We must not mistake violent, extremist Muslims for the vast majority of Muslims who do not kill or maim. Nor must we confuse the right-wing Christians who made a film defiling the prophet Mohammed with ordinary Christians, or Westerners at large. Ordinary Muslims and Christians have more in common with each other than they do with the extremists, or imposters, in their own camps.

The 22-year-old Kabul suicide bomber who killed nine foreigners, including eight South Africans, was herself a victim, mangled and manipulated into a murder by men who saw her only as a thing to be used, a thing that could kill and die, so they might rise to power on a tide of blood.

Too many times, religion has been used to break the commandments of the very religion that is supposedly being honoured, from the Crusades to the St Bartholomew's Day massacre to the Spanish Inquisition. At various points of history, every denomination has been the persecuted and the persecutor.

To the best of my knowledge the Koran explicitly forbids the mutilation and maiming of the body. The term "jihad", meaning "struggle", is usually understood as meaning "holy war" by non-Muslims and is associated with acts of terrorism. The term "jihad", however, has many meanings. It can refer to the war within yourself, your battle to overcome your lusts. If you give in to your lust for power, for violence, you have lost this jihad. If you wish to have faith, then faith can serve as a staff to support you through troubled times. If you use that faith as a cudgel with which to beat in the heads of others, you will lose your balance. But the "best jihad", according to the Koran, is to "speak words of justice to an oppressive ruler". Keep in mind what the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, the Tripitaka and the Bhagavad Gita represent; they represent "The Word" - that is, speech, breath, life. To "win" an argument by killing the person with whom you are arguing is to automatically lose the argument and, with it, "The Word".