The fundamentalist Christian vision of Heaven always struck me as a pretty dull place, sort of like an orgy in a Bible movie: A whole lotta shakin's goin' on, but if you look closely, nobody is actually getting laid. Their picture of Hell is pretty well detailed, though, which should tell us all we need to know about where their head is really at.

The Muslim gardens of paradise at least promise some real carnal pleasures, although it is pretty obvious that the believers have little actual life experience to base their afterlife fantasies on. Still, I believe that fundamentalists always are minority in any religion, even if they do get all the bad press and an inordinate amount of influence. I'm sure the average, urban, educated Muslim winces when he hears his yahoos just like the typical suburban Presbyterian or Methodist cringes when he hears his.

Three hundred years ago, Europeans were still burning witches. We've progressed quite a bit in that time, but three hundred years is nothing in parts of the Muslim world, where Afghani bards still sing memorized lays of the time the Greek Al Iskander's hoplites marched through the mountain passes on their way to the Indus Valley.