It seems slowly the Pope's words are causing a minor stir, and it is a minor stir. This is pretty understated really, the biggest thing is that Turkey has said they can't guarantee his safety when he visits in November which is actually true of pretty much anyone significant going pretty much anywhere - there will always be someone happy to have a go so short of shutting down every street a guest goes down, plus the five adjacent to them, someone will be close enough to potentially cause a security concern. What turkey are essentially saying is "you've pissed off a lot of people (including us) and we're not going to spend the extra money protecting you from your own stupidity, so don't come here."

So despite this being a very minor thing as far as these offended muslims are concerned, the West is up in arms that the precious Pope is being viciously attacked by these heathen scum. Yes, the very same Pope many in the West feel very uncomfortable with because of his opposition to homosexuality and contraception (just a couple of his less controversial views). But he is one of Us and can therefore be made into a martyr of the oppressive muslims. But really, why?

Let's put what the Pope said in context. Much is being made of the fact that he explicitly stated twice he was quoting someone else. Why go to that effort unless you know the words you're quoting will be controversial? Even if the Pope himself was actually stupid enough to think nobody would care if he likened the prophet Muhammed to Satan surely someone in the Vatican would've seen the potential problem and said something; could the entire Catholic church really be that stupid? Of course not! His efforts prove he knew what he was saying would offend and therefore I can't help but feel he said them deliberately to offend.

But in actual fact it's Joe Public who bothers me the most. With some saying that when a religious leader insults the prophet of another religion (especially just before they hold a major religious festival) they should apologise and the Pope digging his heels in and refusing to say sorry even with a cop-out disclaimer for quoting someone else we must all cry about how muslims are constantly attacking us and yet we can't do the same to them. Which is bollocks.

As Westerners we're supposed to be used to freedom of speech. We live in a world where we're supposed to be able to criticise freely, and conversely accept those criticisms. With our attempts to bring these ways of life to the Middle East we can't stick conditions on them - "Well, we want you to have free speech so long as you don't say anything mean about us". It really doesn't matter if I can't stand in the middle of Mecca eating a beefburger, I live here and as such I live in something resembling freedom. Just as I can say that I am offended if an Imam says Jesus brought evil to the world I need to listen to muslims who complain about the Pope saying the same about their prophet. This is freedom I care about. Yes, I believe it's a freedom that should be in place across the entire globe but I know it isn't - it is a freedom I currently enjoy living under though, and therefore people complaining about muslims exercising that freedom offends me. If a freedom only exists for a few it isn't a true freedom.

Of course the complaints I hear are that we aren't allowed to say anything against Islam, which is untrue. We can't slander it or incite hatred it's true, but I can speak out against Islam if I so wish. Hey, I've got a few objections to most organised religions and the best thing is I live in a society where I can voice those objections - all I have to do is avoid blatant lies!

The reason nobody speaks out to defend Christianity is because nobody cares enough. it's that simple. Whenever this topic comes around people are too busy complaining they can't say anything to actually bother trying to say something. You could slander the Pope with vicious lies and you might end up with a few dozen Catholics outside your door because nobody else cares enough! If everyone who complained they couldn't defend Christianity went on a march then they might realise they can defend their religion, but it's just easier to say we can't do anything about it really. "Well I would try to extinguish the fire you lit around my church but I might get fined for breeching Health & Safety regulations - it's a disgrace that the government would rather see the church burn to the ground but what can you do?" Put the fire out and in the unlikely event anyone is stupid enough to fine you worry about it when it happens, is your church really worth less than a few pounds? The disgrace is that we accept these feeble excuses in the first place, by buying into this twaddle we keep fuelling this society of martyrs. Suicide bombers have nothing on the way we can become victims - at least they genuinely suffer, we're often martyrs of things that haven't happened!