I agree that there is nothing inherent in the religion of Islam that predisposes it to be any more violent than christianity- look at christianity's past and the brutality and intolerance in the bible... so why does a huge part of the islamic world seem stuck at the same point christianity was during the crusades?

I have a hypothesis, and I admit it may be incorrect and incomplete- and quite likely it confuses cause and effect- but I think the radicalization of the islamic world is due to the fact that religion is allowed to have power in the government of so many Islamic countries- once you allow even a partial theocracy it will invariably lead to the radicalization of the religion given state power. Saudi Arabia allowed mullahs to have state power, it led to the foundation of schools of religious learning- madrasas... this may have seemed like a fair and reasonable concession to the mullahs in the beginning, but predictably the madrasas were radicalized...

The fundamentalist extremists might always be a minority in any religion, but once a religion is given state power it will be the extremists that will come to dominate. They are louder and play to peoples emotions...

Lets take a hypothetical situation... Lets imagine that somehow the USA declares it is a christian nation and it (and I know this sounds silly and impossible) gives religious leaders power in its government- it wouldnt be long before we saw politicians pandering to the religious extremists, advocating the extremist fundamentalist agenda, maybe even trying to make laws against certain groups of citizens because they are considered 'sinners' by the religious fundamentalists, maybe deciding what sort of science should be funded based on religious doctrine... (Yeah I know, it is a stretch of the imagination- but we are just talking about a hypothetical situation here, remember?).

As the fundamentalists gain more power maybe the teaching of scientific fact that contradicts fundamentalist beliefs would come under attack... and maybe the president would take an accepting view of this and even advocate it... Perhaps state funding of religious organizations would be worked out- maybe it would be called something innocuous like 'Faith Based Initiatives'...

In this hypothetical USA do you think it would be long before the religious clerics felt confident enough that they would start issuing fatwahs against people of other beliefs? ( lets take a silly hypothetical example like ohhh, calling for the assasination of the president of Venezeula, or maybe even calling their followers to pray for the death of supreme court justices that stand in the way of the fundamentalist agenda...)

Luckily, we live in the REAL USA and need not fear such things, my point is that government NEEDS to be seperate from religion, if it isnt then it leads to the radicalization of both.