BERLIN (Reuters) – Turkey’s top religious official says he wants to move on from Pope Benedict XVI’s recent controversial remarks about Islam, and will not raise the subject himself when the pontiff visits Turkey this month.

“I would like to look forward,” Ali Bardakoglu was quoted as saying in advance extracts from an interview appearing in today’s news weekly Der Spiegel. “If the pope does not mention it himself, then I will not bring it up.”

The pope has repeatedly expressed regret for the offense caused to many Muslims by a September 12 speech in which he quoted a 14th century religious text. He said the views expressed in it were not his own, but has stopped short of a full apology.

The letter written by the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologus spoke of the Prophet Muhammad’s “command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Bardakoglu, who is due to meet the pope when he visits Turkey from November 28 to December 1, said Islam was open to criticism. “We are ready for an intellectual discussion about the relationship between belief and reason, between religion and violence,” Bardakoglu was quoted as saying. “Islam and rationality belong together.”

The pope’s lecture sparked a violent reaction in many Muslim countries.

Bardakoglu reiterated his criticism of the remarks, which he said were “a highly prejudiced attack on the three cornerstones of Islam,” namely belief, the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad.

Bardakoglu heads Ankara’s Directorate General for Religious Affairs, which controls all imams in Turkey and sends prayer leaders to Turkish communities abroad.