Unfortunately, in the case of Islam, the religion itself contains many, many tenets which Muslims use to justify intolerance and religious supremacy. When Muslims ignore those tenets, they can be very nice people. However, the comparison with Christianity does not stand. I suggest taking a good look at Robert Spencer’s excellent Blogging the Quran series, and then tell me if you think the Bible is equally problematic (providing specific examples, please!)

This might be a bit too late to reply but better late than never.

To answer your question, I would suggest that you read ” God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe” authored by NYU history professor David Levering Lewis as well as watching PBS’ documentary “Islam: Empire of Faith”.

Both the book and the documentary show how the same intolerant muslim countries, prospered and had invaluable contribution to the human civilization when people where tolerant and allowed religion freedom. 10 centuries ago, both Christians and Jews lived in pieces with muslims in the middle east and, as a matter of fact, several scientists that had contributed greatly to the Arab’s empire were Jewish. Current “muslims countries”, when compared to their status 10 centuries ago, make it clear that it has nothing to do with religion but rather with people. Same countries, same religion and totally two different social and economic status.

It’s interesting how Europe was looking upon by Arabs 10 centuries ago. Europeans were the savages. Does that mean it was Christianity that lead to that? I don’t think so.

What is at issue is whether they allow complete freedom of religion, which includes the right of non-Muslims to promote their religions and the right of Muslims to convert to other faiths. In addition, a truly free country allows anyone to criticize any religion and any political view (Islam includes both religion and politics). So, if you had gone to Mali, stood on a busy street corner, criticized Islam and promoted Buddhism and everyone was very nice to you, this would have addressed the issues more closely. (I would then have requested proof that this actually happened, and that this experiment could be repeated indefinitely!) So far, of all the people who claim Islam is secular and tolerant, I’ve known of no instance in which they were willing to put it to a real test.