If anyone wondered why many people in the West consider Islam to be a barbarous intolerant religion full of fanatics ready to blow up at a moment's notice then perhaps they should read the news. Today is Ashura and the BBC has three stories about Sunni fanatics deciding to disrupt the celebrations of their Shia brethren:
Many Muslim apologists try to say that this is no worse than Christianity behaved during the reformation and the point to shameful events like the crusaders who sacked Constantinople but I think this is a bogus argument, there is no reason why Islam should repeat all the mistakes that Christians made in the same time period. Given that the world has developed a great deal in the last 500 years surely Islam could develop a bit faster?