The plan by a minuscule “extremist Christian” group to burn a pile of copies of the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11 has got a lot of people very jittery.

Hillary Clinton described the planned burning as a "disrespectful, disgraceful act". More to the point, perhaps, David Petraeus, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, warned that there could be retaliatory action against US troops; presumably he meant from Afghans who would normally have been supportive or at least neutral. Protests have already taken place in the capital Kabul at which effigies of Pastor Terry Jones (of the ironically named Dove World Outreach Centre) were burned alongside the American flag.

Christians all over the world are busily disassociating themselves from the proposed Koran burning. L’Osservatore Romano, under the headline “No one burns the Koran”, reported Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Bombay (and before anyone says that should be “Mumbai”, “Bombay” is what the locals mostly still call it), saying “I condemn this completely insensitive threat that is disrespectful to the Holy Qur’an, on behalf of the Catholic Church”. L’Osservatore Romano went on to report that Christians around the world were protesting against the threatened event.