CAABU Director interviewed on BBC about Pope

In an interview with the BBC on 17 September 2006, CAABU Director Chris Doyle said that the Pope had proved his fallibility with the timing of his remarks about Muhammad only months after the crisis over the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark. The Pope has chosen a quote in his speech that was extremely anti-Islamic. Chris Doyle said that it was a “case of poor judgment to say the least.”  It was astonishing that nobody had reviewed the speech and highlighted the potential problem.  He also pointed out the “pope had not distanced himself from the quote during the speech.”

He said that already Muslims-Christian relations had deteriorated. He blamed the Vatican for acting too slow to respond to the crisis. Instead Doyle argued that whilst moderate Muslims will probably accept the Pope’s apology, the extremist Muslims will use this relentlessly to create friction and divisions. It would only make it tougher for moderate Muslims to argue against the extremists. These extremists will argue that the Vatican at its heart was hostile to Islam.

He called on the Pope to “proactively go out there and say this is my view of Islam, I do see Islam as a positive religion that I want to work with, and that Muhammad was a great man, that did bring a lot of positive things to the world.”

Text of the Pope's speech

See also Chris Doyle's comment's in the Guardian