Arab television stations have launched a media blitz for the death of Pope Paul John II, giving Mideast viewers hours of live broadcasts from the Vatican and programs on the pontiff's life -- coverage rarely seen even for the region's autocrats.
The lavish airtime made the Arab world a participant in the giant outpouring of grief that took place in Rome and was aired heavily on pan-Arab stations like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, which have been increasing their coverage of major events outside the Arab world.
But it also generated a backlash. Islamic fundamentalists in particular criticized the parade of Muslim leaders on TV praising the head of a faith that they consider an enemy of Islam.
"How can the death of a non-Muslim be a loss to the Muslim world?" said Gamal Sultan, an Egyptian Islamic activist and editor of Al-Manar, a journal that serves as a mouthpiece of Islamic fundamentalists.
The pope had a mixed legacy among Arabs, particularly the region's Muslim majority. He was widely respected for criticizing the US invasion of Iraq and for calling for a just peace between Palestinians and Israelis, meeting several times with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
He was also the first pope to visit a mosque -- the revered Omayyad Mosque in Damascus during a 2001 trip to Syria -- and he promoted Muslim-Christian dialogue.
On Arab television stations, numerous Muslim clerics went on the air to praise John Paul.
"His death is a great loss not only to the Catholic church but to the Islamic world," Sheik Mohammed Seyed Tantawi, the leader of Cairo's Al-Azhar, one of the world's top Islamic institutions, said in a statement read over the Egyptian state-run television.
In Web sites known as clearing houses for Islamic militant materials, criticism was even harsher.
"How is it that these [Muslim] clerics of the royal courts heap praise on an infidel and an enemy of Islam," wrote a participant on one of Web forum.
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