Let's say you are completely correct, the Jewish Revolt of the 1st Century and The Crusades of the 11th-13th Centuries were solely the result of resentment about who controlled Jerusalem.
Furthermore, let's say that there is a complete moral equivalence between Islamic fundamentalists attacking and killing Jews in Israel and Jews killing Romans in the 1st Century as well as Christians killing Jews and Muslims during the Crusades.
To the current credit of Jews and Christians, something happened to purge the streak of violence from these religions. No such reformation has come about in Islam.
Violence is normative in fundamental (Wahhabi) Islam. Violence is not the norm in fundamental Christianity.
No Christian can point to the New Testament to justify violence. Fundamental Muslims can point to the Koran to justify violence and murder. In order for Islam to undergo a reformation, Wahhabism must be exterminated and all copies of the Koran need to be re-edited to take out sections approving the murder of Jews and Christians.
The possibility of this occuring is ZERO. Islam will never outgrow its current infantile state because its core contains this diseased element of hatred for Jews and Christians (or any other religion for that matter).
Wherever there is strife and conflict in the world, chances are Islam is involved. You may say that Wahhabism doesn't represent mainstream Islam, but mainstream Islam chooses to ignore those sections of the Koran telling Muslims to kill Jews and Christians. Should Wahhabism disappear, another virulent form of Islam will appear, and that form will take its justification from the Koran.
Agree with the first part, no way the second part will happen, is there?
What does that leave as a choice?
The extermination of Islam as a religion?
How do you forcibly convert over a billion people without becoming that which you fought to destroy?
The way HAS to be through the spread of moderate Islam, and the philosophies of organizations such as the Islamic Supreme Council of America, and the physical destruction of Islamic extremism and the people who would finance its spread.
Christianity (in the New Testament) promotes peace, and yet extremism and inter-faith struggles have surfaced in the modern world, most notably Ireland. So expect that there will always be extremists, but if the vast majority of the people do not allow themselves to be pulled into the irrationality of killing in the name of God, we can survive this as we survived the spread of communism.
I am the last person in this site that you'd expect to see quoting Pat Buchanan in a positive manner, and yet, it seems that stand in full agreement with him on this issue.
"In the last century, America was threatened by a global communist revolution. Avoiding all-out war, we outlasted it. And we can outlast this Islamist revolution. What we must avoid is a war of faiths, a war of civilizations between Islam and America. And those who propagandize for such a war are the unwitting or willful collaborators of Osama bin Laden."---Pat Buchanan
I didn't say that was "solely" the reason for those wars. Wars always have several causes, some major, some minor. But it - and religious zealotry - happened to be a major reason, and a connecting thread, in all of them.
Furthermore, let's say that there is a complete moral equivalence between Islamic fundamentalists attacking and killing Jews in Israel and Jews killing Romans in the 1st Century as well as Christians killing Jews and Muslims during the Crusades. To the current credit of Jews and Christians, something happened to purge the streak of violence from these religions. No such reformation has come about in Islam.
What happened was that they got beat.
Violence is normative in fundamental (Wahhabi) Islam. Violence is not the norm in fundamental Christianity.
Violence is the norm of humanity.
No Christian can point to the New Testament to justify violence. Fundamental Muslims can point to the Koran to justify violence and murder. In order for Islam to undergo a reformation, Wahhabism must be exterminated and all copies of the Koran need to be re-edited to take out sections approving the murder of Jews and Christians.
If you're looking for something, you can find it. Just going by memory, there's the "two swords" passage, the cleansing of the Temple (Jesus plays rough), the imprecations on cutting off what jeapordizes your salvation (heretics and infidels?), and the Book of Revelation, which among other things, includes such edifying images as Jesus astride a horse with his tunic soaked in blood. These things (along with the stuff in the Old Testament which, like it or not, is a part of the Christian Bible) have been enough for Christians in the past to justify violence in the name of the Lord.
Later Christians have taken a more moderate interpretation on these passages, taking them in the greater context of the Bible. And despite your skepticism, I have reasonable hopes that once these radical Islamists get beat, as the radical Christians and the radical Jews did before, it will prompt a re-examination of themselves which will purge such violent interpretations from the mainstream of Islamic thought. There are already plenty of good and decent Muslims in the world, and there have been many in the past, and where there's one there could be two, and where there's 100 there could be 1000, and so on. If the Jews could outgrow the violence in the Old Testament, I think Muslims could too.