Why do Atheists defend Islam?

[Mister Agenda]

Oh, please! This is really pissing me off, since it's that ignorant. Get some history lessons, damn it. Look at the Middle Ages and tolerance towards other religions. Want to make a bet where society was more tolerant in general? Towards jews, especially? Want to make a bet, where science flourished and where people were even too ignorant to keep the Roman aqueducts in shape? Do you have any idea what numbers you're yotting down and where they have their origin?

Also, since you're so proud of your South America - might want to look at all the conflicts, the Contras and every other brand of violent terrorists wanting to overthrow one government or the other. True, they don't do it in the name of Jesus, but the Contras, being as despicable as they come, fought the godless regime of the Sandinistas.

Maybe, just maybe, the spread of Islam, which was never a homogeneous mass, but a set of warrying kingdoms and territorries, was mainly political in nature too. But to understand that, one has to look over the rim of the comfy teacup of public opinion and get an informed opinion.

I don't know how you think it can be mainly political in nature and yet separate from Islam. Islam (Not all of them!) is a political system as well as a religion. There was never meant to be a separation of Church and State in Islam and in the early days there certainly wasn't. You guys always talk about it like Muslims (Not all of them!) just happen to come from these conflict areas and that Islam itself has nothing to do with it. That's just plain wrong. While some Muslim countries have separation of church and state, Islam has influenced the politics and culture of these areas for hundreds of years. It's not like they grew up somehow separate from one another and Islam and Muslims (Not all of them!) are just unforunate to have shitty cultures/economies/etc. Islam is essential to all of that and to act as though it isn't is pretty mind boggling.

There was never meant to be separation of church and state in Christianity, and there wasn't until the Enlightenment. We had to muzzle Christianity like a rabid dog to stop the bloodshed.

And the politics and culture and history of those areas has shaped Islam for hundred of years. None of this shit is happening in an Islamic vacuum. The West deposed the legally elected president of Iran and replaced him with a hated dictator which led to a revolution where he was replaced with a religious fanatic. The USA backed the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the eighties and continued to supply their schools with textbooks supporting Islamic extremism into the nineties. We back Saudi Arabia militarily and financially, a regime which compromised with fundamentalist clerics after a terrorist attack and became an active exporter of Wahabbist fundamentalism throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Ayaan Hiirsi Ali is no fan of Islam, but in her autobiography she notes how much more oppressive Islam became in Africa when the Saudi Imam/missionaries started showing up. Saddam Hussein was horrific, but when we deposed him, we thoughtlessly ousted the secular Baathist Party from their military and bureaucratic positions and basically threw them in the street...and many of them wound up in Syria forming the backbone of DAESH.

Our problems in the region don't require more than an understanding of blowback to account for them. Islam is just the flavoring.