I keep hearing the same arguments whenever someone brings up the present barbarism of so many Islamic states. "Well the Crusades were pretty brutal, weren't they?" "How about the Inquisition?" "You burned witches, didn't you?" All of which satisfy the questioner that he has proven the nastiness of all religions, but which really prove very little.

You see,  I can agree that Christianity went through an intolerant and aggressive period. So did Judaism. Most religions have gone through a period where they expanded by the sword. To say so is hardly to make a startling revelation.

The difference is that Christianity and Judaism both reformed, settling down into a more tolerant position. Islam has not. (Or mostly has not, see below for the exceptions.)

Judaism lost its militancy early, and abruptly. Judaism was rarely in a position to be intolerant or aggressive, as the Jews were so often slaves of one state or another. But during the period of the Maccabees Judaism did have a land of its own, and was just as intolerant and insular as any religion feeling self-rule for the first time. And, just as quickly, Rome crushed the Jewish state, and, after a series of revolts, dispersed the Jews. Ever since Judaism has lived as a minority religion, forcing Jews to adapt to a pluralist society.

Christianity was not reformed from without, but from within. Yes, Christians were intolerant, and often treated religious minorities poorly. But, first, in the Reformation, and later through the secular reforms of the post Renaissance period, Christianity was separated (mostly) from state power, and broke into a large number of sects, leading those sects to learn how to get along peaceably, without the government giving one or the other power to enforce its will. All of which led to the mature, tolerant Christianity of today.

Islam never really underwent this experience. In the whole of Islamic history, Islam has been the dominant religion of one state or another, and not just dominant, but endowed with state power. There may not have been a formal Caliph for some time, but even without the Caliphate, there are still a number of states where Islam is granted state power to enforce its will. All of which has allowed Islam to continue on with a perspective similar to Christianity of the middle ages. That is, Islam never lost the concept that it could force conversions, kill nonbelievers, and otherwise act with total brutality in religious matters.

One has to only look at modern terrorism, the excesses of the Taliban, the teddy bear event in the Sudan, the Miss Universe riots in Nigeria, Rushdie's death threats, the inability of nonbelievers to visit Mecca, the Mohammad cartoon incidents, etc, etc. No other religion in the West would ever behave this way. And the fact that apologists have to go back to the Crusades or Torquemada proves my point.

The single exception (at least on a national scale) is Turkey. Thanks to Ataturk, Turkey managed to turn into a secular nation. True, Turkey does suffer from a bit of race-based nationalism (though the Kurdish conflicts are part nationalism on both sides, part an attempt to prevent territorial disintegration, and much more complex than most commentators will admit),  but if you look at modern Turkish history, it is clear that by removing Islam  entirely from the government, Turkey has managed to avoid all the religious barbarism that characterizes so much of the Islamic world.

All of which shows that Islam has the potential to reform. Yes, the Koran has a lot of verses which suggest violence is part of the faith. So does Leviticus, yet Christianity and Judaism entered the modern world. And there is no reason to think Islam cannot do so as well. It is nothing more than circumstance that has kept Islam stuck in the dark ages of religious intolerance and violence.

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Disclosure:

First, let me head off some complaints by saying, if you haven't caught on from my habit of writing "G-d" and my occasional use of Yiddish or Hebrew, I am not  a Christian. I do not defend Christianity out of any partisanship, but because I think Christians are being treated unfairly.

Second, I do not harbor any ill will toward Islam. My wife even accuses me of overlooking faults in the religion. And she may be right. I have something of a historian's perspective on Islam, and I can see both good and bad in the religion, at least as a social force.

Islam was born in violence, and spread through conquest in the early days. But it then settled down into a much more civilized era, especially in those areas dominated by the (then) more tolerant shiites, and established in many places a very cosmopolitan, cultured environment. Yes, there were still excesses, and barbarisms, but it wasn't really until the coming of the Wahabis and the much less tolerant modern incarnation of Islam that we really see the horrors we have witnessed recently. Only for the past two or three centuries has Islam been such a truly violent, barbaric force. Prior to that it was still a rival to Christianity, often violently so, but, strangely enough, Islam was much less barbaric in its behavior in the late middle ages than it is today. Jews lived openly in Baghdad for most of the middle ages, and Christians visited Jerusalem before the Crusades (and after as well), while today Jews have been evicted from much of the Moslem world, and other non-Moslems are barely tolerated. One cannot imagine Saudi Arabia adopting the Ottoman practice of using Christians to fill important ministerial posts today.

Lastly, I have had something of an interest in Islam as religion and philosophy for some time. I am in no danger of converting, but ever since I read Maimonides I have had  an interest in the Islamic philosophers of the 10th through 12th centuries. In addition, I have always had a fascination with the sufi groups and related mystic sects in Islam. Some of their similarities to the ideas of the chassidim and certain kaballists are very interesting.

All of which I mention only to say that I am hardly the bigoted "Islamophobe" so many accuse any opponent of modern Islamic terrorism to be. Just because we agree that Islamic states have turned into terrorist havens and are ruled by crazed dictators does not mean we have any hatred of Islam. Any more than hating Nazi Germany proved someone hated Lutherans.

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UPDATED 01/08/2008

The pedant in me requires that I correct one of my statements.

True, Ataturk is largely responsible for the removal of religion from politics in Turkey, but that is not the sole reason that Turkey avoided the excesses of Islamic extremism.

Turkey had three other factors existing prior to the eviction of the sultan which also helped keep them from becoming an "Islamic state" in the intolerant, modern sense of the word. First, Turkey had a very long history of religious pluralism, running back to at least the 14th century. Nor was it just the experience of occupying Christian lands, but of actively working with Christians, and even allowing Christians to occupying high positions within the state. Second, many of the sultans had an interest in rather heretical versions of Islam. Whether it was something as relatively innocent as Persian religious poetry or the practices of the Bektashi dervishes, or something more radical, such as actual shiite theology, there was a clear heretical strain running through many sultanates, which made it quite difficult for the ulema to exercise control over the sultan. Third, the ulema had played a very active, adversarial role in politics (often due to the aforementioned heretical interests of the sultan), which led the sultan to often try to circumscribe the ulema's authority. This led to a much less powerful clergy than in other states of the time.

So, it was a bit simplistic of me to attribute the whole modernization of Turkey to Ataturk. Though he did quite a lot to push Turkey in a secular direction, the groundwork had been laid in Turkey much earlier.

Still, my point remains. Turkey proves that Islam can coexist with a pluralist, tolerant, modern state.