However, the simple fact is... as a non-Christian, I have very little to fear from the hundreds of millions of Xtians around me; the likelihood of being stoned to death, shot, burned or otherwise done away with for my heretical beliefs is pretty minimal.Hundreds of years ago, one could logically fear such things in "Christian" Europe. There's a certain historical irony in the fact that many Jews found refuge in the Muslim-run Ottoman Empire.In the present day, yes. IMO, the Muslim world needs a healthy dose of Enlightenment rationalism.
There are parts of the Muslim word that indeed need that Englightenment. It's possible one of the reasons they lag is migration. Many American Muslims, perhaps most, came here to escape their more fundamentalist-minded coreligionists.
-Eric
The problem with that thought is that Enlightment Rationalism brought Christianity back to its roots, the stated theology of the Bible, from what the State had made it for its own ends. You are ignoring that the Inquisition burned people at the stake for owning Bibles. The Christian conquests were made by State Religions that banned the very Bible they swore Authority from. The Bible taught the very opposite that the State did. Whereas the stated theology of the Qu'ran is conquest by terrorism and the slaughter of all infidels.
Reformation can correct an errant course, not re-write the foundations of the faith. September 11 is the fruit of Enlightment Rationialism in action on Islam. It is called Wahabism and is being funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by our friends the Saudi's.
It is Islam's return to its roots that is the problem, not the solution here.