The Crusades

[nicky g]

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Nicky, Islam has always been a totalitarian system, and Mohammad and his armies spread it by the sword.

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No, it hasn't - totalitarianism is largely a 20th century phenomena.

"A totalitarian state trys to control all aspects of its citizens lives. Some ancient Chinese rulers seem to have attempted this, but in the West, it is a distinctively modern form of government since it depends on huge government efforts to bring about. Classic examples of attempted totalitarian societies are France under the Committee of Public Safety in 1794, Nazi Germany, the Stalinist Soviet Union, Mao's China, and Kim's Korea. In such societies efforts were amde to bring all public groups under the ideological control of the state."

Totalitarianism

Islam does not seek total control over every part of people's lives, except perhaps in unique mdern extremist versions such as that of the Taliban (even they do not remotely compare to the degree of control under Hitler or Stalin) - it does not seek to control the economy for example beyond the odd tax (cue some libertarians denouncing all tactics as totalitarian, but never mind), it permits "opposition" to it in the form of other religions, it was formed in a time when the political party didn't exist; its texts contain no information on what type of political system should rule. And there is the key point; it is a religion, not a political philiosphy or system of government, except as used by distinctly modern Islamists for their own purposes, and cannot by definition be totalitarian.

I don't understand why the likes of you and BluffTHis have to use the tired old leftist tactic of denouncing everything of which you disapprove in terms of some prominent contemporary or near-contemproary phenonemena. Thus all violence you disaprove of is terrorism, and all systems of though you disapprove of are fascist (just like the Socialist WOrkers!). You can disapprove of these things if you want but using these terms renders them and the debate meaningless.

As for Islam being "spread by the sword", the various Islamic empires were spread by the sword, as are all empires including the ones they displaced and all the various Christian empires. Islam as a religion was largely not spread by the sword. Indeed it has reached places that no Muslim empire ever did eg south-east Asia.