Commentary by By Mohammed Saleh, posted by Shimron

When Pope Benedict recently cited an old debate in which it had been argued that Islam is a religion of violence which had ruled only by the sword, the Arab world’s official media saw it as an opportunity to preoccupy the mob in Arab and Muslim societies, and to divert them from talking about the far more important matters of freedom, democracy, poverty or corruption, from which all Arab and Muslim people are suffering.On gathering these unenlightened crowds together in different Arab and Muslim, their empty minds were stuffed full of the words of ideological clerics, who called on the Pope to apologise.

The demands of these mobs revealed how little-used to freedom of speech, or to the right to differ intellectually and religiously, are the peoples living under these dictatorial regimes. If the masses were enlightened, they would – for example – be questioning the killing in Iraq, where sick idiots have been tricked into action under the pretext of Jihad, leaving non-Muslims to believe that the violence there is what Islam stands for and what the Quran requires.

If I were not a Muslim I would have accused Islam of much worse things than that done by the Danish cartoonist or Pope Benedict. Why? Because as long as the world continues to witness the indiscriminate and savage killing in Iraq and other Arab countries – killing which is perpetrated without condemnation from those religious zealots who shout in the streets and organise phoney demonstrations in defence of religion – those who claim to defend the faith while tarnishing its image by encouraging terrorists to kill under cover of criminal fatwas, are behaving in a manner which is far worse. click here for more