Looking at you, Tennessee

So did George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and all the rest of the founding fathers. The difference is the religion. You see, not all religions are identical to each other.

If Islam founded the United States we would be a totalitarian theocracy. Instead, Christians founded this country and gave us the freest nation to have ever existed and it was NOT a theocracy.

That is a gross oversimplification on a couple of counts. The founders of our country grew up with religion as a part of education and were okay with it, but that's a far cry from religion DICTATING education: the point of my meme.

Secondly, Islam is as complex as Christianity and neither better nor worse. Muslim leaders founded great centers of learning in the middle ages, preserved and extended the knowledge of ancient civilizations (especially in the areas of medicine, astronomy and math). Muslim fundamentalists have (in the past and the present) done terrible things: massacres and destruction of cultural treasures. And I could have written that exact series of sentences with the word "Christian" in place of "Muslim" and it would be equally true, except for the part about medicine, astronomy and math.

You are right about religion dictating education. That never happened in this country. The bible, specifically Christianity was taught in our schools but it was more of generic Christianity. It did not cater to any specific Christian religion.

However, religion, specifically Christianity did dictate the morals of the United States and pretty much all of Western culture. Even as non-religious as this country has become those same basic morals are still what our society and it's civility is based on.

The difference between Islam and Christianity is that the more a Muslim tries to follow the Quran the more dangerous he/she becomes to others. The more a Christian tries to follow the Bible the more loving he/she becomes towards others.

The two books teach different things. Somethings are similar but the Quran commands Muslims to murder the unbeliever. The Bible does not. The Bible says that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbor.

You may want to reexamine the beam in your eye on this one.

Samuel 15:3 "Now go and strike Amalek and completely destroy everything that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey."

And before you say, "but that's the Old and not the New Testament!" remember how seriously many Christians take that first half.

I wasn't going to say that was the Old Testament and not the New Testament.

What I am going to tell that the Quran is a book of commandments. It is not a historical book. There is a priority given to the commandments if there is a contradiction. The newer commandments override the older. It is the newer commandments that tell Muslims to kill the unbeliever. However, there is one exception, the Jews. Allah gives Muslims a choice of either killing or taxing the Jews. Everyone else Muslims are commanded to kill if they don't convert.

This commandment has stayed in effect ever since the beginning of Islam. This is why some Muslims are always causing problems wherever they are. This is why the Crusades started. Islam tried to claim all of Europe. They had Spain and they wanted the rest of Europe. They had been sending soldiers into Europe all through the dark ages killing and plundering.

Now with the Bible, it is NOT a book of commandments, it is a religious history of the Jews. There are commandments in the Bible but the huge majority of it is history.

The verse you quoted, and there are similar commandments against the Canaanites, was a specific commandment. It was directed at a specific group of people at that specific time. That's why you don't see Christians and Jews running around killing people.

When Jesus came He gave mankind the higher law of love. Loving God and loving your neighbors are the most important commandments. In other words you cannot love your neighbor by killing them. You cannot enslaved your neighbor and love them. Many Christians have tried to justify their bad behavior with the Bible but they were/are wrong.

You say that the Crusades started because Muslims wanted to conquer all of Europe, but in fact the Crusades were an attempt by Christians to conquer land inhabited mostly by Muslims and mostly not in Europe. In the process, they slaughtered many thousands of Jews, Muslims, and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Go back and read history. The crusades happened all over Europe and in Israel. They went to Israel to protect Christians who were being killed by Muslim when they made a pilgrimage to the Holy land.

Look at the history of Islam. It has always been about violence and conquest. If they had just kept to themselves and didn't kill people there never would have been the Crusades.

The Crusades were never about European aggression against Muslims.

Stay away from history revision who want to blame all of the world's problems on Christianity. Those are the same people who used to blame it all on the Jews.