October 3, 2006: Pope Benedict XVI sparked violent protests in the Muslim world when he quoted a medieval Christian emperor who equated Islam with violence: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The pope used the quote in a speech on September 12 at the University of Regensburg in Germany. Benedict said that the content of his lecture had been misinterpreted and told the world that he was "deeply sorry" for any offense Muslims might have taken from his speech.

As the furor erupted in Muslim countries over the pope's choice of quotes, German interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) remarked just a day after the pope's Regensburg speech that it ought to be possible for the pope to use a quote critical of Islam. Apparently the number of Europeans who expressed similar views was not enough for the president of the European Union commission, José Manuel Barroso. "I was disappointed that there weren't more European leaders who said that the pope has the right to express his views," Barroso said in comments made to the "Welt am Sonntag" weekly.

"The problem isn't the pope's speech, but rather the reaction of the extremists," he continued. Barroso gave two reasons for the reluctance of fellow European leaders to voice support for the pope – "concern over a possible confrontation" and a "kind of political correctness" that says that "one is only tolerant if one values the opinion of others higher than one's own opinion."

Barroso's remarks made in Berlin may have motivated Ronald Pofalla (photo), party secretary of Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), to make his own quotable comments critical of Islam "The problem of religiously motivated violence today is almost exclusively Islam's problem," Pofalla wrote in a guest commentary for the "Bild am Sonntag" weekly. He also pointed out that Muslims themselves were often the victims of their own religiously motivated violence.

Pofalla made it clear that he also does not accept being called an "infidel" by Muslims. According to him, that term is an insult that makes interfaith dialogue more difficult. The CDU party secretary called on Muslims to be willing to accept criticism, and he urged the West to be proactive in supporting its values. "We must be willing to stand up for our Western Christian values," Pofalla wrote, concluding his commentary by describing the multi-cultural ideology of recent years as a big mistake.