Well this doesn’t happen very often, so listen up kiddies. I, Chlamydia, agree with the Pope. No, I’m not talking about “The Pope” who’s a Hasher from Singapore, I mean the Pope, his holiness, queen of the silly hats and king of the Catholics.

Don’t worry, I’m still a good little atheist --but I do have to give the Pope his props, if only for publicly quoting Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus --a man who, in my opinion, knew a thing or two about Islam.

No big deal, right? All he did was to quote someone else who had a dim view of Islam. Let’s put this into context though, on the stage of world leaders not even GW is willing to stick his neck out far enough to risk pissing off the Muzzies. The Pope, Nazi youth thug though he may be, at least had the balls to repeat someone who was willing to “tell it like it is.” It doesn’t seem like much until you look at what’s happened to other people who have done the same.

In case you’re wondering what it was that Manuel II said that was so offensive to Muslims; it was only this: everything the Prophet Mohammed brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Well, in my opinion that’s not a bad start, but it falls a little short of the truth.

A few weeks ago I finished up a little project of mine which was to read the Koran (or Qur’an if you prefer) and because Muslims are often heard proclaiming that one cannot read an interpretation of the Koran and understand it, and since I have no desire to learn Arabic, along with the Koran I read a few different commentaries.

I re-read (ok, I didn’t really get through very much of it the first time around) a painfully boring little tome called Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (which, to be clear, is not an historical text nor is it non-fiction but it’s significance will become clear in a minute) Additionally, I read another book called Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources by Martin Lings.

Besides those two books (and the Koran itself) I read what is perhaps most informative book I’ve read in years: What the Koran Really Says; Language, Text and Commentary by Ibn Warraq.

If you have any desire to understand Islam, I highly recommend Warraq’s book. It’s a book on the Koran that cuts through the PC bullshit and tells you how the Muslim world is interpreting their holy book. To be clear here, the Koran doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for interpretation. Besides all the silly bullshit it borrowed from the Torah and the Bible it makes one other thing abundantly clear: It is the duty of all Muslims to kill all infidels. It goes on to identify infidels as pretty much everyone who isn’t a Muslim as well as all Muslims who aren’t fanatical enough. An example of a non-fanatical Muslim would be, for instance, a Muslim that has the chance to kill some infidels and doesn’t do it.

Now what I just wrote is a paraphrase, and it probably sounds pretty extreme –and it is, but it’s also true. Don’t believe me? Pick up a copy of the Koran and read it for yourself. It’s all there in black and white.

A lot of Islam’s defenders would be quick to point out something along the lines of “to really grasp the beauty and kindness of the Koran, one must be able to read it in it’s original Arabic…” Right you are, and that’s where Messrs. Rushdie and Warraq come in. They’re both former Muslims, both from the Middle East, and both scholars of Arabic, having studied it in an historical context and both having a far greater understanding of the language than the vast majority of so-called “Clerics.” In both of their books that I read, they were clear, the Koran calls for the destruction of all non-Muslims.

“Not true!” Say the proponents of Islam. Then, why, I ask, have fatwas been issued on both of these men? This isn’t some bullshit ex-communication; this is murdering people for speaking freely (and the truth). The leader of Islam in Iran clearly stated that it was the duty of all Muslims everywhere in the world to kill Salmon Rushdie and everyone associated with the printing of his book. And they’re still trying.

To date they have killed the man who translated the book into Japanese, as well as having seriously injured the Italian translator and the Norwegian translator. Salmon Rushdie has spent the last nearly twenty years in hiding. For his part Ibn Warraq knew what he was getting himself into and was careful to conseal his identity from the outset. Although there is a fatwa on Warraq, to date no one has been killed over his book.

That brings us back to the Pope. Considering the muslim communities predilection for issuing fatwas against anyone and everyone who has the slightest negative comment on their religion, I think it took a lot of balls to stand up there and (IMHO) tell the truth. Already there are Muslim “clerics” who have publicly stated that they are of the mind that the pope should be put to death for his having repeated these negative words regarding Islam. Take a second to consider this, the pope quoted someone who said negative things about Islam and they think he should surrender his life for it –it will be interesting to see how this all shakes out in the end.