line up behind Bush in his modern crusade.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement,
Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org