One of the most common things people say to me is: "You know nothing about Islam." And it's true that I don't know very much about Islam, but it's also true that I know a lot more than I want to know ever since Islam has been allowed to elbow its way into western society and thrust itself into everybody's face. I know, for example, that Islam allows a man to beat his wife, and all over the internet I can find videos of Islamic "scholars" explaining exactly how to do this. These are the same "scholars" whose reading of Islam has turned the country of Saudi Arabia into the kind of place where a person can be executed for witchcraft, or where a father is allowed to sell his pre-pubescent daughter to a child rapist and still call himself a man. I know that Islam encourages violence against apostates, against Jews, and against homosexuals, and I know that anyone who dares to criticise it for this naked barbarism will be physically threatened and put in fear of their life. I know that in the western world rape is a crime against women by men, whereas in the Islamic world rape is a crime by women, punishable by - guess who - men. And I know that for these reasons no other religion makes me feel quite as ashamed to be a human being as Islam does, and coming from a Catholic background, believe me that is saying something. I also know that the oil that generates the wealth to pay for the ongoing Islamisation of the West would still be in the ground if the wife-beating child-raping "scholars" of Islam had their way, because the internal combustion engine would never have been invented. I know these things about Islam because everybody knows them. But people keep telling me: "You are ignorant. You should read the Koran." Well OK, so I read the Koran. But then somebody said: "You read it in English? No, you have to read it in Arabic to truly understand it." Ah, Arabic, eh? Hmm.Well OK, maybe I could learn Arabic. It would certainly be more than most of the Muslims on this planet have bothered to do. Let's see, what else would Arabic be really useful for, apart from reading the Koran? I'll get back to you if I think of anything, but don't hold your breath, because it's precisely because of the influence of conservative Islamic "scholars" that the Arab world has become such a cultural backwater and the number of books translated into Arabic each year could probably fit into a briefcase, and still leave room for a thermos and sandwiches. So anyway, I was reading the Koran in English like an ignoramus, clumping through it in metaphorical hobnail boots, so to speak, but one passage did catch my eye, and that was Surah 109, al-Kafiroon it's called, or the non-believers, and this verse says: I don't believe what you believe, and you don't believe what I believe; you have your religion and I have mine. And I thought: "Well, that sounds very reasonable, very tolerant. Almost, dare I say it, like a religion of peace." And then I got to thinking that if every person on the planet were to become a Muslim the way the "scholars" and the professional whiners of Islam are always insisting, there would no longer be any need for that verse in the Koran. It would be effectively redundant, rendering the book imperfect, which is, of course, impossible, because it's the pure word of God. So clearly God in his infinite wisdom anticipated that not everybody would want to be a Muslim, or would be suited to being a Muslim for one reason or another, and he approved of that situation otherwise he wouldn't have said so in the book. Although a number of people have kindly offered to answer any questions I may have about the Koran, I can't help but wonder why I should have any questions if it's the pure word of God. Is God not capable of expressing himself clearly and directly to me without ambiguity even in a crass and unsubtle language like English? Surely, even to suggest such a thing is deeply blasphemous. To explain or to intepret the Koran is surely an attempt to undermine the pure word of God, to adulterate it with a human perspective, and in the case of the "scholars" who depend for their very existence on such adulteration, with their own personal neuroses. Sealed as they are in their ignorant little bubble of righteousness with nothing for company but chronic sexual repression and a pathological fear of women, the holy men of Islam have no knowledge and no wisdom and not a spiritual bone between them, so they have to rely instead on the only thing they do have, the capacity to generate fear, which is of course the lowest emotion a human being can have. Is that really the purpose of Islam? Crude violence, the threat of crude violence is always the first option with these sad little men, because it's literally all they've got at their disposal. How empty is that? That's why apostates are killed in Islam, because the primitive throwbacks who define the religion simply don't know any other way. It's the "scholars" who call for the brutal punishments, who sanction the mutilations and executions, the monstrous treatment of women, the abuse of children, the murderous hatred towards Jews and homosexuals that have turned Islam from something that could have been beautiful into a dark inhuman religion of death, tainting all Muslims in the process, because if you're a Muslim these people have coloured the way the world sees you, and they are not doing you any favours. And that's one thing I do know, and so do you. If every Muslim was encouraged to read the Koran by listening to God through their own heart and not through somebody else's twisted mind, what a different and vibrant religion it might be. Peace. That's what we're looking for. That's what we want.