...modern secular progressives tend to over-compensate, because they find the bigotry so offensive, and because it often turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. They find racial discrimination so disgusting they make excuses for ghetto gang-bangers, pimps, violent criminals and drug lords. And yes, some Mexicans ARE rapists. Liberals blame crimes on social conditions, which is indeed their cause, but it does little to help their victims, or bring justice to the predators, does it? Are too many black kids being shot by cops? Are cops being ambushed by thugs who just want to kill them for fun? Maybe both are true, they are not mutually exclusive. There is a clever phrase in Spanish that warns against just this kind of overcompensation for the most noble of reasons: No tan calvo que se le vean los sesos." (Not so bald the brains are visible.)

The point I'm trying to make is we must never succumb to the temptation of giving in to the easy solution, the simple answer, the convenient explanation that allows us to just do what our darker nature tells us, simply to annihilate the bastards, send them to hell once and for all. You do realize there are those who want us to do just that?

You're right about Christianity in the Dark Ages, and in those days Islam was a force for enlightenment, for tolerance, for civilization. They preserved the wisdom and learning of the classical world, and if you were Jewish or Christian you could live in the Caliphate in Granada or Cordova, or Toledo, or in the great capitals of Alexandria, Constantinople, Damascus and Baghdad, in safety and free of persecution for your faith, perhaps even study astronomy or mathematics, or geography or navigation--because in the Christian West they were still savages. In the Moorish cities of Southern Spain you could get your teeth fixed. In France they were still burning witches.

So what went wrong? Christendom eventually pulled away from the worst of medieval barbarism, Islam stayed pretty much in the same place. I think it was the conquest by the Ottomans that stultified Islamic culture, or maybe it was European Imperialism, but I'm only speculating. We may never know for sure.

Your statistics are persuasive. But don't be seduced by them. They may well be true, but that doesn't mean they weren't carefully assembled for the worst of reasons. And I'm sure a clever scribbler could just as easily put together an equally convincing brief against us.