How many days has Fox News spent condemning the violence against black church-goers by Christian extremists? Has the Pope come out to condemn this Christian terrorist, and terrorists like him? Why is the Christian world silent on these issues, and what can be done to make Christians take responsibility for the violence caused by their religion? Are there any actual Christian moderates? I'm not sure what you were going for, but it's hard to compute. Generally speaking I don't expect an American born Islamic accountant to answer for the crimes committed by "fellow Muslims" in war torn countries, mid-civil war. I also don't expect a lapsing Catholic in New York to answer for mass shootings in the South. Taking this position is effectively saying, "ISLAM (or Christianity) is guilty of something, and all of it's followers need to express their guilt for me otherwise I will condemn them wholesale." To the best of my knowledge neither Cliven Bundy nor Ted Nugent have gone out publicly to condemn the burning of black churches in the south. It's a shame that the allegedly moderate Christians of this country aren't standing up against the violent, extremist minority, I suppose. Or that whole line of reasoning is inherently broken.
| "ISLAM (or Christianity) is guilty of something, and all of it's followers need to express their guilt for me otherwise I will condemn them wholesale." Where did I say that muslims must express their "guilt" (?!) "otherwise I will condemn them wholesale." ? This is not at all what I am "effectively saying"; maybe that's what you're more accustomed to interpret. I am not condemning anybody, nor expecting anybody to feel guilty for anybody else's actions. What I'd however image is reasonable to expect is people taking distances from acts that happen within their society and that twist a shared condition (Islam) most of them identify with, to some degree. No, I would not expect muslim americans to protest against ISIS. I would expect muslim leaders worldwide to take a clear distance from extremist acts of terrorism. I would also expect the Pope to make a clear statement on Charleston's events. But why did you twist my question to a "christianity behaves better on average than islam" argumentation is totally unclear to me. Also I am not american so I have no idea what Fox News does or say but I guarantee you that's not the only media available.
Muslim clerics denounce violence and terrorism all the time. Have another Google search Look, the point is, there isn't one Muslim community. There's tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. I wouldn't know, I'm not a Muslim community counter. It's not my job. The world is massively huge and massively divided up in so many ways, economically, geographically, culturally, politically. To expect everyone with a single identifier, in this case "muslim" to all respond to everything that goes about is not only unfair, but completely illogical.
I think rd95 already said just about everything that I would have said. Anecdotally, I'm a huge Christopher Hitchens fan, and by necessity of that fact I've thought about this subject a lot. What is it that makes Islam so conducive to horrendous violence? Why is it that in this one particular group we see this particular brand of violence? Those questions assume a certain type of answer and you've already given away some explanatory agility. I think what we see behind every society that spawns jihadists is a history of American/Soviet proxy wars, or some other external meddling. If you broaden the scope of your considerations you'll see the same sort of moral/civil decay anywhere that this scenario has played out. The Korean peninsula? Vietnam? To a lesser extent Cuba. Israel/Palestine has all the right ingredients for precisely what you would expect. So, to join it all up, when you put the screws to small countries extremism is the only chip they have left on the table. The solution to extremism, in my eyes (despite my love of Christopher Hitchens) doesn't rest in Islam. It rests in what I think is the logical place, the place we should have been looking all along; helping people of whatever religion or background develop and maintain functional social/governmental institutions that provide the necessities of life. Get that going in any society and I think you'll see extremism dry right up. In a generation? Perhaps not. But a century of blood isn't always easy to wash away. The moves we've made with respect to Iran and Cuba look very refreshing if you ascribe to the conclusions I've set out in my thesis; if there is a cure for extremism it will be in the form of a secular justice that eventually redeemed France, Germany, Japan, or any other country you'd like. I think the best answer to your question is that the problem with Islam is that it got stuck in the middle of an international conflict between foreign super powers.
To be fair, Friends (especially the liberal Friends) are generally staunch pacifists. This article is a demonstration of that. The only downside is that Friends are a minority in the world of Christianity, however there does seem to be a stronger tradition of pacifism in Christianity than there is in Islam. It is important to note however that this might simply be because I am less aware of the tradition of nonviolence in Islam.