It's a fact that their are crazies in all religions, and plenty of atheist nut jobs as well, but the propensity to massacre a bunch of people because they're "offended" seems to be much higher among Islam. Which is a bit ironic, since my Muslim friends and families are among the warmest and most welcoming people I know.

However, conditions of extreme unemployment, poverty and patriarch-dominance in countries like Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc, combined with a lack of democratic tradition makes these places powerful inncubators for terror.

Islam isn't the cause of terrorism, it's merely a vector.

I think underestimates the influence of the founders. Jesus mostly preached to turn the other cheek and didn't kill anyone.

Here is a list of people killed by Muhammed http://wikiislam.net/wiki/List_of_Killings_Ordered_or_Suppor...

It goes on a bit and the sources vary in their authority but overall impression is pretty pro violence.

Most of the 911 guys were well off Saudis who felt they were following the teachings. Obviously you can interpret the founders of a religion in different way and most Muslims are peaceful but it's hard to understand what's going on if you ignore that stuff.

And yet from the time it achieved the kind of power in any society from which to exert substantial influence well into the modern period, Christians were killing people -- in other countries, in their own countries, etc. -- in the name of Christ all the time. The Crusades (and not just the ones in the "Holy Land" and/or targeting Muslims) were a thing. The Inquisition was a thing. Europe's Wars of Religion were a thing. There is a reason the word "pogrom" exists.

The modern Western concept of freedom of religion isn't a direct product of some religious parallel to the Ruby's community's maxim "Matz Is Nice And So We Are Nice", its a product of the exhaustion of Western European Christians after more than a millenium of killings -- not least of all of Western European Christians by Western European Christians -- in the name of Christ.

The idea that Christianity is somehow inherently more peaceful than Islam requires ignoring pretty much the entirety of the history of Christianity.

Any muslim who kills a satirist who mocked islam has pretty good grounds to be saying that their actions are in line with what Mohammed would have done!

There was some dissatisfaction with Al-Assad[1], but most Syrians supported him and continue to do so. This is not the first time extremist muslims have tried to overthrow him. I remember my hosts telling me he crushed a muslim rebellion in what I can only assume was the 80s or 90s

[1] I believe this had to do with his greedy brother or cousin who taxed businesses for personal profit

I was in Syria in 2010, also before the war. I travelled around for a fortnight.

I completely disagree. It was an almost entirely patriarchal society. I can't even begin to comprehend how you came to any other conclusion. The dominance of men in positions of authority and in the social life of all the cities I visited, including Damascus and Aleppo, was overwhelming and blindingly obvious.

For example, how many women did you see in cafes without male escorts? How many officials did you interact with who were female? How many times did you see women shopping alone in Souks? I think my answer to that is "pretty much zero".

Damascus was definitely much more liberal than other places. I don't recall the same being true of Aleppo.

I agree, however, that the poverty wasn't too bad, compared to other countries.

Popular support for Al-Assad was complicated. It's hard to assess people's true feelings about a situation when they live partly in fear of the consequences of their criticism.

I must admit that all of the families I stayed with were Catholic, but there was no difference in these families than the average American family in terms of respect between husband and wife.

I was trying to dispel the image that the culture of Saudi Arabia represents the entire middle east.

The current debacle with ISIS is likely the result of covert Saudi-CIA funding of "secular" rebels before things went bad (ala Afghanistan): http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isi...

That's not to say I like Abbas, of course, but criticism in the US is always the classic manichean "good" vs "evil", which ends up doing more harm than good.

The other case, being Iran -whose Muslims are far less radical than those in Saudi- is made to appear as some raving mad state (their Govt. is awful no doubt).

Until the propaganda machine changes its mind, you'll keep seeing the violent philosophy of Wahabism spread like a cancer; and being politically correct doesn't particularly help.

It'd be like calling all Christians terrorists because of what the Irish Catholics / IRA did in the 90s. Wahhabist Islam regularly attack and kill Shia Muslims by the dozens.

Even then, Wahhabism is a growing philosophy amongst Saudi princes, who have remained good allies to the US. Explicit denunciation of this particular philosophy would run counter to US Foreign Policy. Besides, its not like all Wahhabists are violent. Going back to the IRA example, some Catholics were violent in the 90s... but certainly not all of them.

Don't forget Islam and Christianity along with many other religions also actively promotes violence. In the west we tend to whitewash things, but for a less controversial example if you look at say Peter Pain or fairy tales there very different pre Disneyfication.

PS: Remember when a faith says it's ok or even expected to kill {ex: witch} then all it takes is for someone to be convinced that X in on that list and people feel justified. Consider, many people have little to no problem with killing a mass murder.

Agreed, but sadly those expectations are met often enough, and dramatically enough (as in the cases you mentioned) that many people are not willing to take the risk.