It's easy to be a christian in Roma, in Germany, in Europe. But there are many places in the world where it's not. This is why I hope that the pope will personnally apologize and correct his sentences. The Ratisbonne conference is a long and old fashioned scholastic discours about the relationship between raison and faith; it's focused on the notion of reason in the greek philosophy and its use in religion. There are two quotes about Islam, the first one is not justified and very offending. The pope also mentions the theologian Ibn Hazn (11th century), who "considered deductive reasoning insufficient in legal and religious matters".
The only good thing about this controversy is that the pope commited a lapsus which is a secret thought in the heart of many non-muslims: Islam has an educationnal role towards non muslims. I hope that the voice of educated Islam will have enough room in our 'christian' medias. At the end of his lecture, Benoit 16 is expressing the urgent need of a dialog between the cultures and religions of the world. He's right but when you want to meet the other, you first have to leave your prejudices...
A very interesting article written before the death of Jean-Paul II: "John Paul II pursued his quest for alliance with Islam in 1986 by becoming the first pope to visit a Muslim country. During that visit to Morocco he had this to say: "We believe in the same God, the one and the only God, who created the world and brought its creatures to perfection"... In 2001 John Paul II visited Damascus and became the first pope to pray in a mosque. He also issued a formal apology for what he termed the misdeeds of Christendom toward Islam, including the Crusades and colonialism."