I guess I consider Mohammed as simply one of the most successful heretics the world has ever seen.
That said, I see very little difference between the militance, materialism and rationality of Islam and that of various Protestant sects or Catholic heretics at different times in history. Given the "brother against brother" nature of their bloody conflicts using religion to premise and cloak their purely political purpose, I find theirs almost worst, actually.
All heresies sort of die on the vine eventually (even if the universal errors on which they're based recur in various forms). If Islam's proven the more enduring, powerful and compelling, I think it's because (1) it was the greater heresy and (2) those with an eye to capitalizing on the Use of religion these days seek as a rule to render an impotent pansy social worker the Christian soldier as they "organize" the ignorant or misguided into the militance necessary to lever the balance of power and the forming of coalitions in reaction.
I've got a book on my desk called "Reading the Muslim Mind" by Hassan Hathout. Granted, he's older, wiser and gentle but obviously bright and I can't believe for a moment that his presentation of Islam as practiced by faithful Muslims is so off the mark.
Found interesting the other night some snippet of a PBS show detailing the rise of the "Islamic Jihadist Front" (or whatever) in Egypt.
Same M.O. as always for any "Front" (for communist repression and terror) ... violence, terror, assassination and -- the dead giveway -- a wealthy son of the wealthy whose consciousness had been "raised" into radicalism to serve as leader, spokesman and enjoy certain privileges re: freedom of movement and from prosecution in the EU.
I just can't equate faithful Muslims with so-called "radical" Islam anymore than I equate Judaism with Israel or Catholicism with liberation theology.
From many of your comments, I suspect that you believe that Communist sympathizers have infiltrated Islam and are deliberately radicalizing the faith. What you may be ignoring is that the history of Islam, which extends much further back than than of Communism, seems to show that Islam itself seems to generate this tendency. The "true faith", by which most people mean more moderate Islam, seems to have become that way primarily due to the moderating influence of other cultures.
You had some kind words the other day for old father Abraham. I'm convinced he's one of the great saints, a religious genius and Close Personal Friend of God whose Semitic desert hospitality welcomed the triune God in the stranger and pleaded for the lives of sinful men.
For his faith in the Unity of God, Satan despises Abraham and for his sake his descendants -- Jew and Arab alike -- whom he seeks to destroy: the first (and Christians, their younger brothers) through a failure of faith (idolatry, whether in the worship of golden calves or in atheism or the nation state), the second through a disordered and fanatical misapprehension of faith as incitement to jihad. In the end, it all comes down to a realization that the real Enemy is not one man or another, but the Evil One, whose hatred is for Abraham's knowledge of God as One -- and thus to the central and salvific importance of Unity. Think of it, if you like, as Satan's riff on the doctrine of Original Sin.
As O'Connor says, if the evangelists included the demons' remarks in scripture, it's because they reckoned their remarks about Jesus were "pretty good witness."