[TheConservator]

Islam is more or less exactly where Christianity was 1350 years after its founding.

[goldstategop]

Yup. Its still more or less in the Middle Ages.

[Darheel]

No, it isn't. Jesus never uttered the earthly hatred and strife contained in the Koran, the two are incomparable.

[wretchard]

Christianity, as an organized religion, came into being as an afterthought. The Gospels weren't written down until nearly 80 years had passed. The Nicene Creed, which was the first "official" statement of doctrine, was adopted 400 years after Christ walked the earth. It was the powers and principalities of the world, notably the Roman and Byzantine empires, which gave Christianity its outward forms. The indictments against Christianity are rarely indictments against Christ; they are usually against people with names like Borgia.

Mohammed, on the other hand, packaged Islam ready to franchise from the git-go. It had a source of funds, the Haj. It had a military arm, the Companions. It had a form of government, the Caliphate. It had a legal system, sharia. And a body of written scripture. You can argue that Osama Bin Laden is practicing Islam right out the box. Mohammed would have done Colonel Sanders proud.

Pipes is arguing, not that Islam isn't so, but that it need not remain so. The alternative is a war of extinction. Perhaps he is right; Turkey being the counterexample to the proposition that all Muslims must die. But the task of learning to live in peace with people like Osama is so alike to all-out war as to defy distinction.

Yet if we hold ourselves Christians and warriors too, we must accept that losing one's life is not the only thing that can happen on the battlefield. We must emerge with our souls intact too to make it worth the candle. Pipes may be right: there is another road, but it is also a hard one.

[elcaudillo]

Hardly.

A cursory examination of Spanish history under the scimitars of the muslim slavemasters will enlighten you otherwise.

Screwing female children (ala the prophet Mohammed) wasn't a part of Christian culture. (Priests screwing male children is a sinister manifestation of Vatican II-and to the delight of the proponents of a homosexual agenda- when the Church heirarchy conspired with satan to make sweeping changes that included allowing gaggles of homosexuals into the priesthood.) Islam and the homosexuals belong in the same category.

Your statement is, in total, false.

[weegee]

Islam is more or less exactly where Christianity was 1350 years after its founding.

Their calendar isn't much farther ahead than that figure either...