My mother once made the comment, probably when I was a young teen, that the most dangerous thing in the world is a religious zealot. Unfortunately through the years she is proved correct over and over again.
We can have debates about religion in general. We can have debates about which religion is more violent or more backwards or more intolerant than others. And we can all find evidence, much too plentiful evidence, to support any viewpoint in those debates.
Does it matter though? Does it matter if more people have been killed in the name of Jesus than in the name of Mohammed? Does it matter if the names of God and Jesus are invoked by Crusaders, or the perpetrators of the Inquisition, or those blowing up women's health clinics, while others invoke Allah and Mohammed when carrying out acts of terror? Is one representative of their religion while the other is an aberration or an anachronism?
To the victims I don't believe the denomination of the zealot is all that important. Nor does it matter to the victim how representative the barbaric murderers are of their religion. Dead in the name of religion is still dead.
Still, from an historical perspective, Islam is about 600 years younger than Christianity. So while there is still hatred and terror and heinous acts done in the name of Jesus, there does not appear to be the organized terror groups we see today in the Muslim world. Which still paints with much too broad a brush.
Perhaps what is needed is a Muslim Reformation. If Islam is going to follow a similar historic arc as Christianity, then we should be ready for one any century now.
I'd just like to see things get to a point where you can dispute a point of the Koran, or poke fun at an Ayatollah, or the Prophet himself, and not have your life targeted.
The cartoon South Park shows Jesus as a very secular character and has used him to poke fun at others as well as himself. Sure many good Christians are mightily offended, but to my knowledge no fatwah has been issued against the creators of the show.
When every religion can take a joke and laugh at itself the world will be a much better place to live in.