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Anti-pope demonstrations rage on

Schools and shops in Kashmir shut their doors in protest and demonstrators burned an effigy of Pope Benedict XVI. In Lebanon, armed police stood guard outside some churches, and Muslims in Indonesia marched through the capital yesterday as tensions remained high over the pontiff's remarks on Islam.

A day after the pope apologized for the angry reaction to a speech he gave last week, quoting a medieval text characterizing some of the Prophet Mohammed's teachings as "evil and inhuman," Muslims said Benedict's explanation was not enough.

"Muslims have all this while felt oppressed, and the statement by the pope saying he is sorry about the angry reaction is inadequate to calm the anger -- more so because he is the highest leader of the Vatican," Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said, according to the Bernama news agency.

In China, the president of Islamic Association of China said Benedict insulted both Islam and Mohammed.

"This has gravely hurt the feelings of the Muslims across the world, including those from China," Chen Guangyuan, a top Chinese religious official, told the Xinhua news agency.

Dozens marched through the streets of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital.

"His comments really hurt Muslims all over the world," Umar Nawawi of the radical Islamic Defenders' Front said yesterday. "We should remind him not to say such things which can only fuel a holy war."

In the Middle East, where Muslims hurled firebombs at seven churches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the weekend, Christian leaders posted guards outside some churches.

"We are afraid," said Sonia Kobatazi, a Christian Lebanese, after Mass at the Maronite Christian St. George Cathedral in Beirut, Lebanon, where about a dozen policemen carrying automatic weap-ons stood guard outside.

Christians -- a minority in the Mideast that varies from nearly 40 percent in Lebanon to tiny communities in the Gulf states -- generally live in peace with the majority Muslims.

But relations are sometimes strained and outbreaks of violence have occurred in recent years. Some worry the flap over the pope will lead to a new round.

The protests and violence have stirred up memories of the fury over cartoons that were published in a Danish newspaper of Mohammed, as well as fears of violence against Christians.

Some feared that the execution-style killing of an elderly nun gunned down on Sunday at the Somali hospital where she worked might be connected to anger over the pope's comments.

Christians have been targeted in other cases: Car bombs exploded in January, killing at least three people in a coordinated spree of attacks outside the Vatican mission and at least five churches in Iraq, where Christians make up just 3 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.

Egypt, where Coptic Christians are about 10 percent of the country's 73 million people, saw instances of sectarian violence during the past year.

A Coptic and a Muslim were killed and at least 40 others wounded in clashes in the port city of Alexandria in April.

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