Comment Re:What special about beliefs if they're religious (Score 1) 894
The elephant in the room is that Islam is fundamentally and irreconcilably offensive to Christians because they say Jesus was not the son of God. There is nothing more blasphemous than denying this fundamental tenant of Christianity.
Quite right. Though "tenet", not "tenant".
If we follow this logic Christian's would be perfectly justified in beating up any Muslim that they happened to come across.
Here's where you and I disagree. I assume you're basing that logic off of the Pope's comment about punching someone else, and if so, it's clear that you've missed some important context...such as the beginning of the sentence, which started with "One cannot react violently". If you follow the links and read the sentence in context, you'll see that he was providing a contrast between morality—"one cannot react violently"—and reality—"he can expect a punch".
Rather than being a justification for violent responses, he was merely making a statement of fact: provoke someone else and you can expect a violent response. That's something most of us would agree with, since morality plays no part in that statement.
I'm not a fan of the papacy, and I'm certainly not a fan of the current pope, but it seems to me that a lot of people are reading things into what he said here that simply weren't there. Even so, his suggestion that there should be limits on free speech, presumably so as to avoid that sort of provocation, is a rather chilling notion and one with which I vehemently disagree.