[TopQuark]

Certain Catholics were evil. Not the teachings of the Church. There's a difference.

Exactly! And the same may be said about followers of any other religion, including Islam.

[mathurine]

The troublesome point at the moment is that most of the world's religions in recent years have eased off a good bit on vehemence and quit killing the people who believe differently. World Trade Center aside, Islamic people in several parts of Africa and Asia are fairly busy trying to thump the people they proclaim infidels. Indeed, they are rather unkind to one another in parts of the Middle East where Islam in one form or another is 90% or more of the total population. I suppose we could say that after a few centuries of infidel-thumping and internicene battling,most Christians, though not absolutely all of them, quit being so violent about religious matters. For that matter, the followers of most religions don't seem to get too worked up about what other people believe. The Islamic cultures seem to be the ones who are still either so faithful or so backward in this respect that they go in for archaic attitudes. No wonder they are not currently neighbors most people in the world would relish having in massive numbers.