“The clarifications supplied by the Pope are more than sufficient, although I would ask for, if possible, more explanation,” he said.

Ahmad Badr El Din El Hassoun made the statement after a meeting with the Vatican's Ambassador to Syria.

There were no demonstrations in Syria against the Pope's intolerant words: he quoted a fourteenth century Byzantine Emperor who said that the Prophet Mohammed "brought nothing but evil and inhumanity to the world."

The previous Pope John Paul II was in favour of dialogue with the Muslim world, and did much to strengthen relations. He was the first Pope ever to visit a Mosque - it was the Ummayid Mosque in Damascus which he chose.