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I'm by no means the President of the Islamic Fan Club just now, either, but how do you simply hate a religion?!

I dislike all religion pretty intensely. The very concept of religion is anathema to me. I mean, think about it. In any other context, we consider people to be mentally ill if they believe in irrational things and talk to people who aren't there. Why do we think someone is crazy if they say the CIA listens to everything they say, but consider them quite normal if they think a big ghost in the sky listens to everything they say? We think they are nuts if they believe in Atlantis but not if they believe in heaven.

So to start with, I think anyone who believes in any religion is mentally ill. I am aware that this view does not endear me to the folks here at FR so I don't say it too often, but there you have it.

I should qualify that by saying that mental illness can vary in extremity. Anorexia is a mental illness, but people can and do function more or less even though they have it. Ditto with gambling. So yes, I believe 95% of the world is in the grip, to varying degrees, of mental delusion.

But Islam is the worst of a bad lot. Really, I don't see how anyone with a functioning brain can read chapters 5 and 9 of the Koran and not come to the same conclusion.

Do you agree that such an attitude would be quite damaging were it to infect national policy?

That would depend on how it was presented. No one as blunt as I am should get anywhere near a microphone, obviously. Besides, the people most likely to have the internal assurance to fight Muslims are going to be Christian. Most atheists, unlike myself, are really secular humanists and/or communists, and either don't have the confidence to say "this is a bad religion" or are secretly hoping that Muslims will undermine Judeo-Christian capitalism enough so that when it falls, they can influence the outcome.

So my best bet would be to whip up the Christians against the Muslims... except I'm just not good at playing people that way. I'd rather everyone simply wake up one day and realize it's all a delusion, but I'm not holding my breath.