Genocidal rat?

Right.

Clearly, you are uninformed about Islam. I am not. I used to be -- and used to think Islam was just another silly, evidence-free belief (like Judaism, Christianity, and astrology).

It is not. The Quran is to be taken literally as the word of god, and commands Muslims to convert or kill the infidel. Muslims also spend a great deal of energy (when there are no Jews around) murdering each other -- as with the female suicide bombers who have murdered other Muslim women waiting in U.N. food lines. Clearly, Islam (as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim lays out very clearly) is contrary to enlightenment values and freedoms. Not all Muslims practice Islam as it is commanded by their Quran that they practice -- many haven't a clue as to what it says. But, they are up for murder, per the Quran, by other Muslims.

For this month's jihad death toll:

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

And as Wafa Sultan, herself marked for death by the barbarians because she is an apostate and speaks out against the barbarianism, noted on TV: You don't see Jews going around and blowing up German restaurants because of the Holocaust.

I am an atheist and dislike religion -- and like Hitchens, find it to be the cause of much evil and death in the world. But, of all the religions out there, Islam is the worst, the most responsible for the death of innocent people -- including young gay boys in Iran...per the dictates of the religion. They were hanged for being gay.

I don't "hate" religion. Hate is a silly, childish emotion. I think religion is very damaging to society. Also, you appear to have both the ability to reason and the historical knowledge of an 8-year-old. Look up Israel's history. Jews have been running around there for centuries, and the state came about through British policy (Balfour Declaration, etc.).

Are you in favor of the Quran's commandments -- and many Muslims' stated intent -- to slaughter Jews? They've slaughtered them for eons in Muslim countries, along with slaughtering each other (these are primitive, tribal, warring people). The Israelis are defending themselves, and land they rightfully took in a war. When you win a war, the losers don't get to keep the land.

PS Israeli Arabs live side by side with Jews -- when they don't seek to slaughter the Jews.

The Quran is an evil book -- and is to be taken literally by Muslims...which explains why, in a modern age when they could be inventing cures and technology to make the world a better place, they're running around blowing themselves and other people up:

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/023-violence.htm

The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding. Muslims who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter.

Unlike nearly all of the Old Testament verses of violence, most of the verses of violence in the Quran are open-ended, meaning that the historical context is not embedded within the surrounding text. They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subjective as anything else in the Quran.

Unfortunately, there are very few verses of tolerance and peace to abrogate or even balance out the many that call for nonbelievers to be fought and subdued until they either accept humiliation, convert to Islam, or are killed. This proclivity toward violence - and Muhammad's own martial legacy - has left a trail of blood and tears across world history.

More below:

The strangest and most untrue thing that can be said about Islam is that it is a Religion of Peace. If every standard by which the West is judged and condemned (slavery, imperialism, intolerance, women's rights, sexuality, warfare...) were applied equally to Islam, the verdict would be absolutely devastating. Islam never gives up what it conquers, be it religion, culture, language or life. Neither does it make apologies or any real effort at moral progress. It is the least open to dialogue and the most self-absorbed. It is convinced of its own perfection, yet brutally shuns self-examination and represses criticism. This is what makes the verses of violence so dangerous. They are given the weight of divine command. While Muslim terrorists take them as literally as anything else in the Quran, and understand that Islam is incomplete without Jihad, moderates offer little to contradict them - outside of opinion. Indeed, what do they have? Speaking of peace and love may win over the ignorant, but when every twelfth verse of Islam's holiest book either speaks to Allah's hatred for non-Muslims or calls for their death, forced conversion, or subjugation, it's little wonder that sympathy for terrorism runs as deeply as it does in the broader community - even if most Muslims personally prefer not to interpret their religion in this way. In fact, many Muslims are simply unaware of the Quran's near absence of verses that preach universal non-violence. This is because their understanding of Islam comes from what they are taught by others. In the West, it is typical for Muslims to come to believe that their religion must be like Christianity - preaching the New Testament virtues of peace, love, and tolerance - because Muslims are taught that Islam is supposed to be superior in every way. They are somewhat surprised and embarrassed to learn that the evidence of the Quran and the bloody history of Islam are very much in contradiction to this. Others simply accept the violence. In 1991, a Palestinian couple in America was convicted of stabbing their daughter to death for being too Westernized. A family friend came to their defense, excoriating the jury for not understanding the "culture", claiming that the father was merely following "the religion" and saying that the couple had to "discipline their daughter or lose respect." (source). For their part, Western liberals would do well not to sacrifice critical thinking on the altar of political correctness, or look for reasons to bring other religion down to the level of Islam merely to avoid the existential truth that this it is both different and dangerous. There are just too many Muslims who take the Quran literally... and too many others who couldn't care less about the violence done in the name of Islam.