I have Muslim friends, but am convinced that while there are reasonable and moderate Muslims, there is not and cannot be a reasonable and moderate Islam.

For Muslims, Mohammed is the perfect example of a life well lived. You canot criticise the prophet publicly without risking death. Yet Mohammed, as I have noted before, had sex with a nine year old girl, tortured his enemies, and was a mass murderer who in between killing Arabs who disagreed with him, decapitated several hundred Jews.

Unless Muslims are willing to repudiate Mohammed’s example, and that would mean disowning the prophet – impossible! –  an Islam which claims both to follow his example and to be moderate will simply be an impossibility.

Some interesting comments here about the film Islam: What the West Needs to Know.