"Organisations' are not abstract concepts. PEOPLE run them"
Not individually, they don't - its when they form themselves into a church they become a problem - I can honestly say I have never met a Muslim who I would have thought would advocate stoning anybody or carrying out female genital mutilation....
I've read about them though, just as I've read about Christians who march about in pointy white hoods carrying burning crosses and advocate stringing up "niggers", especially those who step out of line in regard to white women.
Modern laws have made much of this a thing of the past, but that doesn't mean the will has gone away.
Some of the atrocities carried out in Apartheid South Africa in the name of Christianity with the blessing of the Dutch Reform Church doesn't bear a re-visit.
I wouldn't particularly like to be a Muslim in today's Israel, particularly right at this present moment.
You can point to religious extremism in any society and pull out excesses in behaviour.
Isis is, of course, a fair point, but it is very much a case of peoples trying to break with the old ways and failing - for all sorts of reasons.
Much of the modern-day rise of religious extremism in the Middle East and Africa is a direct product oil wars, searches for W.M.D., selecting friendly fundamentalists rather that hostile secular governments, arms sales..... business and politics; as that nice Mr Cable said, "We sometimes sell arms to states with dubious human rights records".
It will be interesting to see, if Assad finally wins out in Syria, whether he will once again become a close ally of Britain, as he was when he was only filling his torture chambers with opponents where the world couldn't see.
Little of this has to do with real religion; rather, it's about religion being used for political or economic ends - when it comes to it, people are people everywhere.
Jim Carroll