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where you see a fundamental essence of Islam that is amenable to radicalism, i don't.
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here martinguerre gets to the heart of the matter. everything written in the vaguest way supportive of the article at the start of the thread stages an understanding of "fundamentalism" as linked to some bizarre understanding of islam in general by essence. this kind of argument seems to work to the exclusion of information about islam that does not reduce it in its social complexity to a series of propositions from the texts around which the religion was elaborated. it works by partial quotation, combined with television imagery and material derived from a particular ideological context to generate imaginary views of islam and of its variants.
much of what i have been arguing by trying to push debate toward a more historically oriented view of this thing called islamic fundamentalism has been about trying to show just how huge the gap is that seperates understnding that is rooted in taking seriously contextual situations, in taking seriously differences between them, and the signifier "islamic fundamentalism" when it comes to thinking about the ostensible object in the world (the referent).
since the distance is pretty much insurmountable, then you have to think about this signifier "islamic fundamentalism" in other terms--what i wanted to argue was that it only makes sense as a function of the ideology of bushworld, it only is functional in that context.
given this, i do not see why the digression into dueling anecdotes about religions you like as over against religions you do not like is of any interest.