Vox's Roundtable #1: Holier Than Thou

VOX POPLAR- Hello, and welcome to a new feature here at Vox Poplar Is Right About Everything & Don't You Forget It. It's Vox's Roundtable, the last bastion of sincere and intelligent discussion on the internet. Today the topic is religion and religious violence.

Joining me today is his Holiness, Pope Benedict the XVI. Hello Benny.

BENEDICT XVI- How ya doing.

VOX POPLAR- Great, just great. And representing Islam is Ayatollah Khatami, former President of Iran and current guest lecturer at Harvard for interfaith relations. Welcome Ayatollah.

KHATAMI- Death to the infidel.

VOX POPLAR- We asked the mainstream media to send their deepest spiritual thinker to participate in this show, but they sent Rosie O'Donnell instead.

ROSIE- I really hate working on The View, but I sure love the money.

VOX POPLAR- Now there's a lot of controversy, in fact outright rage, over recent comments made by Pope Benedict. Can you clarify what you said?

BENEDICT XVI- Sure. I was talking about religion and violence and I made a point about how many perceive Islam as being inherently violent. And to do that I used a quote from a 14th century Byzantine Emperor that said the only new ideas that came from Islam were Holy War and violence.

KHATAMI- That is offensive! You have offended me! You must die like an infidel dog!

ROSIE- How dare you offend this poor fellow! You sir are worse than Hitler!

BENEDICT XVI- All right, I'm sorry that you're so touchy and intolerant that you have to react to the slightest criticism with threats of violence and terrorism.

KHATAMI- Thank you... Wait a minute! That's not an apology! That's an insult! You must die! You must all die you pig worshipping monkey fornicators!

BENEDICT XVI- Blow it out your hairy ass Khatami. You see what I'm dealing with here?

VOX POPLAR- I think so.

BENEDICT XVI- Islamic leaders constantly demand respect from everyone else, yet they do nothing to earn that respect. Instead, they expect it to be just given to them out of a fear of terrorism.

Five churches in the Palestinian territories have been either firebombed or shot at, a book about killing the Pope, meaning me, is a bestseller in Turkey. Is that supposed to make me suddenly love them? I don't think so.

KHATAMI- What has your church done to earn respect?

BENEDICT XVI- Two thousand years of deep philosophical and spiritual thought, countless acts of charity, the Renaissance, educating millions worldwide to do something other than blow themselves up.

ROSIE- What about the Crusades and the Inquisition? Hah! Top that Pope-boy!

BENEDICT XVI- You really are dim. I'm not denying that lots of people did a lot of wrong things in the name of Christianity.

ROSIE- He admits it! He admits that Radical Christians are a bigger threat than Radical Muslims!

BENEDICT XVI- Oy. Okay, I'm going to speak slowly, so you can catch on. The Crusades and the Inquisition are what you call 'history,' meaning that they happened a long time ago. Islamic jihad is what's called 'news' which means it is happening right now.

ROSIE- You oppose gay marriage! That makes you worse than Hitler!

BENEDICT XVI- Hitler killed gay people. Khatami-boy has killed gay people and his government is still killing gay people! Yet, in your mind, I'm somehow worse than them because I don't want my church forced to do something that defies our ancient traditional definition of marriage and families! What kind of shit are you smokin' baby? Because it must be pretty potent.

KHATAMI- You worship a slaughtered monkey on a cross! You are a repulsive spiller and drinker of blood who must be beheaded!

ROSIE- You are an Islamophobe Mr. Pope!

BENEDICT XVI- And you're an idiot. You rail against 'radical Christians' and call people 'Islamophobes' because that's what your limousine liberal friends tell you to do.

But how much of what you believe actually connects with reality. When was the last time gangs of radical Christians crashed airplanes into buildings full of people? How many Christian countries have public hangings of homosexuals and so-called apostates? I don't hear any suicide bombers singing 'Onward Christian Soldiers' baby!

ROSIE- How dare you challenge my prejudices with facts!

KHATAMI- You evil pig worshippers are oppressing the Islamic people!

BENEDICT XVI- Oh really. If we're oppressing you, how come your people have been killing so many of my people in the Sudan, Indonesia, Nigeria, and just about every other place where Islam meets the rest of the world?

KHATAMI- I didn't say you were very good at it. Just that you were!

VOX POPLAR- Perhaps we can take a moment to look at what the Democrats like to call 'root causes.'

BENEDICT XVI- I'll tell you the root cause of Islamophobia. It's caused by Muslims dammit! People say they respect the Islamic Faith, but it's not real respect, it's just lip service because crackpots like Khatami here will get a lot of people killed because they got offended.

How many people, Muslims mostly, were killed over a frigging bogus cartoon. Hundreds? Thousands? Meanwhile we got so-called 'artistes' making images of the Blessed Virgin Mary out of elephant shit, and I haven't heard of anyone being killed because of that.

Let's look at the facts. A Christian goes nuts and kills people over their religious or political views these days and the bulk of Christians will declare him nuttier than a bag of almonds. But a Muslim blows himself up, killing a lot of innocent people, he's declared a martyr and praised from Mosque pulpits from Algeria to Zanzibar.

ROSIE- You sir, are a racist.

BENEDICT XVI- And you're dumber than a sack of skunks. Moderate Muslims are afraid of speaking out, because they'll be killed as 'apostates' and the majority of Muslims will let it slide, because they're scared of their fellow Muslims too. If Islam is going to survive the free fall it's in, it has to do these things:

· Eliminate so called Islamic Republics. Even the Grand Ayatollah Sistani says they only serve to breed atheism.

· Stop supporting terrorism.

· Stop replacing lousy secular governments with lousy Islamic governments.

· And stop blaming your own screw ups on everybody else. The fact that your life sucks ain't my fault, it ain't Israel's fault, and it ain't America's fault.

Now I've said my piece.

VOX POPLAR- That's a lot of passion Your Holiness.

KHATAMI- Infidel pig you must die!

BENEDICT XVI- Fine, bring it on beeotch! You don't scare me. I was taught by nuns. Nothing scares me anymore!

VOX POPLAR- Okay, I think we'll call it a wrap for now. See you later.