Cardinal Pell has labelled the response of some Australian Muslim leaders to the issue as "unhelpful", singling out the responses of Sheik Hilali and Ameer Ali of the federal Government’s Muslim Community Reference Group as being "unfortunately" typical.
Archbishop Pell said the nation’s Muslim clerics should address the links between Islam and violence instead of sweeping them under the carpet.
He also said the reaction of Muslims to comments made by Benedict XVI – in which the Pope quoted a Byzantine emperor using the words "evil" and "inhuman" in reference to the prophet Mohammed – showed the link in Islam between religion and violence.
Dr Ali said yesterday he did not understand why Cardinal Pell was trying to keep the debate raging. "Why continue this controversy? I don’t understand," he said. "It is a charged environment we live in. We don’t need another thing to cause more division."
Mr Howard sought to make a distinction between the Christian and Islamic faiths. A "common thread" in modern terror attacks was that their perpetrators "claim the authority of Allah".
"I don’t at the moment note groups killing people and invoking the authority of the Catholic Church. That’s the difference," he said. "If Catholics rioted every time people attacked the Catholic Church, you would have riots on a very regular basis.
"He’s expressed his regrets and I think we should all move on."
Mr Howard was supported by NSW Premier Morris Iemma, who said Cardinal Pell was justified in making comments about extremists.
"In enlisting the support of the leadership of a community and moderates in that community to rein in extremists, I think that that’s an obligation on all," Mr Iemma said.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey comes out strongly:
THE former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to “violent” Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Pope’s “extraordinarily effective and lucid” speech.
Lord Carey said that Muslims must address “with great urgency” their religion’s association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the “clash of civilisations” endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole.
“We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times,” he said. “There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths.”
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