@v0ider
Please, I'm very interested in seeing from where you got that. Protip - it's not the Quran - it preaches love and cooperation with and towards "people of the book" - christians and jews (will happily bring out a quote from the Quran if you wish), interpreted by modern muslim scholars to also include other religions and non-religious people.
The idea that muslims in general are crude, barbaric people is one that needs to be laid to rest - they were probably the first to bring to law the *right* for women to inherit, permitted people within their borders to worship whatever religion they wanted during times when in many European countries you had both antisemitism and forced conversion to whatever variant of christianity was the state religion, and allowed culture and art to flourish when Europe was in the darkest of dark ages by comparison.
The preachings in the holy book are no more regressive (or progressive if you like optimism (seemingly you don't, though)) than those found in the old or new testament; possibly they are a bit more practical and applicable at times, as Mohammed also aimed to unite the arab people and was in no meaning considered holy himself, unlike Jesus.
What matters is how people interpret them.
Many muslim countries have lagged behind in their state-building-processes, and secular and islamist visions are competing for influence, although the secular visions are clearly, in practice, on the winning side, and has been, for some time. For people that until 1923 when the Ottoman empire collapsed had lived under an islamic state (side note: Islamic state as it may have been, in the late 18th century, European court women were amazed at the freedoms muslim women had in comparison to European women (Source: Women in the Middle East and North Africa, Guity Nashat & Judith E. Tucker)) this change to secularism is obviously dramatic, causing some to adapt a very extreme interpretation of Islam and force it on people at gunpoint (Note: many more muslims have died at the hands of "Islamic" terrorism than Europeans).
Basically - it's the people, not the religion. But, you know - the more we demonize muslims - the more they are alienated from the European communities, and do you know who takes advantage of that? Oh yeah, ISIS does. They don't want no muslims to integrate in our societies - they exist only because the hate against West has grown strong enough among some muslims after colonialism (along with the identity issues, problems with modern state building, and socio-economic cleavages that one shouldn't overlook as other reasons the middle east has lagged behind west in development, but that ISIS would never admit) brought big issues to many of the countries, colonialism first as post-WW1 western powers jumped atop the collapsed Ottoman empire's "abandoned" territories and established various forms of colonial rule, (the french in Syria, the british in Egypt (actually happened before WW1), Iran and Palestine, Russia in Iran) later as cold war-tensions made them a pawn in the game between the U.S. and the USSR, and even later as the U.S. decided to play world police and force democracy on countries that wasn't ready for it, in ways that just messed them up further.
Oh well, this post is getting too long for any sane being to read. But try looking to the majority of muslims, not the extremist minority that most muslims won't even recognize as being muslim, and you might get a different view. Think of them as people, and realize they were born no different from you.
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@v0ider
Please, I'm very interested in seeing from where you got that. Protip - it's not the Quran - it preaches love and cooperation with and towards "people of the book" - christians and jews (will happily bring out a quote from the Quran if you wish), interpreted by modern muslim scholars to also include other religions and non-religious people.
The idea that muslims in general are crude, barbaric people is one that needs to be laid to rest - they were probably the first to bring to law the *right* for women to inherit, permitted people within their borders to worship whatever religion they wanted during times when in many European countries you had both antisemitism and forced conversion to whatever variant of christianity was the state religion, and allowed culture and art to flourish when Europe was in the darkest of dark ages by comparison.
The preachings in the holy book are no more regressive (or progressive if you like optimism (seemingly you don't, though)) than those found in the old or new testament; possibly they are a bit more practical and applicable at times, as Mohammed also aimed to unite the arab people and was in no meaning considered holy himself, unlike Jesus.
What matters is how people interpret them.
Many muslim countries have lagged behind in their state-building-processes, and secular and islamist visions are competing for influence, although the secular visions are clearly, in practice, on the winning side, and has been, for some time. For people that until 1923 when the Ottoman empire collapsed had lived under an islamic state (side note: Islamic state as it may have been, in the late 18th century, European court women were amazed at the freedoms muslim women had in comparison to European women (Source: Women in the Middle East and North Africa, Guity Nashat & Judith E. Tucker)) this change to secularism is obviously dramatic, causing some to adapt a very extreme interpretation of Islam and force it on people at gunpoint (Note: many more muslims have died at the hands of "Islamic" terrorism than Europeans).
Basically - it's the people, not the religion. But, you know - the more we demonize muslims - the more they are alienated from the European communities, and do you know who takes advantage of that? Oh yeah, ISIS does. They don't want no muslims to integrate in our societies - they exist only because the hate against West has grown strong enough among some muslims after colonialism (along with the identity issues, problems with modern state building, and socio-economic cleavages that one shouldn't overlook as other reasons the middle east has lagged behind west in development, but that ISIS would never admit) brought big issues to many of the countries, colonialism first as post-WW1 western powers jumped atop the collapsed Ottoman empire's "abandoned" territories and established various forms of colonial rule, (the french in Syria, the british in Egypt (actually happened before WW1), Iran and Palestine, Russia in Iran) later as cold war-tensions made them a pawn in the game between the U.S. and the USSR, and even later as the U.S. decided to play world police and force democracy on countries that wasn't ready for it, in ways that just messed them up further.
Oh well, this post is getting too long for any sane being to read. But try looking to the majority of muslims, not the extremist minority that most muslims won't even recognize as being muslim, and you might get a different view. Think of them as people, and realize they were born no different from you.