re: #75 klys

So go ahead, please, continue to try to excuse your bigotry. I’m going to worry about fundamentalists of all religions without claiming that any one religion has a particular problem.

From my perspective, it is not that one religion has a particular problem per se, but that one religion has a particular problem at this particular moment in history. Too often I see real bigots fail to make this distinction, as if Islam inspires more violence and has always inspired more violence. This is not the case.

But for all the faults of Christian fundamentalism, we have not seen Christian extremists trying to violently overthrow governments and using terror tactics against civilians, and that is exactly what we have seen with Islamic extremists for decades now, with a death toll in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. It hasn’t always been this way and I’m sure it won’t always be this way in the future. But this is what we have to deal with right now.

One notable difference is that Christianity has no equivalent to Sharia or Jewish religious law from the Old Testament. Islam was always intended to be a guidebook to all aspects of life, with strict rules about how individuals should conduct themselves and also how governments should apply the laws. And the unavoidable conclusion is that any government that embraces Sharia will find it difficult to also embrace modernism and liberal humanism.

Quite simply, it is not as difficult for Christians to tolerate separation of church and state (though many don’t), since Jesus said “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”, and also disavowed the old Jewish laws, making a fairly clear distinction between religious and civic life.