At least if they insist that the “survival of the world” is at stake.

The "survival of the world" is at stake if Muslims and Christians do not make peace with each other, leaders of the Muslim world will warn the Pope and other Christian leaders today.

In an unprecedented open letter signed by 138 leading scholars from every sect of Islam, the Muslims plead with Christian leaders "to come together with us on the common essentials of our two religions" and spell out the similarities between passages of the Bible and the Koran.

The scholars state: "As Muslims, we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them - so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes."

Excuse me, but the last time I checked it was Muslims who have been attacking Christians since the time of Muhammad, waging war on us on account of our religion, oppressing us, and driving us out of our homes. Remember – much of the Middle East and all of North Africa was Christian in the year 600 AD – but by 700 AD it was Muslim.

Only the heroic stand of Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732 stopped the advance of the Islamic horde into Western Europe – and it took another seven-and-a-half centuries to reclaim Christian Spain from the clutches of the Moors.

Constantinople, the Christian city of the first Christian emperor, is today in a Muslim land and its cathedral, Hagia Sophia, has never been returned to the hands of the Christian faithful from whom it was stolen by the Turks in 1453.

As late as the 1600s, Muslim troops stood at the gates of European cities, threatening to impose their rule and their faith upon the Christian inhabitants thereof.

Today, Christians in the Muslim world – where they are not forbidden entirely – live an existence as a persecuted minority with second-class citizenship. Just this week, one such Christian was murdered for the crime of selling Christian books in Gaza, and he is only one of the hundreds who will be martyred at the hands of Muslim fanatics this year.

Peace with Islam? I’d love to see it. But the problem here is not the Christians – it is the followers of Islam, and the cancerous forces of violence that are drawn from the Quran itself, that are the problem. Until the Muslim faith gets its own house in order, peace is impossible.

I, for one, applaud the stand taken by this courageous British churchman who knows quite well the true nature of Islam and the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The first reaction to the letter, from the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, a leading Anglican expert on Islam, appeared to be critical.

Dr Nazir-Ali, who was born in Pakistan, welcomed the Muslim scholars' deisire for a dialogue, but said that the appeal was based on the Muslim belief in the oneness of God.

"What I would say to that is that Christians uphold belief in one God vigorously but our understanding of the oneness of God is not the Muslim understanding," he told The Times. "We believe in God as source from whom everything is brought into being. Jesus is God's word and presence for us but is also human."

He added: "One partner cannot dictate the terms on which dialogue must be conducted. This document seems to be on the verge of doing that."

Peace between us? Yes. But it must be a true peace, not a Munich-style “peace in our times” with an aggressive enemy that seeks out ultimate destruction.

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