Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar yesterday wrote to a leading Sunni cleric in Qatar to express his sadness over the comments made by Pope Benedict XVI last week that sparked a wave of fury among Muslims worldwide.

In a letter in Arabic to Yusuf Kardawi, Amar wrote that "we must respect all faiths and the ways of all peoples and nations, as the Prophet [Mohammed] said: 'That each nation will go as instructed by their God. Even when there is a struggle between nations this must not be turned in a struggle of faiths.'"

Kardawi, who is based in Qatar, is considered a leading figure in Sunni jurisprudence, and the message was sent to him through Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish, the ounder of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

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In a speech last week in Germany, the pope quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who said that early Islam was spread by violence.

Amar's letter was not written on the official letterhead of the Sephardi chief rabbi and it was transferred to Sheikh Darwish through Rabbi Menachem Froman, of the settlement of Tekoa, who holds a regular dialogue with his Muslim counterparts.

Froman added to the letter, with the approval of Rabbi Amar: "Every Jew who studies the writings of our great rabbis ¬ most prominent among them the Rambam [Rabbi Moshe Maimonides], peace be upon him ¬ knows that our great thinkers wrote in Arabic and lived among the Muslim countries and participated with the great thinkers of Islam in the effort to explain the words of God, on the basis of wisdom ...

"Even in the bloody conflict that we have experienced with the Muslims since the beginning of Zionism, we know the war between the Jews and the Muslims is a cursed act of the devil. We know that Islam is based on peace," Froman wrote.