So we can compare Church of Scientology favorably to Islam. By the way of contrast, Babylonian Talmud is even older than Quran, and Upanishads are older still.

One question that was raised is if a religion allows for sexual intercourse with “underage” girls. If I understand correctly, there is no concept of “underage” in Judaism. There is a provision in Talmud that after marrying a prepubescent girl the husband can have an intercourse with her on the 4th night after the wedding. So if she was 10 years old, she will be 10 years and 4 days old, much better.

If you believe that God orders now the same morality as ever, there is no reason to reject something merely because it dates to the early Iron Age. Of course, you can argue that the sages made a wrong interpretation.

Where others see religious conflict I’m afraid I only see a warped version of class conflict, with protests like these another way of distracting ordinary Muslims from their real tormentors – their political and economic exploiters.

Everywhere you look people crave dignity. Their anger and sense of injustice can be channelled positively by leaderless mass-movements like the Arab Spring, but those movements are genuinely dangerous for those who have an interest in the status quo. Brewing false controversy over a stupid film keeps the rabble onside.

And I get tired of people implying (or outright claiming) that Muslims are inherently more likely to become violent when their religion is percieved to be under threat, and that this is some kind of built-in problem with Islam.

The built-in problem is that Islam is overwhelmingly the religion of the poor, and it manages to restore some of the dignity to the masses that material and political circumstances take away. Little wonder that it is so cherished as a way of life, and so quickly defended when percieved to be under attack.

It’s poverty that is the problem, and religion an excuse not to take it seriously.