For the love of god, smite the infidels (and, indeed, anyone else you care to have a go at)

It doesn't take a lot to start a holy war nowadays. Perhaps it never has. The dear old Hitlerjugend Pope ("My mates call me 'Eggs'.") Benedict is the latest chap to put his foot in the ordure that is islam by having the nerve to quote part of a conversation which occurred something over 600 years ago: "Show me just what Muhammad 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."
As a consequence of an entirely predictable bout of typical islamic unpleasantness the pope has since been blessed with dazzling enlightenment and, equally predictably, announced that the words "do not in any way express my personal thought". So much for papal infallibility. Perhaps he can also tell us how he feels about the words' being uttered by a follower of a religion that had, for hundreds of years, been doing a fair bit of smiting of its own, and with the blessing of a whole string of popes.
And, hey, "... there you will find things only evil and inhuman ... " is a bit rich. If Eggs did, before his divine awakening, believe this to be true of islam, and I must say I've a fair bit of sympathy with the view, I wonder how he feels about the burning of witches and the Spanish Inquisition. Was that merely a bit of friendly persuasion? It seems to me that the followers of the many lunatic cults spawned by the god of Abraham, in his various guises, have always been pretty damn keen to indulge in a bit of persecution and bloodletting whenever and wherever they can. I blame all the violence on tele, personally.
And is it not unbelievable how folk can insist their religion is not even the teensiest weensiest bit violent, and then proceed to demonstrate this by burning an effigy of the pope, attacking churches, calling for days of anger, telling worshippers to hunt down and kill whoever offends the prophet mohammed, and, possibly, bravely shooting a nun in the back? I wonder what the international response of islam would have been if after 9/11 or the London bombings hundreds of thousands of christians had taken to the streets, burnt effigies of Sahibzada Mirza Masroor Ahmad Sahib Abdul the Bulbul, Khalifatul Masih V, or whatever, and destroyed a few mosques. Whatever the response, as sure as Eggs is Eggs (geddit!) it would not have been unreserved apology. But they need not worry - the behaviour of christians is, usually, no longer quite that primitive. Neither are they as mentally unbalanced or as pitifully childish.