“ First off, it seems to me like you’re under the impression that I don’t understand Islam”

No, it seems that you don’t understand christianity.

“I would confidently say yes, Islam is absolutely more inclined towards violence than Christianity. If anyone doubts this, they need only look to the representative figureheads of either religion. There should be an obvious distinction between a wandering Jewish hippie who spoke in prose and taught people to love their neighbors, and an Arabian warlord”

A warlord like, Moses, who also is a “figurehead” in christianity. People act how people act. If you’re a religious person in Boise or Berkley, and have an education and a good job, you read the Sermon on the Mount or Surat al-Ma’ida, 48. You read the peace-y love and tolerance parts. If uneducated, broke, scared, and without hope somewhere, then you read something like Leviticus 20:13 or Koran 7:80–84. Christians in Uganda torture gays to death, muslims in Iraq/Syria torture gays to death. Religion is inherently intolerant, and if gays aren’t handy, jews or some other minority group will do fine too.

“Saudi Arabia is a perfect example of the true doctrines of Wahaabi Sunni Islam which they demonstrate through their regular human rights abuses.”

I agree wholeheartedly, but if you think that an America, with the christian pastors influencing the government as much as the wahhabist clerics influence the Saudi regime, would be better, you’re deluding yourself. Christianity in Europe for hundreds of years killed and tortured and acted the same way as ISIS and Saudi Arabia and Iran. It’s not the doctrines that are the problem. It’s religion in general.

“[N]o, the U.S. did not invent ISIS”

You obviously know more specifics than I do about the formation of ISIS. Thank you, I’ll have to look into it’s formation more, but in this case I really just making the case that had the US stayed out of Iraq, the islamic terrorist organizations wouldn’t be nearly the problem that they are now. I’m not excusing the terrorists, but if we look at actions taken against the US, from the Iranian kidnapping of US citizens to the 9/11 terror attacks, the US was involved in something to provoke it. I’m not saying that the attacks were ever justified, or that the US nessicarliy had bad intentions, but we installed the Shah and then gave him asylum, we sold weapons to both Iraq and Iran during the eighties during their war, we invaded Iraq after telling Saddam Hussein that we would not interfere in his dispute with Kuwait. We did much of this with ham-handed good intentions, and we were often not the only bad actor involved, but we clearly have some responsibility for groups like ISIS.

”[T]here are many people in the world who like violence.”

And they don’t belong to one particular religion or race or creed. The second Iraq invasion was caused by people who like violence, the Bush administration, and while the Iraqi people suffered and US soldiers died, George W. Bush, the oil industry, and Dick Cheney did swimmingly.

”They are the products of an ideology that fetishizes death and martyrdom.”

I concur. In no way would I defend islam, but again, if you think that christianity is any better, you’re wrong, and I hope that we never get the chance to have me proven right. What you do when you single out one particular faith, and claim that it has some special recipe for causing human suffering, and you have to ignore the history of every other religion that has existed for more than a few decades to do this, you empower the christian right in the US.

“ Yes, everybody is focusing their attention to Muslim terrorists because they are in fact relevant today.”

I would argue, less relevant and more importantly dangerous than the US christian right. It would be scary if Saudi Arabia had a nuclear bomb. It would be scary if ISIS got a nuclear bomb. In the US we have an election in less than a year that could put a bomb in the hands of Ted Cruz though. Cruz believes that we are in the “end times” the same way that ISIS does. He, George W. Bush believed this prior the 2nd Iraq invasion, that the Middle East needs a holy war so that Jesus can return. Cruz believes that the Dome of the Rock must be destroyed, and that the jews must build a temple there, and that Jesus will appear on the Mount of Olives to kill all the muslims and most of the jews. I’m not misrepresenting his views here. They mirror the views of the wahabbists and the Iranian sunnis. I understand these beliefs because I grew up fundamentalist baptist the same way you grew up muslim.

“ It isn’t bigotry to point out that Islam has an inherently violent history, as it is very different than intolerance towards Muslims as people.”

Christianity doesn’t have an inherently violent history? You’ve mentioned the holocaust a couple of times. You realize that the christians in Germany killed six million jews. That’s not to say that they were worse than ISIS. You can’t do the accounting that way, but christianity is drenched in blood, and I don’t mean to downplay the violence that islam is responsible for. You seem to think that I don’t get the violence that islam has committed, or that I want to downplay it. I don’t. I just know that the way that your framing it, ignoring the violence and stupidity of christianity, feeds the bigotry of people who make no distinction between “intolerance towards Muslims as people” and intolerance towards islam.

Just a word about intolerance and then I’m going to leave this unfinished for now. Intolerance can mean two different things. I believe wholeheartedly that islam and christianity and swedenborganism and every other religion should be mercilessly ridiculed. Intolerance in that context, we see far too little of, but no one should be prohibited from practicing their faith if it’s practiced in a way that doesn’t cause direct harm regardless of how stupid it is. One of the worst things about Saudi Arabia and Iran currently is that one faith, islam, is given preferential treatment. My understanding is that Iran is better than Saudi Arabia, correct me if I’m wrong, but in both countries islamic law reigns. I don’t want a christian version of that in the US, and singling out muslims, saying that their faith is extra-special-violent-and-stupid, makes that more of a reality. I want christians, and jews, and muslims, and buddhists to all coexist and talk to each other about their respective faiths. I want everyone to evaluate which faith is most likely true, because when someone makes that evaluation honestly, they give up on faith altogether.