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By Fred Burton

For the past several days, Muslim governments and religious leaders from both the Sunni and Shiite realms have been expressing their outrage over Pope Benedict XVI's controversial speech at Regensburg University. Reactions have varied from strictly political moves, such as the recalling of ambassadors, to more emotional statements and acts: The pope has been burned in effigy in India and Iraq, publicly likened to Hitler in Turkey and made the subject of fatwas -- issued by some marginal radical leaders in the United Kingdom and Somalia -- calling for his death. Not surprisingly, al Qaeda in Iraq has pledged a war against the "worshippers of the cross" in response to Benedict's speech.

This last threat has little significance in and of itself, as al Qaeda long ago declared war against "crusaders," and its node in Iraq has been attacking American, British, Australian, U.N. and other foreign targets for the past three years. But the statement is nevertheless a valid representation of wider jihadist sentiment concerning the Christian world in general and the pope in particular.

Jihadist attacks against Christian targets can be expected to continue in Muslim lands. This was to be expected even had the pope not quoted a passage from history that described the teachings of Mohammed as "evil and inhuman" -- though the violence may have been a factor in Benedict's decision to include this quote. However, the risks to Christian and Catholic targets in Muslim lands, like the risk to the pope personally, likely has ticked upward in the wake of the comments at Regensburg.

Given the symbolism of his position, the pontiff -- whoever that individual might be at a given time -- was already in the jihadist crosshairs, but the recent speech likely has moved Benedict to the forefront of jihadist consciousness and up a notch or two on the target lists of al Qaeda, its sympathizers and grassroots jihadists. We anticipate that attempts will be made on Benedict's life and -- should plots actually reach the execution phase -- they will, given the nature of the pope's public activities, be quite bloody.

The Backlash

Criticism of the pope's speech has come from all quarters of the Islamic world. Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a Lebanese cleric who is Hezbollah's spiritual leader, said Sept. 15 that Benedict should personally retract his "false statements" about Islam. A Sunni leader, Sheikh Youssef al-Qardawi -- the head of the Islamic Scholars Association -- said, "We call on the pope, the pontiff, to apologize to the Islamic nation because he has insulted its religion and Prophet, its faith and Shariah without any justification."

Governments from Iraq to Indonesia have also expressed their anger. The deputy leader of Turkey's Justice and Development Party, Salih Kapusuz, compared the pontiff to Hitler and Mussolini. Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Sept. 18 that Benedict's apology was insufficient and echoed Fadlallah's call for a retraction.

Toward the other end of the spectrum, some radical leaders have issued fatwas calling for the pope's death. So far, none have been issued by widely recognized Islamic scholars -- but since many radical religious leaders believe that insult to the Prophet Mohammed (and thus to Islam) is an offense warranting the death sentence, and it is widely held that the pope's words were in fact an insult to the Prophet and Islam, it seems only a matter of time before more prominent clerics and leaders issue similar fatwas. In the eyes of a radical jihadist, however, the issue of sourcing would carry little weight; the mere fact that a fatwa exists, regardless of who issued it, would likely be sufficient justification to act. Along these same lines, we would expect a statement from al Qaeda's senior leadership to be issued in the near future, likely transmitting a call for the group's supporters to strike at the pope or, possibly, a wider array of targets.