I'm just so sick of these endless Muslim sob stories. Wherever Muslims hold power non-Muslim minorities so marginalised and mistreated - for example in Saudi Arabia non-Muslims have no right at all to practise their religion even in private, Iran where for example they may not become military officers (that would mean an infidel commanding Muslims). India now has a Muslim president...when will Pakistan have a Hindu president I wonder? I'm just fed up with Muslim whining about mistreatment all over the world. The incredible double standards and hypocrisy are breathtaking.

I think a good first step would be to FORCE Saudi Arabia to legalise religious freedom. This despiccable dictatorship is the fountainhead of Islam and sets the extremist, paranoid, clannish tone for Islam in the world today.

Muslims must realise that the world will not tolerate double standards of freedom for them in the West, but repression of Christian, Hindu, apostate or atheist minorities in Muslim lands. Reciprocity must be the watchword from now on when dealing with Muslim nations. When I see full religious freedom in Saudi Arabia I will start to have just a little sympathy for Muslims' "plight". Until then, forget it.

Avinash,

Thanks. It seems, then, that Muslims must do as others do to achieve goals.

From a recent ABC Radio National Religion report:

This week I received an email from an Indian listener with an interesting perspective on the Pope's comments about Islam.

'If Muslims around the world are claiming hurt or insult at the Pope's comments about the sword being used to spread religion in mediaeval times, then how should Hindu Indians react to what happened to their culture in the name of true religion?

'This is what the American historian Will Durant wrote in his first volume of The Story of Civilisation: Our Oriental Heritage, published in 1935:'

(And of course this was before the Second World War and Maoist China)

"The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilisation is a precarious thing. The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with great glee and pride, the slaughter of Hindus, forced conversions, abduction of Hindu women and children to slave markets and the destruction of temples carried out by the warriors of Islam between 800 AD and 1700 AD."

'Just imagine putting up with a 9/11-style event every decade for a few hundred years, and you get a sense of why many Hindus are not surprised at all by the latest jihad activities. They have seen it all before.

'When the Hindus made their last big stand at Vijayanagar in the 16th century, local Muslim historians themselves recorded how it took five months to destroy all the kingdom's sculpture and art. They described how, loaded up with loot and slaves, the Muslim armies marched home proclaiming that there was not a breathing creature either man or beast, left in a 50 miles radius of Vijayanagar.'

(And he concludes) 'Perhaps the Hindus also deserve an apology.'