Religious fundamentalism is the same everywhere, only the branding changes.

They have liberal, moderate and fundamentalist wings just like Christians. It's just that their fundamentalist camp is quite a bit larger percentage of the whole. It's something of a debate whether that's somehow inherent in Islam, or (as I feel) its more a function of the grinding hopelessness and poverty that dominates most of the Muslim population concentrations. Of course THEN the open question is how much of that misery is a result of Islam, and whether Christianity, allowed to run wild, wouldn't produce the same amount of human suffering.

Ultimately I think part of the problem is that Islam's "enlightenment" was stillborn, and failed to moderate it. Fundamentalist influences killed it in its cradle. And that's too bad, because we owe a lot of basic stuff to the Arab world, like the invention of the concept of zero, which was important to the invention of algebra.

I would say yes after being friends with devout Muslims unlike "moderate" Muslims.

@archer5691 I never said it was anything Christians or the West did to them. And I would agree they have largely done it to themselves. Doesn't really change the dynamic though.

As for their dogma being more likely to be interpreted literally or violently -- I haven't studied the Quaran and so have no opinion on it. I still tend to suspect that Christianity is less overtly violent because of accidents of history and a craftier, more deniable sort of cruelty under the hood; but ... I don't claim to know. I'm just vey wary of anything that auto-otherizes outsiders.