Perceived Slights Have Left Many U.S. Muslims Wary of Pope

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Video Essay: Pope Visits NYC

AP photographer Amy Sancetta captures the sights and sounds of the Pope's visit to New York City. (April 19)

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There was no exchange in the meeting, according to participants, with Benedict delivering an address to the 200 leaders representing five faiths.

"It was not very interactive. It was not a two-way street," said Nihad Awad, a co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who attended.

Many Muslims fondly remember John Paul II, who made interfaith dialogue a central tenet of his papacy and was the first pope to step inside a mosque, while in Damascus, Syria, in May 2001. On that trip, he asked for a joint act of contrition "for all the times that Muslims and Christians have offended one another."

"The previous pope was very embracing, very wise, and I think he was genuine and sincere in fostering a commitment to build dialogue and communication with other religious groups," said Ali, of the Islamic Cultural Center. "The current pope is a little different."

Various scholars and theologians say that in the first days of his papacy, Benedict did appear to downgrade interfaith dialogue, removing Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, an Arabic speaker and noted Muslim scholar, from his role as president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue and sending him to Egypt as nuncio, or the Vatican ambassador.

"There's a doubt that he's serious about dialogue, said the Rev. Dan Madigan, a professor of theology in Rome who serves as a consultant to the commission for relations with Muslims, part of the Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue. Madigan said the council he sits on "is not called on very much."

He and others suggested that Fitzgerald, had he been retained in his position, would have properly vetted Benedict's Regensburg speech and excised the offending lines before the lecture caused outrage among Muslims.

"That speech at Regensburg never would have happened if it had been vetted," said the Rev. Patrick Ryan, an Islamic studies specialist and vice president for mission and ministry at Fordham University.

"He's very much in favor of interreligious dialogue," Reese said. But, he added, the pope's "great fear is relativism. . . . I think his biggest fear is that Catholics will misinterpret interreligious dialogue as meaning all religions are the same."

There is an opportunity for better relations, many said. Muslims recall that the pope was an early opponent of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and he has spoken out against the killing of Muslims in the Darfur region of Sudan. Also, Catholic scholars said, the pope admires Muslims' religious devotion.

In November, the Pope received King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in the first papal audience with a Saudi monarch. And last month, Vatican officials and Muslim leaders agreed to launch a Catholic-Muslim Forum for dialogue.

But improving dialogue will not be easy. "I think it's going to be a long-term effort," Madigan said. "It's going to require a lot of hard work."