Maybe I am a bigot and a hater. I don’t want anything to do with sexism blatant or otherwise. I most definitely hate misogyny cloaked by peaceful religions.

Like your new site by the by.

I would address two points:
One is the respect. While it is true that Christianity has the golden rule of respect for fellow mankind, on the daily level what I see is that there is a “we respect everyone except” kind of attitude. Usually toward gays, but with more hardcore followers it extends to atheists, followers of different religions, members of the “other” races, women, and Joe Next Door.
What I conclude is that yes, having a “love thy fellow human” written in the Holy book of your choice helps, I agree with CathSynth that there is a huge cultural effect on it – my second point willget to that too.

In the western culture the hold of religion is weaker than in the ME thus the whole society is less tolerant toward religious extremism.
Even then, there were no real outcries when a prominent religious figure said that Hugo Chavez should be assassinated – “thou shalt not kill” -, or when he gave his hitlerjugend speech.

The other is the difference between ME and European cultures:
Western culture with it’s European roots is more tolerant, and less extreme for historical and geographical reasons than the Muslim culture.
Europe has seen a lot of migration of different cultures, and resulted in a bunch of different cultures, languages and people to form countries.
The geographical characteristics of Europe made unifying and maintaining the unity impossible or inconvenient – too many mountains, rivers, etc. – but did not prevent contact between the different cultures. If you add that for historical reasons everyone was Christian, that made an additional bond. In the end you had a continent with different cultures which shared something important, thus learned to tolerate differences.
The same can’t be said about the ME for example.

While Christianity had it’s share of reforms, break ups and tests, Islam had almost none of that. It always ruled over a mostly homogenous area, culture, so there was no need and chance to change it. And not only the religion, the actual culture had no reasons to change. Sooner or later it will come to a point of serious reforms – not neccessarily peaceful.
One thing you have to keep in mind that you cannot kill a religion. If you could, there would be no Vatican, there would be no Buddhism, there would be no protestants. And the Islam is too strong, too deeply ingrained in the local traditions that a few missionaries could steal the followers.

These days Islam and the traditions there met a serious challenge, I would risk to say, the first serious challenge they ever met, delivered straight to the homes of the people, so it tightens its hold.

*Ok I wonder if it is still intact, I had to take half an hour break in the middle of the comment. Hopefully it is still sensible *

LL&L: There is a subscribe button at the top. I’m looking into other ways for people to follow this blog too. If I can find something suitable, I will put a button of box in the sidebar. Thank you for visiting.

However, I think Islam as a religion is dangerous and whether radical or not, still not compatible with Western democracy and liberties. Rather like many movements before, such as Nazism, it is liable to render the adherents susceptible to acts that would in other situations, not occur.

Unlike Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and numerous other religions, Islam does not have the golden rule of respect for fellow mankind. It’s a faith, that in its multiple teachings, whether in the Quran or Ahadith, proscribes intolerance and violence. Remember too, the rules of abrogation and the chronology of the verses between Medina and Mecca.

(I found your site via Wordless Wednesday and your cat pic, but I’m always interested in issues like this, and probably share a similar outlook on religion)

A government will always push it’s own ideology – and the radical one. A republican government will push the radical republican ideology, a communist government will push the radical communist ideology, a religious government will push the radical religious ideology.
Plus the big government ideology, that’s universal.
I think it’s because the radical ones are strong and forceful enough to push themselves into control – and they don’t have problem with eliminating the weaker, less radical competitors no matter what.

So the radical end of the ideology bubbles upward, no matter what ideology we are talking about. That is why every religion should be taken out of the government.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely

As for the mental illness – if it is done by a Christian fanatic it’s mental illness, if it’s done by a Muslim fanatic it’s not mental illness?
I fail to see the proof for that. I think the Christian fanatics are not mentally ill – except if you define being fanatic as a mental illness, but then the Muslim fanatics are mentally ill too. Actually this is what I think, but it’s not an excuse.
I measure the Christian fanatic who kills his son and the Muslim fanatic who kills his wife with the same weights.
As it is in the Bible “you won’t have two sets of measures.”