bearded bruce:

Your point on McGrath's pickiness re the word 'medieval' is well taken. I didn't use the term 'medieval' nevertheless one doesn't have to go far to find incidents of European religious 'fundamentalism through history including well into modern times. There's the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in which the Catholic royals of France utilized the people of Paris to commit wholesale murder and mayhem upon Protestants, there's the incident in which a Protestant was horribly executed in France which caused Voltaire to coin his phrase: "Ecrasez L'infame", and of course there's the well known and prolonged religious wars throughout Europe, in the wake of Luther, including the incredible historical period in England called the Civil War, which was in fact a complex period of religious, political and class warfare. And I think the carnage in Europe and South America was far worse than anything the Islamic world has yet come up with.

This is all toward my oft-repeated point that Islam is in a different time-stage relative to the other main religions of the world, which have gone through similar periods up to recent times. Complaining about the use of the term 'medieval' is like remarking on the color of the patch one uses to fix a leaky pneumatic tire.

As for Akenaton's contention that "The problem with the arguments put forward by Robo and Keith is that they fail to see any fault in the position of the West." this is Akenaton's failure to put up some concrete instances but to attempt to justify Akenaton's own weak position by spreading the blame around on a level with "mistakes were made".

Also it is not true in my case. I'm NOT making the case that the West is all sweetness and light. I'm making the case that the West has been through very similar times to what is occurring now in the Islamic world, that there may be a 'progression' of intellectual thought that all powerful religions go through, so we should be well warned.

And my argument that the Islamic fundamentalists of today are very similar to the Nazis of the recent past in self-justification, aggresiveness, and potential cultural damage yet stands.