Following a wave of protests against Pope Benedict's remarks on Islam, Muslim intellectuals in Turkey are asking what he really thinks about their faith and what long-term consequences his views will have. Muslim thinkers in Turkey, where the German-born Pontiff is due on a sensitive visit in late November, suspect Benedict suffers from 'Orientalist' delusions about Islam and wants to move the Roman Catholic Church away from dialogue with it. His argument that Christianity is rational could be an indirect way of saying Islam is unreasonable and has no place in Christian-rooted Europe, they say. At the same time, they set clear limits on the dialogue they want, boxing it into a series of polite exchanges where the tough issues Benedict wants to discuss risk remaining taboo.
"He should explain a lot of things. His apology was not enough for the feelings of the Muslim world," said Bekir Karliaga, philosophy professor at Istanbul's Marmara University.