I’m still torn on this. The Old Testament does have some crazy recommendations in it which involve killing people for bad reasons, and these are contradicted by the New Testament. Parts of the Quran (taken out of context) state that non-believers are to be converted or killed.
The extremists aren’t bright enough to put the nasty passages in context with the times and other parts of the Quran, and so go around killing “infidels”. The mosque isn’t the issue – the people it attracts are. The vast majority of them are level-headed enough to know that parts of the Quran don’t apply today, but the people who are attracted to religion of any sort are by definition unable to fill their own void, and so are vulnerable to brainwashing. Combine a charasmatic psycho for a teacher and a stupid, socially awkward and gullibile student, and things go badly. Why does that happen FAR more with Islam than any other religion? Culture, probably. What’s the solution? There isn’t one that doesn’t involve taking away other freedoms.
If I was Dictator, maybe I would take the offending passages out of the Quran (and the Bible, while I was at it) – but it definitely wouldn’t be a free country.
