I truly do not understand why the followers of the Prophet are so thin-skinned.

Nor do I understand why they claim to be a religion of peace. They are no more so than are the Christians. Regardless of what the Prophet and Jesus may (or may not) have written or said, there is little in the behavior of either group, either recently or historically, that would confirm that they are anything but warlike in the extreme. (We won’t even talk about the Jews.) Muslims civilized northern Africa, parts of the Middle East and the Iberian Peninsula at sword’s point. The followers of the Prince of Peace chased them out of Spain, attempted to evict them from the Holy Land by force, and generally raised hell throughout the northern part of the Muslim countries for hundreds of years.

On other fronts, Christians saved the souls of the Indios of the Americas and, in a genocide just as effective as that of the Nazis — if rather less-publicized, the winners having indeed written the history books — stole roughly 1/3 the land area of the planet from its previous tenants. Several million of those saved souls were released to their maker during that period of spreading God’s Word. The British duplicated the spread of their peaceful religion throughout the far east, Australia, and the Indian sub-continent. Islam spread its way throughout much of Asia and the rest of the globe in much the same way, but with its spread facilitated even more by the depredations of the hated Christians.

Neither of these groups has the moral high ground, save from the standpoint of moral relativistics. Even then the facts must be bent drastically in order to accomodate the application of any rational system of ethics.

Both Christianity and Islam have bloody hands. It matters not what the founders said, wrote, intended or wanted. Those are the facts, recorded by historians and pounded into the bloody ground beneath the believers’ feet. The remaining question is, how much more killing and mayhem will take place in the names of those peaceful founders?

My guess is, a whole bunch, because our leaders are not true to the beliefs they claim to espouse. Like most leaders, they give lip service to moral and ethical imperatives while using the power of their positions for political ends. (Four percent of the world’s population are sociopaths, by most estimates, and many of them become politicians.) Even after picking and choosing their scriptures, they are unable to adhere to the precepts of their founders. The numbers of Muslims who try to live peaceful lives as The Prophet taught are in the many millions, as are the Christians and Jews, for most people just want to be left alone.

But the leaders…

In any case, accusations on either part are so patently a case of the pot calling the kettle black, that you’d think everyone would just laugh and get back to the business of destroying the world.

But wait…keeping things stirred up is part of the business, and certainly the Devil’s work, no matter how one perceives Him.