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Well, if you've been wondering when moderate Muslims would speak out against violence in the Middle East it has happened. Bin Laden told his baby beheading jihadis in Iraq to tone it down.

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Six Muslims were arrested in an alleged plot to attack Fort Dix and kill as many soldiers as possible.

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The pope visited St. Sophia's Cathedral while he was in Turkey trying to make nice with the Muslims. The Cathedral is an empty museum.

Secular Turks want to join the European Union but the Islamic population is still miffed over a speech last September where "Benedict quoted a Byzantine emperor, who said that Islam was violent and irrational."

According to the NY Times that speech was really about  empty churches in the West.

"But the section on Islam made up just three paragraphs of the speech,
and he devoted the rest to a long examination of how Western science
and philosophy had divorced themselves from faith — leading to the
secularization of European society that is at the heart of Benedict’s
worries."

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The pope gave an academic lecture on faith and reason. He said that God cannot act against reason. He wants science to broaden its definition of reason to include faith. His complaint was that Europe has abandoned faith. 

You can read the actual text here.  The pope quotes John's Gospel finding  God in logos. The Greek  word logos means both  reason and word.  He says," John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God."

Christopher Hitchens calls this a premeditated insult to Muslims because they claim Muhammad gets the last word on God. Hitchens, a non-believer, finds both claims absurd:

"…and where Muslims believe that Mohammed went into a trance and took
dictation from an archangel, Ratzinger (Hitchens insists on using his pre-pope name) accepts as true the equally
preposterous legend that St. Paul was commanded to evangelize for
Christ during the course of a vision experienced in a dream."

Hitchens thinks Benedict gave Islamic radicals more fuel for jihad. Though he slams the church for doing the same throughout history, Hitchens probably would agree with the pope's point that spreading faith by violence is unreasonable. 

Radical Muslims took issue with this point and commenced to burning churches.

The Pope apologized for his reasonableness.  He was not forced to convert.  Yet.

Good thing they didn't see any Muhammad doodles.

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