Organized religion, at least it's heirarchy, has a despicable and sordid past that somehow gets glossed over time and time again with "yeah, but look at the charities".

For example, it happens with Hamas (nobody else operates hospitals in Gaza!). Talk about the Catholic priest abuse scandal and people will immediately try to deflect the conversaiton to some of their charities.

I've had a theory about Islam 'maturing' like an organism. Just as you had Christianity go through stages of going from the persected to the persecutors (Roman times, then gain power up through things like the Inquisition and then the Salem Witch Trials), I wonder if Islam is doing the same.

Now, you have fewer wide-scale atrocities going on but they still happen (remember, the Christians were the ones inflicting the genocide in Bosnia) and MOST scandals are on a smaller scale (though some still make your stomach turn).

It's like we have two choices, neither very comforting. Either ignore it and people die - or go for 'conversion by sword' and people die. Leave it alone? Intervene?

I'll be the first to admit that I'm tired of hearing of all the crap done in the Name of God - and I don't care WHICH religion is the perpetrator.