The religious leaders' guide to bad PR

Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to quote a 14th Century Christian emperor labelling Islam as "evil and inhuman" must rank highly on the list of international PR disasters. In describing these 600 year old words as "brusque" without further qualification, the Pope set the world on tenterhooks and put his own and others’ lives at stake.

In the wake of the row over the Muhammad cartoons, an angry response could and should have been predicted. Speeches made by world leaders such as the Pope are checked for possible errors, contradictions and potentially inflammatory statements. Benedict’s advisors must have seen this speech in advance; one of them may have written it in consultation with him. It should have been run past his PR people. So what went wrong? Did they fall asleep instead of keeping watch in his hour of need?

They appeared equally slow to wake up and diffuse the situation; instead, a statement put out by chief Vatican spokesman Frederico Lombari, without an apology, exacerbated it. The Pope didn’t mean to cause offence he said, adding:

“It is clear that the Holy Father's intention is to cultivate a position of respect and dialogue towards other religions and cultures, and that clearly includes Islam."

In which case, Mr Lombari, the Holy Father committed the first sin of PR and went way ‘off message.’ If he seriously thinks quoting the words of a 14th century Christian emperor to critique 21st century Islam is a ‘clear’ sign of ‘respect,’ then Christian-Muslim relations are in deep trouble.

It was a first-class example of how not to do PR crisis management. Yes, the Holy See did eventually apologise but the move came four days too late, during which time a nun was shot in Somalia and two churches were burnt down in Palestine. And what was going on behind the scenes? As soon as it was clear a storm was brewing, senior staff could have made diplomatic contact with respected Muslims, assuring them the Pope had made an innocent mistake and expressing hopes the matter would not be allowed to escalate into an international crisis. Yet Muslim organisations worldwide expressed anger and began making demands, suggesting this did not happen. It remains to be seen whether the Vatican PR machine will be supplying a steady stream of stories highlighting more positive Papal views of Islam over the next few months.

Back to how the Vatican got itself into this mess in the first place. Part of the problem is that Benedict’s PR advisors are too like him. As practising Roman Catholics they are at a disadvantage, as are all faith groups who consult only within their own faith communities on external affairs. Internal PR officers who share the faith of their employers are inevitably going to be less confident in challenging their leaders and be less able to assess objectively how the outside world may respond to their views.

Benedict had every right to raise the issue of Islamic Jihad and violence committed in the name of Islam in his speech focussing on reconciling faith and reason. To go further and attempt to critique Islam was more risky, but legitimate if delivered sensitively and backed perhaps by Islamic sources. But by quoting a Christian Emperor, effectively using Christian thought to critique another faith, his speech became grossly insulting. An objective PR should have picked this up.

The same criticism applies to the Muslim response. While the US headline ‘Pope Implies Islam a Violent Religion: Muslims Bomb Churches’ just about sums the extremist’s idiot image management, moderates didn’t exactly do themselves any favours.

I am deeply saddened by the fact I have seen no quotes from Muslim organisations expressing regret that Islam is perceived increasing, worldwide, as a violent religion, and questioning what more they can do to promote peaceful manifestations of Islam.

Instead, most Muslims delivered the usual, stereotypical, Pantomime ‘oh no it’s not!’ response they nearly always deliver when anyone suggests Islam encourages violence. They seem to rejoice in a now familiar ‘them versus us’ victim mentality; the very mentality that lies at the root of the problem.

In PR, when trying to improve the reputation of an individual or organisation, you start by assessing their current reputation and take that as a given - irrespective of your own or their personal opinion – before drawing up a strategy to enhance it. Simply denying the problem exists never works.

Yet Muslim groups seem determined to continue to adopt this useless strategy. Two weeks ago, PR Week magazine revealed 78% of Britons felt the best-known UK Muslim organisation, the Muslim Council of Britain, was not doing enough to prevent members of its community becoming radicalised. How did the MCB take the news?

“This is interesting. We have long suspected this might be the case and are grateful to PR Week for giving us the opportunity to assure British people we take the radicalisation of young Muslims very seriously. We are working extremely hard with the police and other authorities to do a better job in future.”

Er, no. The response of the MCB spokesman was to highlight the “very disturbing and frankly bigoted agenda” of some of the media and suggest “it is for the police alone to take actual action against extremists.” How much easier it is to point the finger of blame at others than take responsibility for getting your own act together.

In religion, as in any other subject area, nothing changes if nothing changes.

This blog entry was published in the Church of England Newspaper