“If you say I am violent one more time, I shall kill you. Not just kill you, but I shall slice off your head, burn your body, and hang your worthless carcass from a bridge! Such a fate awaits anyone who accuses the Religion of Peace^TM as prone to violence!”

It looks like Pope Benedict is in serious publicity trouble for quoting some ancient emperor, making mention of a centuries old debate between a Christian and a Muslim scholar.

From the Associated Press report, the Pope was quoted as saying the following:

The pope quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and a Persian scholar on the truths of Christianity and Islam.

"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," the pope said.

"He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,'" he quoted the emperor as saying. He did not explicitly agree with them nor repudiate them.

Beats me, I don’t know what he’s talking about. This strikes me as some pretty arcane history, known only to the kinds of scribes and monks and scholars that most religions keep wisely bundled up in towers.

Is it just me, or do Muslims the world over have an overbearing sensitivity towards any mention of their religion by the Infidels? There must be some subsection of one of the laws in the Koran that tells them to find offense with any non-Muslim utterance that includes any mention of their religion, absent fawning praise and a prostrate attitude?

I mean, this guy’s the Pope of the Roman Catholic (Christian) Church. Doesn’t that automatically give him license to, like, not believe in other religions and their traditions? Doesn’t he get to adhere to his own traditions, and why must Muslims insist we all pay their traditions more deference than our own?

And some critics think we’re wrong to call the radical flavor of these guys fascists?!

I forgot the punch line, to come full circle. The AP Report quotes some Pakistani bureaucrat:

"Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.

“In this, I am deadly serious. Stop saying that I am violent, or you shall indeed find out what violence means!”