As Muslims all over the world protested, with effigies of Benedict XVI burnt during demonstrations in Pakistan, members of the Turkish Government urged the Pope to reconsider his visit in November. Senior officials in Turkey said that they could not guarantee his safety if he went ahead with the trip.

The Pope’s remarks were either “the result of pitiful ignorance” about Islam or a deliberate distortion of the truth, said Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of the strongly Islamic party led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister.

“He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages,” Mr Kapusuz added. “Benedict, the author of such unfortunate and insolent remarks, is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.”

The outrage followed a speech that the Pope gave on Tuesday during a tour of southern Germany. At the University of Regensburg, Benedict XVI quoted remarks by the 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, who wrote that everything that Muhammad had promulgated was evil and inhuman, “such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”.

The Vatican claimed that the Pope had been quoted out of context and that he had not intended to insult Islam. But even though the thrust of the Pope’s argument was that violence cannot be justified by any religion — drawing on a dialogue between the emperor and a Persian scholar — he was widely criticised for not distancing himself from Manuel II’s opinions and for quoting a particularly inflammatory statement.

Benedict XVI’s visit to Turkey, which is due to take place on November 28-30, was already a source of controversy because of views he expressed when a cardinal that cast doubt on the country’s fitness to join the European Union, and for his references to Istanbul as “Constantinople”. There are also fears for his safety after a series of assaults on Catholic priests in Turkey, one of whom was murdered.

The Vatican had spoken of the trip as a chance to promote dialogue between Islam and the West. The Pope is also due to meet Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual head of the world’s Orthodox Christians, in Istanbul to help to heal the 1,000-year schism between the Western Church and the Orthodox faith.

But Ali Bardakoglu, head of the Directorate-General for Religious Affairs in Ankara, which controls Turkey’s imams, said that the Pope had reinforced “ingrained prejudice in the West” towards Islam, and said the Crusades showed that Christianity also had problems with violence. “The Pope’s aggressive, insolent statement appears to reflect both the hatred within him towards Islam and a Crusader mentality. I hope he apologises, and realises how he has destroyed peace.”

The Pakistani Parliament condemned the Pope and also sought an apology. “The derogatory remarks of the Pope about the philosophy of jihad and Prophet Muhammad have injured sentiments across the Muslim world and pose the danger of spreading acrimony among the religions,” the resolution said.

The Muslim Council, which represents 400 groups in Britain, said that the emperor’s views were ill-informed and bigoted. “One would expect a religious leader such as the Pope to act and speak with responsibility and repudiate the Byzantine emperor’s views in the interests of truth and harmonious relations between the followers of Islam and Catholicism,” Muhammad Abdul Bari, the council’s secretary-general, said. “Regrettably, the Pope did not do so.”

In Gaza, at the Saladin mosque — named after the Islamic war- rior who recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders — Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian Prime Minister, promised protests.

Times Recommends

• No cause for celebration in crushed Sarajevo
• Jazz funeral for the final victims of Katrina
• French fined for 'insulting' civil servants