It seems almost medieval when even a discussion today of Middle Ages theology can provoke a global storm of protest and denunciation. The Pope, however, can hardly have expected that his scholarly lecture on faith and reason to the University of Regensburg would have led to the uproar that has broken out in sections of the Muslim world, to demands for an apology and to comparisons with Hitler and Mussolini. Yet a close reading of the speech shows that if any group was openly criticised or “insulted”, it was Western materialists.

At issue is a single sentence in a lengthy survey of theologians and their understanding of reason: the Pope quoted a discussion between one of the last emperors of Byzantium, the erudite Manuel II Paleologus, and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and noted the emperor’s “startling brusqueness” in saying: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and in-human, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The Pope did not endorse the sentiment. He made it clear that he was quoting from the historical record. And he went on to compare the Byzantine belief in reason with the Muslim teaching on God’s transcendence.

Yet his quotation has now been wrenched out of context, denounced as “derogatory” and held up as an example of Western Islamophobia. Islamic websites are calling for mass protests. The pontiff has been accused of falling into the trap of “bigots and racists”.

The Vatican insists that no offence was intended but those who are looking for offence will never be easily appeased. Already links are being made with supposed Western hostility to Islam. Like the Danish cartoons, the Pope’s words provide a golden opportunity for Islamist militants to inflame the millions who have no access to his full speech with a distorted interpretation of his words and his intentions.

Given current sensitivities, however, all this is scarcely surprising. Too many extremists are ready to over-interpret any comment or perceived slight and that reaction is magnified by the technological wonder that is the internet. The Vatican should know this. It might have been wiser if the Pope has excised from his speech any remark, especially a quotation about the Prophet Muhammad, that could be taken out of context by those for whom ecumenism is anathema.

Yet it would be wrong to censor a pope who has pondered the future of faith and reserves disdain for rationalists whom he confronts in his conclusion: “In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world’s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion to the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.”

Both Christianity and Islam aspire to the divine and they share a theology that is contemptuous of mindless materialism and crass consumerism. This Pope is not “relegating religion” and he is tweaking the tail of the rationalists, which provides no excuse, no justification, no cause for the spiritual to be irrational. Christianity and Islam have rarely sat easily together; but tolerance must not be deliberately destroyed by the intolerant.