Muslims leaders around the world demanded a more personal apology from the Pope last night after the Vatican said he "sincerely regrets" the offence caused by remarks which they claimed had insulted Islam.Senior Vatican officials tried to damp down fury over the speech in which the Pope quoted from a medieval text saying that the Prophet Mohammed had brought the world "only evil and inhuman" things. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, issued a statement saying that the Pope's remarks had been misinterpreted. He "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".
The statement expressed the Pope's "esteem" for Muslims and emphasised that he intended to underline that there was "no place for violence in religion".
But street demonstrations and sporadic violence against Christian churches continued and left two of the world's largest religions still dangerously at odds. "We want a personal apology from the Pope," said Mohammed Habib, the deputy leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. A cleric linked to Somalia's powerful Islamist movement last night called for Muslims to "hunt down" and kill the Pope.
Cartoon lunacy redux