I’m getting a little tired of Muslims around the world overreacting to comments made about or against them. It seems that now, more than ever, people have to be overly cautious when discussing Islam, its founder and its followers. It’s gotten to the point where Pope Benedict XVI, giving an academic lecture at Regensburg University in Germany about reason and faith in the West, was forced to give an apology for perceived wrongdoing under threat of violence and mayhem by the Muslim communities around the world.

This lecture was academic in nature and given at an academic institution. The only part of it that sparked this nonsensical outrage was one sentence in which the pope quotes 14th Century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel II Paleologus who was speaking with a Persian scholar. The offending passage reads, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

This one sentence, which was not even the pope’s, sparked a string of indignation from the Islamic world. Leaders of Islamic countries publicly denounced the pope and threatened to cut diplomatic ties with the Vatican. A leading Muslim cleric in Somalia urged his followers to “hunt down” the pope because of what he said. Other leaders demanded the pope apologize for his comments and claimed violence may ensue if he did not.

And ensue it did. The Orange County Register reported Sunday that protestors in the West Bank firebombed two Catholic churches in the town of Nablus. The group claiming responsibility for the bombings said the attacks were in response to the pope’s statements.

Does this make any sense? Two churches were bombed and threats and denouncements poured in from almost every Islamic country in the world because of a lecture the pope gave at a university where he quoted a ruler who lived hundreds of years ago. He only used the quote to make the point that one cannot force people to believe in a religion. He was trying to say that religions shouldn’t employ violence in their proselytizing.

Apparently, many in the Islamic world don’t hold that belief. All too often, it seems, the Muslim communities around the world react with violence or threats of violence when they are confronted with something with which they do not agree. Think back to the controversy a few months ago that centered on a Danish newspaper printing caricatures of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. This triggered threats of death and violence against the publishers of the newspaper and elicited vandalism and destruction of many Danish embassies throughout the Islamic world.

And these instances are not the only ones on record.

Any criticism leveled against the Islamic world is automatically met with outrage and indignity. To put it in simpler terms, the Islamic community is like a spoiled child. If the Western world does something the Islamic world doesn’t like, the Muslim communities around the world will throw a collective tantrum. They will huff and puff and stomp around the room demanding apologies and passing on threats like it’s nobody’s business. They’ll claim the Western world simply does not understand them.

And they’re right. I don’t understand them. For a religion commonly described by its followers as one of peace, I don’t seem much of it. For as much as I want to understand it, I can’t seem to wrap my brain around it. The Islamic world sends out too many mixed messages, and the recent controversy involving the pope has only muddied the waters further.

Rational people don’t react to something they disagree with by threatening to or actually blowing it up. Rational people don’t riot over cartoons in a newspaper. Rational people don’t threaten the leader of a world religion and firebomb his churches because of a lecture he gave at a university that was taken completely out of context.

For as much understanding as the Islamic world demands from the West, is it too much to ask for the same consideration? Is it too much to expect the leaders of the Islamic world to not act like a spoiled child in the candy isle? I don’t think so. But then again, I’m a rational person.