"But Christianity has gone through such periods in its history as well."
Granted, but this is the 21st Century and other than a few crackpots, I don't see any sect of Chrisitans promoting and conducting mass murder. In addition, it's speculated that 10 to 12% of the some billion Muslims are fanactics...do the math.
I'm not arguing that Islam as a whole isn't in a more primitive state than current day Christianity. I'm arguing that there are very significant differences between various sub-groups of modern Islam. we lose the moral high ground if we insist otherwise in the face overwhelming evidence, and it's hardly a good strategy to punish moderate and liberal Muslims on the grounds that 10% of Muslims are radical. This serves only to push the moderates and liberals into the arms of the radicals -- and we can all agree that we don't need more of those.