All religion is intrinsically aggressive - wars of religious conquest, missionary zeal and religious intolerance have accounted for more human deaths than any other man-made cause.

Any value system that tells people what to believe without any evidence whatsover, in return for a promised future reward, has to be questionable to say the least.

The Christian Old Testament is actually more aggressive, intolerant and narrow minded that the Koran. Christianity has considerable responsibility and a case to answer for itself. Perhaps the Pope could have considered what comments he should make about Christian values and behaviour in the 15th Century, rather than Muslim ones.

At the risk of causing even more offence (because every thicko in the world seems to regard it as a divine right to be offended and angry about something, somewhere), I wonder if people in the US Bible Belt, or the UK evangelical/cult churches, have more in common with radical Islam that they would like to think.

In 'Gulliver's Travels' a war is fought about whether people should open bolied eggs from the pointy end or the more rounded end. We laugh and think what a stupid thing to fight a war over - but this is exactly where we are going at the moment on the world. The end result/middle is the same, we argue how to approach that end, when it is pretty unimportant really.