Passy, your reduction of modern life to "class struggle" is laughable. "lumpen proletariat" indeed! You are an elitist of the worst kind- the socialist variety.

As for "Christian" armies, again, laughable. The US Army, the British, the coalition partners don't head off to war under the Cross of St george (indeed, that cross is kept hidden these days in England for fear of upsetting the poor Muslims). You'll have to do much better than that.

"Lets just start with Saudi Arabia and Iran. Tell me do you honestly believe 93% of their populations are “moderate”."

Iran's probably not as bad as Saudi Arabia but it is stuck with a hardline Islamic regime that stifles opposition.

Voicing criticism, even condemnation, against Islam or any religion should not be considered racism or vilification in a society that upholds free speech.

Stevenlmeyer

First, standing ovation for the rationality of your scorn. And secondly, “the critic is under no obligation to abide by anybody's definition of fairness or to take account of the feelings of the faithful”, says it all.

Pericles

With the interpretation of your facts in your posts and your logic, Plato would never allow you to enter his Academy.

Vegetarianism, unlike pork, is not a feature of culture or religion but a trait of individual choice and belief of assumed physical and mental health. May be one could “force” vegetarians to eat meat, “but that would not change one iota their religious leanings”, and needless to say that would be the case. But by putting it so, you beautifully demolish your own argument. Pork is a cultural divide between Muslims and Westerners. For a Muslim as a “Westerner” eating pork changes his “religious leanings” by many “iotas”.

http://daringoutlook.blogspot.co

<<The vilification of Islam, particularly in the West, ..>>

The so called “vilification of Islam” is but to speak the truth about this ideology. Daniel Pipes has not gone far enough. Let the ex-Muslims speak for themselves. The following is from Ali Sina, the founder of the website ‘faithfreedom.org’

“To bring peace, it is necessary to eliminate hate. There is nothing more hate mongering than Islam. This doctrine is more evil than Nazism and communism. It inspires more hatred and causes more division than either one of these ideologies that are also hate based. Islam is more insidious because it claims to be from God. It is this added lie that has given it longevity. As Hitler used to say, the bigger the lie, the more believable it becomes. Islam is the biggest deception ever….You can never reform Islam. It is firmly built on lies. You can only demolish it by exposing those lies and by telling the truth about the despicable and shameful character of its pedophile, rapist founder. ”

http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/sina80128.htm

One of the best website is ‘Islam Watch’ by ex-Muslims mainly from South Asia

“We are a group of Muslim apostates who have left Islam out of our own conviction when we discovered that the religion of Islam is not a religion at all. Most of us had taken a prolong period of time to study, evaluate, reflect and contemplate on this religion of our birth….

Islam was nothing but a lie, we left Islam silently because of the fear for our lives. Then we felt that it was a responsibility on us to make the 1.4 billion world-Muslims to be aware of the falsity of Islam and its cruelty so that they can also leave Islam and live with love, respect and harmony with rest of the world.

…the current Islamic terrorism is not an aberration of the so-called 'peaceful Islam', rather it is the real Islam preached and practiced by the alleged Prophet Muhammad. This can be confirmed from a thorough study of the Qur'an and Hadis.”

http://www.islam-watch.org/IW/WhoWeR.htm

Oh c’mon Paul. Islam has been equated with foreigners, with outsiders, with “those type of people” for years. “Pipes argued Europe was in danger of losing its “distinct cultural” identity.” Culture, identity, race. It’s not a big leap. Pipes is just riding the wave. “Masked within the euphemisms and indirect speech is a classically racist argument: blacks (or Muslims, or whomsoever is targeted) are not just inferior to us in the West, but inherently so.” “His solution to this perceived danger is for Muslims to be more “Western” and less Muslim.” Can’t be both? I’m sure he’d like everyone to think that. I disagree.

“Muslim populations in the west are much younger on average than their host societies.” What, they’re all guests? Working, participating, paying taxes, yet fair game for being told to go back to where they came from.

Perhaps I’m the only one subscribing to OLO who’s worked and socialised with Muslims. It’s ironic they’re targeted on this site and on the streets, when chances are they’re just regular people doing regular things. Here a non-Muslim complains of having to endure the same thing; I bet he’s a regular guy as well. It’s no consolation to either of them they get to walk in the other’s shoes a bit.

Everybody misunderstands Israel it seems, so forgive me if I don’t afford them the sympathy you feel they deserve. It seems almost as misunderstood as Iran.

DB - I don’t really follow your arguments at the best of times. I find it difficult to engage with obscurantist and ambiguous scripts from 100-odd generations ago