Religious scriptures matter surprisingly little in determining the actual behavior of religious people over time. The Old Testament, New Testament, The Koran and other scriptures contain both violent and peaceful elements, and these elements have been used to justify a wide variety of behavior over time, both bad and good. Looking back several hundred years, even after the crusades and inquisition, Catholics and Protestants were torturing and killing each other all over Europe. During the reign of Henry XIII alone in early 16th century England, tens of thousands of people were burned, tortured, beheaded and hanged entirely for religious reasons. One could look at that from the perspective of that time and make a similar claim to the one that you are making here - that Christians were beyond redemption and would never reform. But the simple truth is that religion moves with the culture and the times. Until Islamic cultures are ready to embrace modernity and secularism, the situation will not change, but there is no reason to suspect that those cultures are not just at an earlier stage of the same trajectory as the west.
And by secularism, I do not mean the elimination of religion. What I mean is the separation of religion from government and civic affairs, and the comparmentalization of religion to the private domain, with respect accorded to the sphere of secular government and law. The trouble with certain religious people - be they radical islamists or Christians who kill abortion doctors - is that they believe they are operating by divine commandment and that this then trumps the prohibitions of secular law. So what I mean by secularism is to first separate religion from government and law, and then to respect secular law in its own right. This is not the case throughout much of the Islamic world right now, just as it was not the case in the Christian world for nearly 2000 years.
- wolf
