I notice, however, that we only learned religious toleration relatively recently. It is not something we've had for time out of mind that is alien in other atmospheres, it is instead a still revolutionary new principle that has simply never been accepted in half of the world. Including the communist half quite recently, in China today, etc.
If you go look at how we learned it, principle did play a role and the arguments for it can be run through and repeated, for those who can listen to reason. But we did not really get it established by deriving it from first intellectual principles - let alone finding it in ancient books, slapping our heads, and crying out "oh sorry, now it is so obvious we've been doing it wrong for the last 1500 years".
Instead, we arrived at the principle of tolerance -practically-. By exhaustion. We tried persecution at the wholesale level in the reformation and counterreformation - and fought ourselves to a bloody stalemate. We gave up, because it did not work in practice. It seems to me this is quite relevant to the present war against Islamic terrorists.
I think we can teach them religious toleration in much the same way we learned it. But thwarting their will to persecute, directly, by superior force. Some of them are having a persecution brain-storm right about now, and think it will somehow help them. We can make sure it doesn't, in spades. While simultaneously working with those like the article writer to hold out a reformed islam, and the carrot of reasonable treatment for reformist countries by the west (e.g. Turkey).
One has to envision the eventual state we can live with as victory. And coordinate our practical actions so that they move things toward it. In the long run, victory will mean islamic countries we can live with, that are not determinately hostile. They will be thinking differently than the islamicists are urging them to think now. A large part of that will be enforcement of practical outcomes, what will work vs what we won't let work. Some will be theoretical justification, in their own traditional terms, some in ours, the language of human rights, etc.
As for how many terrorist attacks will occur while this is going on, fifty to a hundred sizable ones is a realistic estimate. I am extrapolating from history, and things have changed somewhat, so that is obviously just a guess. But millions are not going to actively engage in terrorism. Armies will fight wars, particularly against the weak - Islamic armies have a limited and pathetically inglorious record against opponents that are fully armed. All powerful they most certainly are not.
There is no need for millions (hundreds of millions is more like it) of Muslims to actively engage. All they need do to ensure the success of Jihad terrorism is that at which humans are best: nothing. That is what the mass of Muslims is doing right now. But from what I have personally observed, many do somwhat more than precisely nothing: e.g., many, perhaps most, of the mosques in the United States are places in which hatred of Christians, Jews, and the West is actively encouraged.
Sheik Palazzi wants a paradigm shift within his religion from the maddening passivity Muslims demonstrate in their own homelands, to an activity of Reform. He wants to shift the only human activity for which Muslims have ever shown any enthusiasm, the Jihad, away from 14 Centuries of Islamic conquest, toward the conquest of the individual Muslim soul. Bravo Palazzi. Have at it. Perhaps Sheik Palazzi will be the San Francesco d'Asissi of Islam.
What the Hell does that have to do with me, except that the more enthusiastic and efficient of the unreformed Jihadists which infest his creed and the World, wish my death, enslavement, or conversion? Naturally, I would like Sheik Palazzi to achieve his objective, before the multitudinous and rapidly multiplying unreformed bastards achieve theirs. But all I ask is that he begin his holy quest in an Islamic land. After all, St. Francis did not start his in Mecca.
In regard to Christian tolerance: the most intolerant episodes of Christian history were inspired by the armed conquest of the once-Christian Eastern and Southern Mediterranean Lands, by Muslims. How can I tolerate Islam, when Islam, as the good candid Sheik so cheerfully admits, tolerates and supports the terror of the armed Jihad? My answer as a Christian, is that I tolerate Islam perfectly well in Islamic lands. My God, man, one could not even bring a dog or horse into the British Isles without quarantine to make sure it was not carrying some devastating virus. Does it not make perfect sense to at least treat Muslims, so many of whom carry this Jihad Virus, the same way? Keep them out until they, following the good Sheik Palazzi perhaps, sort it out themselves.
Furthermore, good Jason, if I parse correctly, you seem to espouse the quaint belief that what the Muslims need right now is a crushing armed defeat, whereupon we shall spring Sheik Palazzi amongst them to begin the great reform.
How about this instead? IMHO, modernist, "democratic" Turkey would be a perfect place for Sheik Palazzi to HQ his altogether commendable effort to introduce that most Christian of ideas to Islam: Reform. Then, if doesn't take, we can still meet them again, without a Muslim 5th column infesting our major cities, at Omdurman, at the gates of Vienna, or even Lepanto.
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