Malta, like Italy, is most certainly lagging behind. It is “utterly ridiculous” to deny it.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j1nKt7TNTm4/TdIyk-qRveI/AAAAAAAADhI/6N2Jazw0mDk/s1600/RainbowMapEurope.JPG

[Daphne – Malta is not lagging behind. Onloy 10 states worldwide permit actual marriage between two people of the same sex. A few more permit some form of civil union. There is no such thing as gay rights. There are only human rights. If you mean the right to a civil union, then up to last summer, Malta and New York State were perfectly equal. Keep a sense of proportion or your arguments are weakened. Argue for same-sex marriage for its own intrinsic worth, and not because some other countries have it.]

You mean Islam.

I will use the same language. Here we go: Mohammed was the greatest political and military leader ever to have lived. The empire he founded stretches from Morocco to Indonesia, with other outposts all over the globe, and is stronger than ever, 15 centuries later. No other empire even comes close.

Islam was never a religion. It was a political system, a convenient merging of Jewish and Christian beliefs and practices and the Arabian peninsula’s own animistic religion. It was the only way to unite disparate tribes and cultures and pave the way for the conquest of North Africa and the Middle East.

The reason we find it extremely hard to make jokes about Mohammed is that we know so very little about him. He wouldn’t even allow pictures of himself, for heaven’s sake. Jesus was a different sort, and sounds more like a Greek cynic than a Jew. So now I’ve mentioned Judaism too.

Regarding that video, my feelings are neither shock nor indignation. I simply posted it to show how a gentleman should not behave. When NATO has just liberated you from a tryant and paved the way for your ascension to power, you show some civility and gratitude to its lead nations. Islam and crosses does not come into it, except incidentally. We Maltese sometimes verge on that sort of behaviour when we bad-mouth the British, who defended us against Fascist oppression, or the Germans, who are keeping Europe together.

But of course we’re all better off without Gaddafi. Let’s be clear on that one. Even if Libya becomes the first North African caliphate since 1912.

You forget the youngest of the twelve. Please don’t tell me he was there only to finish the book.

Paul, what is the point of bringing Islam into the equation? In Malta it is fundamentalist Catholic (not any other religion) ministers we are dealing with and therefore it is their extreme beliefs which are ridiculed.

When Malta has a fundamentalist Muslim minister who proposes Sharia law, I’m sure he or she will be ridiculed too.

H.P. Baxxter, I am agnostic by the way and don’t give a hoot about religions. I bet you won’t use the same language to discuss the most barbaric ‘religion’ in the world. Notice the inverted commas.

The video of Libyans vandalising a cemetery and a cross you show on your website is really shocking.

I wonder what our lovely Muslim Iman has to say about that.

. . . and moreover, the 12 scarpered pretty sharpish-like when it came to the crunch.

Only the girl and the mother were anywhere to be found.

The 12 and their successors never forgave them (women) for showing them up, and relegated them to permanently passive roles in the Church.

Didn’t she come in towards the end, when Jesus had become a celebrity? She even displays the typical behaviour of the infatuated fan. Washing his feet with her tears and drying them with her hair. Whatever next?

Yeah, especially with her son always hanging around with his twelve “special friends” and not a girl in sight.

Oh lord, I’ve done it now. Francis Saliba will come down upon me like a ton of bricks.

[Daphne – Errrr, there was a girl in sight. Hanging around with them, actually.]

His innovative ways at shutting up his own mouth are remarkable, but ineffective.