Only ludicrous if you limit your perspective to our very small slice of human history. Militant Shinto drove the Japanese Imperial expansion before and during WW2 that resulted in, among other things, the Rape of Nanking. Christianity was used do justify anti-Jewish pogroms for centuries. And if you move beyond religion, I would argue that Communism wins the prize for the most threatening culture, beating out Fascism by quite a margin. What other culture resulted in the death of 100 million people in the 20th Century? Is militant Islam currently dangerous? Yes. Has militant Islam always been as dangerous as it is now or the most dangerous culture on the planet? Of course not.
I understand that you're trying to say that all cultures and beliefs are morally equivalent. It's a nice thing to believe, it just doesn't happen to be useful or even true.
Not at all. What's important is to understand why Christians go good or bad and why Muslims go good or bad. Muslims have not always been as bad as they are now and during some periods of history, they might have been worse. What makes Muslims go good or bad? You aren't going to answer that if you assume all Muslims must be bad or Islam must produce bad Muslims, any more than you are going to understand what makes Christians go good or bad based on the assumption that all Christians are good or that Christianity must produce good Christians.
Aside from the occasional knuckledragger, nobody outside of Islam is actually calling for the mass extermination of another culture based merely on belief. To bother with this is to completely miss the point.
And my point is that there are plenty of people inside of Islam who are not calling for the mass extermination of another culture based merely on belief. Yes, 40% of British Muslims may want Sharia law in the UK. But that means that 60% of British Muslims don't. They don't want to exterminate the UK or Chrisitians. Don't pretent that those other Muslims don't exist. They most certainly do.
What most of us are concerned with are the barbarians at the gate.
I understand that and even sympathize with it to some degree. But that's no excuse not to at least try to distinguish the barbarians from those who aren't barbarians and have no interest in your gates.
For them, things are in fact fairly simple. They wish to kill us and we don't wish to die.
Who are "they"? All Muslims? If not, then your job is to distinguish between the good Muslims and the bad Muslims rather than simply wanting to kill them all and let God sort them out. If the militant Muslims are trying to kill you and you accidentally kill some innocent Muslims (e.g., while bombing an Iranian nuclear plant), that's fine. But some of the statements I see tossed around here to border on "calling for the extermination based merely on belief" -- a professed faith in Islam, rather than any particular threat. If it's wrong for Muslims and knuckledraggers to think that way, then it's wrong for conservatives to think that way even if we are afraid of barbarians at the gate.
We don't need to go around hunting for "peaceful" barbarians to slaughter... they are throwing themselves upon our defenses as fast as they can run. So be it. When they stop attacking, they'll stop being killed.
I have no problem killing those who try to kill you and understand that some innocent Muslims may be killed while getting at the cowardly evil militant Muslims who hide among them. That's not my problem. My problem is with statements, which you'll find close to this reply, that all Muslims are bad and can't be trusted. Not true.
I didn't say that.