Reply #39: You are right, wholesale demonization is wrong.

[megatherium]

Especially when its purpose is to encourage war. I don't believe that Islam is inherently evil or wrong; people of good will understand that there is good in all religions (and in humanist secularism too). Indeed I have had Muslim friends (not unusual in academic circles, though where I teach now we don't happen to have Muslim faculty).

I recently read The Argumentative Indian, by Amyarta Sen, who drives home the point that the recent conflicts in India between Muslims and Hindus are unnecessary and have been propogated by Hindu fundamentalists for political purposes. Sen highlights the long history in India of amicable relations between Muslims and Hindus in a secular, diverse country. E.g. the father of the Indian atom bomb is a Muslim and now President of India.