Clarence Page takes Pat Robertson to task for implying that all Muslims are corrupted by the taint of the extremists among them. Page is right to insist that Christian religious leaders be circumspect in how they characterize members of other faiths. But he is wrong to minimize the problems facing Islam.
Attempting to establish some moral equivalence between faiths, Page tosses out the guilt-inducing chestnuts of the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades as examples of “the bloody, sorry history of Christian jihads.”
But unlike Christianity, Islam has not had anything close to a Reformation to purge it of its extremist elements and to reconcile it with secularism and modernity.
On the contrary, cautious estimates put the number of Islamic extremists and their supporters at 10 percent to 15 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims, an alarming base of support.
Page can’t explain away these numbers by claiming as he does in his column that the Muslims he knows are peaceful. The fact is that there are many he doesn’t know who aren’t interested in peace.
