That said, however, the phenomenal overreaction of Muslim leaders and masses around the world to the Pope's remarks proves once again that Muslims do indeed have a problem with rationality. It is not by rioting on the streets and calling for jihad and the destruction of the Holy See and, in fact, of all symbols of Christianity and Judaism that Muslims can hope to re-build their tarnished image as well as the proper civil institutions, which could have both the capability and authority to respond effectively and in a measured way to the challenges facing them today.

Exaggerated reactions such as those to the Pope's speech or the ones involving the publication in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten some time ago of cartoons depicting and satirizing the Prophet Mohammed reflect the general inadequacy of the Islamic State and civil organisations, which lack both the authority and the effectiveness in dealing with the perceived challenges. They also reflect the deep ignorance of the Islamic masses and their aversion to anything and everything which they characterize as non-Islamic.

The failures of Islam, as correctly pointed out by the Pope, are multi-faceted and stand in the fact that Islam - both as a religion and as a way of life - has failed to achieve many of its goals. Raising standards of living, ridding societies of corruption (corruption in all its manifestations, incidentally, is expressly forbidden by the Prophet), freeing people from chronic, centennial poverty, failure to allow freedom of thought and expression even in their basic forms and even protecting Islam from what Muslim scholars have dubbed a ‘rampant Westernization'.

It is not through its inveterate Western-phobia, anti-Americanism and utter dislike of Israel that Islam will ever solve its own shortcomings. But, above all, it is through the embracing and acceptance of jihad or holy war as a means to spread the faith that Islam manifests its own irrationality in its entirety. And this is specifically what the Pope was referring to when he cited Emperor Manuel II Paleologus' remarks, which were rendered within the wider context of the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both faiths.