It's an English language book aimed for Westerner readers. It purports to argue that the core strategy for spreading Islam - terror - is not compatible with Western values. It also states that other features of Islam are incompatible with Western values, such as repression of women. The book argues that since these ideologies are incompatible with Western values, they must be abandoned.
However, the abandonment argument is only valid if one already accepts Western values as an axiom - which being an English-language book most of the readers would agree with. These readers will perceive the book to promote the reform of Islam into a religion that resembles a modern Christian denomination, just with different idols and prayers and holidays.
However those who do not come from the perspective of modern Christian values and as axiomic, will reject the argument outright. This is the Muslim population who might read it.
You can call it 'Western' values or 'Christian' values or whatever in order to make it seem chauvinistic all you want, but the simple truth is that these values are often shared by many other religions and places. As an example, look at the success of the Indian Hindus and the Chinese / East Asian Buddhists in the United States and across the globe. For a reverse example, contrary to popular belief, Christians, Sikhs, and Jains in Hindu-majority India are actually richer and more educated on average.
Time and time again, if you go look at the data, you'll find that Islam is almost always the odd one out.
The Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Taoists, etc can all be made to get along with Christians or 'the West'. There is really only one pretty much universally problematic religion, and that's Islam. You can argue this point all you want, but the entirety of Islamic history shows it to be true. You can again (correctly, in some cases) point out various bad actions from Christians (or Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, etc), but the simple truth is this: it's pretty easy today, in 2025, to imagine how to get along with these people. In places with diverse populations and migrants from these places, there is barely any violent religious conflict. At most you get some fundies in a tizzy over someone else doing their thing.
The only one that consistently performs violence is Islam. And that's something Muslims need to figure out. They don't need to abandon their religion. And they certainly do not need to be harmed for their beliefs. But, they do need to figure out how to integrate with the rest of the world in 2025 in a pluralistic global society.
You seem to be mixing up "Western values" and "Christian values" whereas Christian values are very much against the accumulation of wealth, whereas "Western values" seem to be all about worshipping wealth to the exclusion of all other considerations and even worshipping those who deliberately exploit others to amass an ungodly amount of wealth.
If you think that small difference means that Western values are not Christian values, then you have no idea how large the gulf between your values and Islamic values are.
Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?
Most of these arguments on the effect of different religions tend to be a bit silly. Islam is much more related to Christianity and Judaism than either of those two are to each other.
Language, cultural history, and geography tend to play a bigger role on society than the monotheistic religions do.
As neither a Muslim nor a Christian, but have lived among both, the dismissive argument "A is more similar to B than C" should not mean "I don't need to be concerned about A or B or C".
> Radical Christians are no different from radical Muslims who are no different than radical Jews.
Be that as it may, by examining the frequency of terror attacks the percentage of what you call "radical Muslims" is high enough that they do not need to be termed "extremist Muslims". Whereas Jewish and Christian terrorist attacks are attested to such a small percentage of the population that the terms "radical Christian" and "extremist Christian" are effectively synonyms.
Pretty sure Palestinians would take issue with your opinion on that. And that’s not even considering historical records and precedent of any of those religions.
Bashing one monotheistic religion while trying to contort logic around supporting the others is a fruitless endeavor.
So you choose a group who has been murdering our people for over a century, and hold them as an example of a group that would take issue with Jewish radicals?
Let's take your argument at face value - let's assume that Jewish radicals are as common among the Jews as Muslim radicals are among the Muslims. We disagree about the cause and the effect in the holy land, so let's disregard it. Please list for me all terror attacks that are plausibly attributed to Jews - worldwide. Then tell me how much larger the Muslim population is than the Jewish population. I'll use your own numbers to respond with an appropriate number of terror attacks plausibly attributed to Muslims.
If I can't beat the target number I'll rescind my stance.
Those values seem to be exactly the ones being discarded by the Christo-fascists of the USA.
My point is that the so-called Christian values are nothing to do with the reported teachings of Jesus and instead are used to justify the exact opposite.
The ACTUAL teachings by Supreme Leader Khamenei (remember, the HIGHEST Shia authority according to some) include that school girls who are to be killed for not wearing hats should be raped, because the Muslim God judges children based on if they have been raped. With teachings like this, I'm OK with muslims not following the teachings.
I did not realize that the point of discussion had changed to specifically Christo-fascists of the USA. My point still stands in regard to the vast majority of Christians you will meet.
One thing that I can not stand about some modern fanatics is the representation of 1% of a population as if they represent the whole. Don't bring up Christo-fascists of the USA as representative of Christian values. That's highjacking the subject to your pet cause.
> Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?
Sorry, I thought you were pointing out the many issues with the current US administration and you were showing the difference between Christo-fascists and Christians who value the teachings of Jesus.
Big breaking news. Saw multiple posts hitting around here. Happened to be on, other submissions still coming in (already hour old story), easy to catch the dupes, usual suspects.
Read the site regularly. Posts/topics aren't fresh.
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