Re-reading this article, there is so much that is wrong with the argument, and it is absolutely unbecoming of Prospect. Consider this:

“throughout its history, Islam has been protective of the Jews, regarding them as “people of the book” to whom it had a special responsibility.”

Yes, but the Caliphate in the Middle Ages levied exorbitant and discriminatory taxes on Christians and Jews, with the result that many converted to Islam.

“Nor has it settled other parts of the world and systematically obliterated other civilisations as did Christian Spain with the Aztecs and the Incas.”

Without “systematically obliterating other civilizations”, how did the nomadic tribes of Arabia come to have an empire that stretched across the Middle East and North Africa, eliminating the Christian character of Palestine, Syria, and Egypt as it expanded?

“Nor have Islamic societies created anything equivalent to the racist culture of the old American south.”

Ever hear of Wahhabism?

As I can sense someone’s anticipation of my use of the word “islamofascism” I will spare their fingers the keyboard taps. I think that term is nonsense and ad-hominem, and I detest Islamophobia. However, I detest equally a blindness to the facts of history when they get in the way of a good argument.

In your armchair ratiocinations, have you ever come across the name of Mohammad Amin al-Husayni? Recall, he was an Palestian / Arab leader during World War II, and his meetings with Nazi leaders are legendary. The outcome of one of the meetings was the following:

“Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.”

Please, no more blanket statements like the one you made!

Agreed, particularly on your last point. With respect, Annabloom, atheism is absolutely no guarantee of decency: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, North Koreans, Pol Pot, The Gang of Four etc. etc. etc. committed logarithmically greater atrocities even than Hitler, partly under the banner of atheism as a liberating principle.

Surely the abiding lesson is that ‘decent’ atheism is no different from ‘decent’ religiosity: both require tolerance, humanity and disinterested compassion. And wrong ‘uns are wrong ‘uns.

I’m not instinctively a fan of Peter Oborne, but his Dispatches documentary last night: (http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/it+shouldnt+happen+to+a+muslim/2314592) described the systematic media demonising of Islam. Valid comparisons were made with institutional anti-Semitism. We all know what that led to last time round.

Many thanks. For me Pound is like Wagner; magnificent but only tolerable in very small doses. I therefore missed the reference.

International slave trading - and raiding - goes back as far as we have records. To our lasting shame, we West Europeans industrialised it. Greatly to our credit, we later surpressed it.

Far be it from me to justify Cromwell’s policies. They earned such general detestation that the Great Poll Tax imposed to pay off his old army was paid cheerfully by the people.

Al Queda’s defining atrocities were aimed at infidels, though they have never minded creating a sprinkling of involuntary “martyrs” among the faithful. Their strategy in Iraq appears to have been focussed on mobilising Sunni allies through defining Shias as infidels, and attacking crowds at “blasphemous” Shia religious ceremonies. Some of the Shia co-operated with tit-for-tat massacres of Sunnis.

But murderous fanatical intolerance seems to pop up everywhere. The nearest Islamic precent for Al Queda appears to have been the Assassins - a medieval Shia group who trained and used suicidal killers, and were more willing to co-operate tactically with the Crusaders than with Sunnis. And the nearest precedent in time for Al Queda appears to have been the late 19th - early 20th century international network of violent anarchism; a murderous group amongst whom atheism seems to have been strong.

With regard to tolerance, perhaps Islam used to be more tolerant than Christianity in the past, however, that has changed. Try to openly practice Christian Faith in e.g. Saudi Arabia, that explain the issue. Most Christians these days have at least learned that faith and religion is something subjective and personal and not an absolute truth one can force on others something.

The main problem with Christianity and Islam is the general unkindness and base morals of both religions. Instead of relying on its greatness each has to threaten people with hellfire and punishment should they fail to believe. We cannot expect much from people who wish pain and misery on all who do not agree with them.

The world, it seems, needs more atheist decency.

The extent of ‘authenticated African slave raids on the British Isles’ is, as you say, somewhat obscure. The African slave trade, which led to the transportation and deaths of 14 million, is widely documented, beyond reasonable dispute and was carried to an overwhelming degree by god-fearing Christians (and repealed, it is fair to say, to a large extent by the efforts of Christians, including Quakers).

Cromwell’s record, against the Irish in particular, is hardly excused by his favourable treatment of a small Jewish elite, not do the times compare to the York massacre or the Spanish expulsion of the Jews. The Ottomans had their prolonged moments of brutality and committed the defining ethnic cleansing/genocide of the 20th Century.

Al Qaeda directed their defining atrocity not at Shias but at random groups of people in a New York building (and Bali nightclub) as well as crowds in Iraq and elswewhere. Shias, meanwhile, as ‘represented’ by the Mahdi Army, have killed thousands of their own as well as the Sunni. So I broadly agree that it is spurious to relatively compare history in this fashion. Prejudice of all sorts is suburban and ignorant, however intellectualised. The reference comes from Ezra Pound, by the way, recanting on his anti-Semitism, not that it matters.

As for the comments above, I am not very well informed but I have the impression that:
- the relative order and safety of different cities has varied from generation to generation in my lifetime - and in such accounts of the past as I have read. No one has established a link between good order and the dominant religion in the city.
- Islamophobia, Christianophobia, Ba’haiophobia, etc. occur in the oddest and in the most ordinary of spots; perhaps even in suburbia.
- All the major existing religions are Asian in origen. The European domination of Christianity surely excludes most of the first three centuries A.D.?
- The last authenticated African slave raid on the British Isles took place in the early 16th century; less than 50 years before the English began buying slaves in West Africa. Muslims and Christians were certainly making slaves of each other in the Mediterranean until the early 19th. cantury; but that had been a customary practice amongst these peoples since before they were Christian or Muslim.
- Cromwell allowed some Jews to settle in England some four centuries after their predecessors had been expelled by the English. That expulsion from England was much more brutal than Queen Isabella’s expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

I knew that Jonathan Power was right about my slough of ignorance on this matter. I am surprised that the slough seems to go so wide and deep amongst some Prospect readers.

How are Byzantium, Rome and the US (as historical centers of Christianity) less diverse than the places you mention? If by ‘European descent’ you mean white then don’t forget that the coasts of Europe from Ibiza to Ireland were raided by Muslim slavers until the middle of the c19th. Is it safe to picnic at midnight in Lagos or Karachi? Cromwell also allowed the Jews to settle in England after they were kicked out of Spain; plenty more came later (or went to the US) from Poland and Russia.

I agree most Muslims are peaceable people who want nothing more than to quietly get on with their lives, but so are most Christians.