Daffy, Strawman alert! You couldn't resist could you?
The author of this article is an apologist of Islam, it's a biased article intended to trick uneducated people into regarding Islam as the lesser of two evils by firstly leveling a charge of endemic anti Semitism at Western people then drawing an asociation between anti Semitism and Racism and colonialism.
You're playing along with his false proposition and casting Islam as just another victim of European aggression your strawman is the evil European colonist.
I've suggested that it's probably no coincidence that European powers started to expand into the New world and Africa during the period when Islam was literally "At the gates of Vienna", it's an explanation which fits the facts but it's not the whole story.
Genocide? Sorry, there's no such thing as genocide, Jewish Anti Fascist Raphael Lemkin invented the word in examining WW2 and it's only context is in the Anti Fascist narrative.
You mentioned the Herero "genocide", their population was estimated at 80,000 in 1905, today it's estimated at 240,000.How is that a "Genocide"?

The Belgian Congo lasted 52 years, the German African adventure was about 40 years, the poor old Italians only lasted four years and the British, the most benign rulers hung on until the mid 20th century.
The Moorish colony in Spain lasted for 700 years, the golden horde terrorised Europe for 300 years, the Ottomans followed and their descendants still hold onto areas of the Balkans to this day.
Europeans took an estimated 12 million Africans as slaves over a period of two hundred years and fought bloody wars to abolish slavery across India and Africa.
Muslims are still taking African Christians and Animists as slaves as we speak, nothing has changed.
See we're "guilty" of a brief, mostly benevolent adventure in colonialism which had a beginning and an end and which has been repudiated by all thinking Europeans.Islamic aggression and expansion has never let up, never repudiated it's slaving,colonialism mass murder and mayhem

At this point in history the dark side of western civilisation is in suppremacy. The benefits of our evolutionary growth are huge, however the major beneficiaries are extremely few compared to the world's seven billion inhabitants. (stake holders in the planet's capacity to sustain LIFE). www.civilisationhijacked is an intro to the book "Civilisation Hijacked" that details the process whereby the one percent has gained control of the rest of us.

No other groups have caused more harm than the religious & academic.
The decent in their midst are totally outnumbered.

Moslems pirates from North Africa took about one million Europeans as slaves from the 8th century until the 19th--they raided English coastal towns for slaves in the 17th century, and the Ottomans enslaved millions of Eastern Europeans, they, like Africans, were victims of slavery on a massive scale. As to the conflict between Islam and the West, who started it? Not the Crusaders.

Jay,

I'd agree with your specific comments-

(1) that this article could be used as a propaganda piece, particularly if read by someone ignorant of history.

(2) the only significant contribution that Moslems have made to the West was to force Europeans to look for a sea route to East Asia

Every civilization has its bright and dark sides. The worst of the dark side of western civilisation today is that it's descended into deceit and hypocrisy. Climate change denial is a large part of this new behavior. Unfortunately, its tentacles are spread far and wide, where the neo-converts are more dogmatic and vile than their masters, as I note in this filing from India. http://creative.sulekha.com/the-derailment-of-western-civilization-does-it-need-a-bail-out_371499_blog

Namaste CV,
Welcome to the forum, I've been reading your blog for a few months; interesting.