Author:
Publication: Yahoo News
Date: September 22, 2006
URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060922/wl_sthasia_afp/vaticanpopeislampakistan_060922124129
Hundreds of Pakistani Islamists held street
protests to condemn
Pope Benedict XVI for remarks they regard as anti-Islamic, with one leader
saying the pontiff should be crucified.
Demonstrators Friday poured out of mosques
after the main weekly Muslim prayers in Pakistan's largest city Karachi, the
eastern city of Lahore, the capital Islamabad and other urban centres.
"If the pope comes here we will hang
him on the Cross," Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a senior leader of Pakistan's
main alliance of radical parties, told around 200 noisy demonstrators in Islamabad.
The alliance, called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
or United Action Front, forms part of the parliamentary opposition and is
often heavily involved in street protests in mostly Muslim Pakistan.
Ahmed also said the pope had joined US
President George W. Bush's "crusade" against Muslims, referring
to Christians who fought against Muslims from the 11th through the 13th centuries.
In Karachi police said at least 100 hardliners
shouted slogans demanding an apology from the pope and criticising the United
States.
"Religious leaders like the pope should
not use (US President George W.) Bush's tone," Merajul Huda, Karachi
chief of the hardline Jamaat-i-Islami party, told the rally.
Witnesses said more than 300 people chanted
slogans against the pope outside an Islamic school in the central city of
Multan. Dozens more massed in Lahore.
Prayer leaders also condemned the pope during
Friday sermons around the country.
Anger has gripped the Muslim world since the
pope quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who said innovations introduced
by the Prophet Mohammed were "evil and inhuman."
The pontiff later said he was "deeply
sorry" for the outrage triggered by his speech early this month at a
German university, and that the passages quoted by him did not express his
personal opinion.
A gathering of hundreds of fundamentalists
in Lahore on Thursday said
Pope Benedict should be removed from his position for his "blasphemous"
comments.
The Pakistani parliament has also condemned
the pope's comments and the foreign ministry summoned the
Vatican's envoy in Islamabad last week to lodge a protest.
- AFP
