The Search for Moderate Islam

I assume you are saying that your web search came up empty.I'm not sure that means much. We are currently in a climate of hostility towards Islam, so web pages that are hostile will dominate the search results.Personally, I don't know enough about Islam to comment on whether there is a moderate branch.The main problem I see, is that it is difficult to separate what is the religion from what is the culture. They are tightly connected.

But what does that mean.If we look back through history, there were times when Christianity was pretty violent.So what changed? I really don't think Christianity has changed that much. We still hear pretty harsh rhetoric from the religious right. What I think changed, is that religion and culture became partly separated with a rise in secularism. So Christianity and culture are now not nearly as tightly connected as they were in the past.We have not seen a comparable rise in appreciation of secular values in the Islamic cultures.

This is nonsense.Prayers have not been removed from the public schools.What it took, was a small number of loud mouthed lying fundamentalist Christians to spread the false claim that prayers have been excluded from the school.What a few atheists and many sensible Christians did, was remind us what the US constitution says (the non-establishment clause of the first amendment). At the time I was an evangelical Christian and I supported that court decision as good for Christianity.

That seems a bit simplistic.Previously, there were Christian communities within various Arab countries. It wasn't all wine and roses, but they were able to manage. But, following the US 2003 invasion, that has changed and it is far harder for Christians in that part of the world. The invasion seems to have stirred up a hornets nest.