Quote from KymarFye:
Many aspects of Mohammed's biography that are here being presented as facts would very likely be disputed by other people, even before any attempt to adjust for historical and cultural context. Still, more than the other great religions, Islam is identified with a prophet who was a warrior and military leader. This fact may make Islamic traditions somewhat more susceptible to facile "militarization," but, taking the long view, it's hard to argue that the alternative origins of other religions have made non-Islamic nations appreciably less warlike. It really shouldn't be necessary to provide examples from the history of Christian nations - which, among many other things, were the first to apply modern industrial practices to what eventually became "total warfare" in the 20th Century.
In the judgment of many historians, Islam was for centuries the foundation of the world's leading civilization, responsible, among other things, for preserving and reviving the "Western" tradition, for making critical advances in mathematics, astronomy, and engineering, and for organizing regimes that were remarkably honest and efficient in government and were, generally, rather highly tolerant of other religions and cultures.
I believe that the dysfunctionality and destructiveness of Arab and other Moslem-dominated regimes and the implacability of Islamic terrorists are better explained by unique historical and socioeconomic factors - though that doesn't make present-day Islamic extremism any less repugnant or inherently dangerous.