My point is that the history of religious toleration is complex. At a minimum, it certainly wasn't: “Christians tolerant, Muslims not.”

First, let me ask a question. Let's accept your idea that Islam is fundamentally a violent religion with its foundation in hating non-Muslims. What actions should we take as a consequence? Try to convert everyone to some other “better” religion? Try to wipe out the Muslim peoples, all 1.2 billion? Try to confine them into their special area and hope that the religion will die out over time? And as we do all these things, how do we hold on to our own sense of morality?

As for some specifics of your comments:

1) I have family members who have lived in Saudi and currently reside in Morocco. They particularly enjoy their time in the latter place and have generally been welcomed. Why is this the case if Islam is always at war with non-Muslims?

2) Why doesn't this hatred of non-Muslims exist in places like Indonesia where multiple religions are practiced openly? Are they not true Muslims?

3) Peoples of various religions have gone up and down in their power. Not long after Mohammed, the Arabs conquered lands all across North Africa, all of Arabia, and as far as the Himalayas and Hindu Kush. Later, the Ottoman Empire scared the hell out of most of Eastern Europe and indeed they extended their rule across most of the Balkans. Today, most Muslim nations are not great powers, but for your idea that Islam is the reason for this would have to say that the people who lead the former great empires were not real Muslims while the people with less power today are. Hard to believe.

4) The parallel of 3 is that people of other religions have at times been quite powerful, as they often are today, while at other times they've been quite weak. Similarly, you've got immensely powerful nations with majority Christian populations like the U.S. and very weak nations with majority Christian populations like Moldova. If power is often attributable to having the right religion, are Americans better Christians than Moldovans?

5) You said: “Islamic thinking believes Islam to be the supreme revelation, the only true religion, that it is superior to all others….” You surely know that there are tons of Christians who believe the exact same thing. Probably a large majority of them, which is why they are Christian. Some pray for my delusional soul because I believe in evolution. They travel all around the world in the tens of thousands to convert people to their one true religion. While most Christian proselytizing today is peaceful, there are hundreds of years of forced conversions in its history, and many wars started over time to spread Christianity.

6) You say: ” the Muslim world is backwards, illiterate, poverty-stricken, intellectually sterile, & militarily powerless….” I took a look through Google to see what actual literacy rates are and have been. While the data is complex and contradictory, it appears that in 1841 in England, 33% of men and 44% of women could not write their own name on their marriage certificates. That's an illiteracy rate of about 39% for English people right in the heart of their colonial times in which they were the most powerful nation on Earth with an empire on which the sun never set. Meanwhile, Egypt's rate today is… about 29%, i.e., better than the English Empire of old. Syria's illiteracy is at 20%, Iran's 18%, Turkey 13%, Lebanon 12%. If Islam makes nations weak and illiterate, why are their literacy rates higher than the extremely powerful and Christian nation of Britannia?

7) Poverty is much higher throughout most of Southern Africa than North Africa or Arabia. If Islam is the problem, bringing poverty to those nations, why are they doing better than the generally non-Muslim peoples to their south and west?

There will be a lot of Muslim scholars who will be surprised to learn they are intellectually sterile. Even if you exclude contemporary times, remember that it was Muslim scholars who preserved and extended the knowledge of the classical world through out much of the latter middle ages, not European Christians. Many of the latter didn't think Greek science and philosophy had much to offer since all the important answers were already in their one holy book that was flawless and inspired directly by God.

I am not denying that religious beliefs have an impact on a nation's economy, politics, and culture. That's obviously true. But whatever's going on is clearly a lot more complicated than something like “Islam is dragging people down.”

The Byzantine, Balkan and Eastern European populations during the Middle Ages would disagree with you.

You can express your support for Islam, but don't try to rewrite history to get there.