Fatehipuri Masjid Shahi Imam slams Pope for anti-Islam remarks

New Delhi, Sep 15 (UNI) Slamming Pope Benedict XVI for his anti-Islam remarks, Shahi Imam of the Fatehipuri Masjid Mufti Mohammad Mukarram Ahmed today said the remarks were meant to encourage a campaign agianst Islam.

''The Pope's remarks are a political statement.... These were made to encourage anti-Islam feelings which are propagated by Israel, US and England,'' the Mufti said in his Friday address to a congregation in the mosque.

''It is absolutely wrong and false. We condemn the remarks,'' he added.

In his speech in Germany on Tuesday, the Pope appeared to endorse a Christian view, contested by most Muslims, that the early Muslims spread their religion by violence.

He repeated criticism of the Prophet Mohammad by the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who is recorded as saying that everything Mohammad brought was evil ''such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached''.

Most of the Pope's speech was about faith and reason but his historical references suggested that he shared the emperor's view that the Islamic concept of jihad showed that Islam was irrational and incompatible with God's nature.

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