Perfect answer William xx

Muhammad was careful to guard against his mind virus being modified to reform it, so it's a much more dangerous concoction. When ISIS killed 10,000 Yazidis recently, they were acting directly on a command in the Qur'an. So long as that kind of hate is tolerated and propagated, there is no hope of a peaceful world.

@David_Cooper The Bible also curses anyone who changes "so much as one jot or tittle" in the text (those being essentially what we'd call dotting i's and crossing t's), as well as stridently condemning anyone who teaches "heresy". I'm curious how Mohammed managed to top that.

It seems to me that your typical Muslim citizen here in the US (demographically different from how many of them are in Europe, they are actually better educated, wealthier and more law abiding than the average US citizen) just do what liberal Christians do, they ignore inconvenient commands and cherry pick what they're going to observe. But for that to happen in Christendom, the hegemony of more dogmatic sentiments had to be broken. And if Christian fundies continue to gain ground in the US, they will intimidate or even abuse the liberals into line or at least into silence, and then will accordingly run amok. I still see nothing inherent in Islam that dictates there can be no such thing as a moderate or liberal Muslim, anymore than I see anything inherent in Christianity that there will always be moderate or liberal Christians. Look no further than Uganda and Kenya for examples of what Christianity can devolve into in modern times.

Regardless, we must oppose extremists of whatever stripe, without painting moderates of each stripe with the same brush. Yeah there's a sense in which we unbelievers oppose Christianity or religion generally here in the US and not just Christian fundamentalism, because any ideology divorced from evidential supports will tend to become fundamentalist. However ... neither do I see all believers as fundies and I think that just leads to more fascistic thinking, the very thing we fault them for. We cannot write off whole groups of people as "less than".

@mordant The Christians have become good at overriding religious dogma, to the point that there's a gay minister in charge of a church which I used to attend as a child (not by choice). However, it remains a dangerous ideology with lots of hate built into it which has caused millions of killings, and it's a good thing that it's gradually dying out in Britain and other parts of Western Europe. I don't appreciate having to live with dangerous religious bigots, but they are now a minority here and it's a lot safer because of that. It would be a pity to win the peace now only to give it all away by accommodating another vicious imported religion which may be a lot harder to get rid of. Islam looks like a one-way trip.

@David_Cooper I'd feel more like you about it if I lived in your part of the world. As I said, here in the US, we have mostly educated middle and upper class Muslims. Two Muslim women just won seats in Congress tonight. It's hard to radicalize successful, upwardly-mobile people, even in 'Murica.

Also in contrast to your situation, fundamentalist Christians are not a dying breed here, so they are a far greater threat than fundamentalist Muslims. The speed with which things are turning to shit here is breathtaking and, frankly, terrifying. In just two years under Trump we have concentration camps on the borders, talk of shooting unarmed refugees, and lately claims that Trump's opponents are fomenting violent rebellion; we've lost our leadership and credibility in the world, and embolden tyrants.

I actually think fundies are a dying breed in the long run, but am now fairly certain we're heading for a painful and possibly lengthy dystopian sideshow where they will try to pull us all down with them. Even though in the end such ideologies are unsustainable, they are and will remain very dangerous for some time to come.

Muslims are free to be more liberal in the West than they are in Muslim-dominated countries, and the first ones in are typically the more outgoing, moderate ones who are genuinely interested in trying to fit in. The problems begin when the hate preachers follow them and start to bully everyone into conforming with the bigotry, and because all that bigotry is backed by the direct words of God, they are pressured into bowing to its authority. It never goes well in the end - it always leads to war and genocide and it's criminally irresponsible to mix bigotries together in an increasingly explosive mix. When the Christians had gained sufficient power in Europe, they went on a killing spree, wiping out most of our experts in herbal medicine and using the Bible to justify it. A lot of people have the idea that you can prevent conflict by ignoring holy hate and condemning those who point it out instead, branding them as the haters, while anyone who finds the hate in their own holy texts and acts on it is supposedly just a mentally ill person who wasn't inspired by the holy hate that inspired them to commit acts of violence. The reality is that the holy hate is the bomb, and it needs to be defused by banning and getting rid of it. New versions of the holy texts should be produced with all the hate removed, and anyone who propagates the removed parts should be treated as a terrorist, but I know that people are too stupid to cut out the cancer in that way and to spare us of the consequences of leaving it in place to grow without restriction. I think we're heading for the biggest genocide of all time and that a billion people will die on both sides. Future generations won't thank us for putting them through that.