OK Mise, let's compare Islam and Christianity, and see why they are so different.

Christianity was began by a Jewish pacifist, who's teachings were peace, love, and tolerance. His sayings include "blessed are the peacemakers", "love thine enemy", "if a man strikes thee, turn the other cheek." Then there was the parable of the Good Samaritan, who's message was that people of other faiths can also be good people.

This pacifist and tolerant message was concealed from Christians by a self serving Christian clergy for over 1000 very violent years, because the clergy would not allow Christians to read the Bible. Christianity became a very violent religion, which was the opposite intent of it's founder. The Christians then had a Reformation, where Christians were encouraged to read the Bible and rediscover it's pacifist ideals.

Islam was created by a warlord, an ethnic cleanser, a beheader, and a paedophile, who encouraged his soldiers to rape female captives. He was a criminal among his own tribe. His intent was to create a religion that would justify the expansion of his kingdom through military conquest, and which would create suicidally brave soldiers who had no fear of death. Mohammad's sayings (hadiths) include "Kill the pagans wherever ye find them." "Fight the unbelievers who are near to you, lay ambushes for them, strike terror into their hearts." "....and fight them until there is no disbelief in Allah."

Unlike Christians, Muslims have always been encouraged to learn to read the Koran so that they can read these intolerant and violence endorsing scriptural messages themselves. The Muslims today are having their own Reformation because they are a civilisation which has lost it's way. It is a poverty stricken civilisation which compares badly with every other. The stupid sods think that Allah had abandoned them because they are not religious enough. So they too are going back to the original scriptures of the Koran, and that message is, kill anybody who will not covert to Islam, and take over the world.

Then Allah will smile on you again and give the Believers his blessings.

Of course, We could stop sending as much money as humanly possible to islamic nations.

Not one single detractor of islam has *ever* suggested that.

rusty

I wonder if anyone has ever bothered to calculate the percentage of Arabs, Indonesians, Pakistanis etc who are devoutly religious and compared it to the 20% or so of White Europeans who claim to be observant Christians?
True, there's no comparison between Christianity and Islam but the reality is that in 2014 the 20% of the population who are Christians are supporters and enablers of Islam in general and apologists for even it's more radical and violent elements.

LEGO,

"This pacifist and tolerant message was concealed from Christians by a self serving Christian clergy for over 1000 very violent years, because the clergy would not allow Christians to read the Bible"

That is entirely wrong, there was no restriction on who could read the Bible other than the fact that most people couldn't read.
The Bible was not hidden but was in short supply because copies had to be hand written.
Over 250 sheep skins are needed to make the vellum for the pages of a Bible and years of work to copy the text, the usual illuminations were so time consuming that some of them were never finished; as can be seen in some extant copies of the Gospels.
See:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/LindisfarneChiRiho.jpg
where some words/letters appear to be unfinished, going by the intricate and ornate rest of the page.

Poirot
According to you there's nothing wrong with the government bombing whoever it wants, as much as it wants, because it's "democracy", remember?

Had you forgotten your own principle for deciding whether or not the use of power was justified?

Killarney
Do you oppose the enforcement of all the polices you advocate, or not?

Look ... a lot of people have thrown stuff at me about what I'm supposed to have said that I'm supposed to be 'justifying'.

Just go away. The lot of you.

I have no interest whatsoever in 'defending Islam' or any other pathologically patriarchal Abrahamic belief system.

I do, however, completely reject the Western obsession with turning Islamic countries into 'failed states' by means of all the usual Western bully tactics, like sanctions, destabilisation, regime change, training and funding militias, creating and then siding with one side in civil wars, bombing and lots more bombing (for no other reason than that the West seems to believe that bombing 'works'), and promoting irrational fear campaigns that Islam wants to take over the world (when all the indications are that Christianity has been doing just that for centuries).

I've often said on OLO that I believe the Europe-based West would have been much more spiritually better off if they had never been forced by Rome to adopt such a patriarchal/dominator-based Abrahamic religion from the desert cultures of the Middle East, one that was so at odds with the pantheistic, egalitarian mysticism of the forest cultures of Old Europe (but that's a topic for another discussion).