Folks,

One of the best explanations of the differences in Christianity's handling of Old Testament vs. New Testament was that Jesus marks the difference. It was his arrival and his "dying for your sins" which changed things. It was that assumption of those sins that allowed the New Testament to build on the good things of the Old Testament while setting aside the excesses of the Old.

You also would be very hard pressed to find any denomination of Christians which still practice only the Old Testament ways. Very hard pressed.

Plus, Western Civilization has figured out how to handle religion in the midst of a modern and otherwise secular society. It took a while for it to do so but we've done much better hewing to that "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" principle. It also helps - a lot - that the main religion of Western Civilization, Christianity, is inherently a hierarchical thing. Thus, there is a central point from which reforms can be applied and adhered to.

Over the centuries this has caused schisms in the faith but, even there, the various Christian sects are also hierarchical. This also has helped to limit the "downsides" of Christianity.

There is not any such thing with Islam. Islam is inherently a non-hierarchical religion. Oh, it has "elders" and experts on interpreting Islamic doctrine and dogma but their authority is purely a voluntary thing. That is, any Muslim is free to adhere or ignore the fatwahs of any particular Islamic cleric.

That means that reform is an exceptionally difficult thing to apply in Islam.

Also, the Islamic world has never gone through its version of Christianity's "Wars of Reformation" which drove home the need for separation of church and state. Thus the secular and sectarian are still very much mixed in the Islamic world as opposed to officially, legally, and culturally separate as they are in the Christian world.

So, when you get some charismatic political leader in the Islamic world he's also able to wield the absolutism that comes with religion. We've learned in the West how nasty that can spin out of control. The Muslim world is continually proving that point.

Anyway, this is why it's an exercise in futility - at the least - to try picking out the nasty things in the Old Testament and attempting to use them to shut down criticisms of Islam. The two are not equal. The Old Testament is not in practice in Christianity - only the New Testament is. In the Islamic world, everything in the Koran is viewed as current and applicable.

As to how nice and un-radical are the Muslims some folks keep referring to - note their locations. The ones who are that way are almost all in the West. And they're here for a reason. Namely, their moderation would get them dead were they still back in the Middle East. And the longer they stay amongst the secular West the more moderate they get. With exceptions, sadly.

So pointing out how nice and un-radical those Western Muslims are is pretty much irrelevant when compared to how things are in the Middle East.

I also gotta say that too many people seem hell bent on ignoring the threat of Islamist jihadis. And they keep doing so on an appallingly regular basis.

Some new horrible Islamist attack is perpetrated by some new band of jihadis and their first reaction is to shrill their sorrow and weep for the slaughtered. This usually takes the form of quickly creating a heart rendering #Hastag to denote their feelings and then also generating some tear inducing image to overlay on their Facebook profile picture.

Within days - in some cases, hours - they'll then crank out the same tired old rationalizations to enable them to run away from actually dealing with the issue.

The latest terror attack by Islamist jihadist fanatics thus somehow becomes OUR fault. The attackers thus somehow become VICTIMS themselves. And we should refrain from using violence in our response as that will only create more terrorists in the future. Oh, and the self-professed Islamist jihadis who perpetrated the attack are not, in fact, Islamists at all.

It's like they're all reading from the same script or something.

This then allows them to blame the West and demand no real long term solution be meted out. And they then merrily go back to their normal lives happy in the knowledge that they are oh-so-morally superior for having such an "enlightened" world view.

Until the next horror rendered out by the next bunch of radical Islamist jihadis.