Islam is not bad, too many of you are ignorant of history.

[mrstickball]

Mr Khan said:

Kantor said:

Christianity and Islam have both been through this stage: when power-hungry followers of the religion insisted (contrary to the words of their holy books, because Christianity also doesn't permit mass murder) that everyone else was wrong and evil and should be killed.

Christianity grew out of it before the real advent of world politics and human rights. Islam was founded later, and therefore has not yet grown out of it. Therein lies the problem.

And of course, it's only a minority of Muslims and all that, but the Crusades were carried out by a minority of Christians. Just because something was done by a minority doesn't excuse it, and nor does it sever its ties with the religion. Christianity was responsible for the atrocities of the crusades and the Inquisition. Islam is responsible for the actions of al-Qaeda and the oppression of people in the Middle East (which is thankfully now ending).

This treads on incredibly volatile ground, but maybe Christianity didn't grow out of it, but the peoples who practiced Christianity did. I mean today the religion is mostly the domain of reasonably affluent and developed peoples, and the ideological mouthpieces of Christianity are also in these highly developed society (which means that Christian pockets in less developed countries are receiving their ideology from the well-off, if Christianity is being proselytized in their area). The Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda is probably the exception that proves rule, perhaps, this brutal and ostensibly Christian movement in the back-country shows that the religion can still be hijacked for violent purposes in this day

The Muslims in Europe are all immigrants or near immigrants, for instance, and the hotbeds of extremism come from places where Muslim populations are horribly mistreated, like Israel or the North Caucasus, or back-territories like Afghanistan

The danger of course comes from implying that Muslim peoples are "less developed," and because of that are prone to irresponsible behavior, which treads dangerously close to a purely racist argument.

I wouldn't say that it was because Christians got out of it, but we broke up the theocratic rule of the Catholic Church.

Most if not all issues of extremism in Christianity come from one, and only one place: the Vatican. The reformation and its leaders were able to break up the Catholic power base by introducing new (not really new, just Biblically-based) ideas into the system, which helped ensure the Church didn't control it all.

Look at the collective aggression of the Protestant church since the 16th century. You can't really say they have comitted many atrocities when compared to other major religious or ideological subsects.

Because of that, I wonder what it'd take for Muslims to become less violent. Last I checked, the religion's entire existence has been steeped in war and conquering since its inception.That doesn't bode well for me with hopes, unless they can enact very secular states in every Muslim-majority country.

e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests