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Perhaps, the McCarthy hearings did inspire the play, "The Crucible". However, the Salem Witch Tials are a warning to everyone about religious fanaticism. The Salem Witch Tials are all too much alike the Inquisition during the Medival period.

There is no "perhaps". Miller wrote the play as a reaction to the McCarthy hearings, although I'm sure he would have had absolutely no problem applying it to Christianity as well. In fact, I'm sure that's why he picked the Salem Witch Trials for his play instead of, say, the Communist purgings in Russia, as the place to hang his metaphor. That way he could kill two birds with one stone.

Comparing what has happened in Christianity to Islam is ridiculous. Human beings can be evil, and will use whatever means available to them, as in the case of the Inquisition, to maintain power over others or, as in the case of the witch trials, to act upon their greatest fears. However, Christianity does not dictate to its followers that they go out and kill unbelievers. In fact, it does just the opposite. Some people may go out and kill their fellow man, then use Christianity as their excuse, but they cannot re-write the New Testament and only those pre-disposed to believing Christianity is bad would take such people seriously. Islam, on the other hand, does, indeed, dictate violence against non-believers and therefore any true believer of Islam will have to accept violence as a legitimate tenet of the faith.

As far as this great condemnation of "religious fanaticism" goes, there is a huge flaw in that kind of thinking. One either believes in something, or he doesn't. How can someone only half-believe in something? For instance, either you believe the world is round or you believe it's flat (I suppose you could believe that it's a cube, or a dodecahedron, but for simplicity's sake, we'll just use the two main choices). Now, if you believe that it's flat, you're not going to get on a ship and sail off into the ocean because you'll fall off, and nobody would be able to talk you into getting on that ship, because you would be absolutely certain that you're going to fall into space. If someone were able to talk you into getting on that ship, then you didn't really fully believe the world was flat, did you? You had a certain amount of doubt about your own beliefs, and someone else was able to use that doubt to convince you to act AGAINST your own beliefs.

Apply that logic to religion. Either you believe in the principles of the Bible (or the Koran, or whatever else you have) or you don't. If you believe fully, you will follow those principles faithfully and will not veer from them, and you will apply them to all facets of your life, and be an example of those principles to others. The label "fanatic" is applied to anyone who does not shed or bend these beliefs whenever it suits the agenda of the labeler. In other words, as in the case of Fulton, the Christians in the community compained when their moral standards were violated in the school play, but were simply being true to the beliefs that they hold, and are now being called "fanatics" by many, including people on this forum, who think that these people should leave their beliefs behind when they come into conflict with the beliefs that others have. However, either these people hold these moral principles or they don't, and getting them to agree to cast those principles aside could only be done by exploiting any doubts they had about those beliefs in the first place, and consequently getting them to act (or to engage in inaction) directly against their own beliefs. If they would do so, that would make them better people? I think not.

I submit to you that the problem is not and has never been the degree to which people hold to their beliefs and values. On the contrary, holding fully to those beliefs and values is the only way to truly claim that you actually believe in those things. Instead, the problem has always lay with which beliefs and values one holds. In the case of Christians, being true to their faith will make them better neighbors, while, in the case of Muslims, being true to their faith will make them dangerous, even lethal. It is the belief system itself which is the problem, not the fact that they believe it fully, as "fanatics" do.