The Lunatics Have Taken Over

Hello,
As you know I get a bit tense from time to time, fortunately I have assembled a set of beliefs that help me cope. They might be entirely wrong but as I'm not in a position of authority and don't mean any real harm, I don't see that it matters. May it comfort you all to know that I am happy.

Nevertheless the one thing I can't conquer is my habit of gaping at the news in wide eyed horror and screaming 'are these people insane?' at the top of my lungs. Then I get tense.

Some of you might have noticed that the Pope has landed himself in a bit of bother with the more excitable sections of the Muslim community. If there is a God I've seen enough to be quite certain he has sense of humour. A warped one at that.

I can understand why Muslims are offended. What I cannot understand is the protesters demanding respect for their religion by burning an effigy of the head of another faith.
How can any reasonable person even begin to tolerate, respect or understand the beliefs of people who make, such, puerile, aggressive gestures towards the beliefs of others? Why not aim for the moral high ground, rather than sinking below what riled you in the first place?

Worse than the effigy burning, the Muslim Brotherhood have claimed that the Pope' remarks 'threaten world peace'. Good God, have these people nothing better to go looking for war over. Remarks -a threat to world peace? Really? Is that the sort of world we want, where an offensive remark is enough to threaten world peace? The Pope said nothing that couldn't be dealt within the confines of theological debate. Why the need for such threats and aggression?

For heavens sake The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church. He's the competition, do you expect him to order the worlds Catholics to convert to Islam? At worst (though I believe the remarks have been taken out of context) he's just talking down the opposition and if you want to fight back there's plenty dirt to be dug up about the Catholic church.

I cannot fathom for the life of me why some followers of one of the worlds great faiths believe their religion is so weak that it cannot withstand a few insults. Look at the obstacles Islam overcame to even become established? Do these people feel so inadequate about their faith that they cannot defend it by calm, rational argument and debate? Islam is not a delicate piece of coral. It cannot be smashed beyond repair by a few knocks. There are millions of Muslims in the world with brains in their heads and tongues in their mouths, there are millions of printed Qu'rans. Islam will be just fine unless the human race is struck dumb or blind which I am confident won't happen. See everything is just fine, now can you all just calm down, because you're giving me a headache.

Cheerio

UPDATE- Oh brilliant, now Catholics on their way to mass are getting grief. Like it or not this is a multi-faith nation, if the various faith groups can't even let each other attend worship unmolested then I'd like to hear their proposals as to how this set up works. Are we to expect Catholics protesting outside mosques this Friday? Fuck the war on terror, can we all just declare war on all hate filled nutjobs and be done with it?