Debate: Would you be okay with a Muslim President?
Side: Sure

If Islamic nations are currently more reactionary than western nations, this is not primarily a consequence of the religion but of the political history of western intervention in the Middle-East (e.g. establishing and supporting Saddam Hussein in Iraq prior to the invasion). There is not an equitable degree of recent state-sanctioned action by Middle-Eastern/Islamic countries towards western countries so of course the reaction to insults is not as strong. You have completely overlooked my larger argument that as with Christianity there are myriad interpretations of Islam, and that many (if not a majority) of adherents to Islam believe in a non-violent interpretation of their faith and view the violence of other Muslims as a perversion of their faith. The reality is that any faith can be used to justify violence, and that all faiths have been used to that end.Regarding violence, I think that it is intrinsically connected to democracy especially as the violence we have been discussing pertains most often to the persecution of other groups. With respect to Christianity I have already pointed out that you cannot just say that some of them were true Christians and some were not; very convenient but a logical fallacy as I explained already. For further analysis, consider that the Christians persecuting each other switched between the same sects which each oppressed the other during their respective times in power. So which were the “true” Christians?Regarding the use of Christianity to oppress people: (1) You argue that the New Testament does not condone slavery, however the Old Testament does (even with restrictions); were the Christians who lived before the New Testament just not “real” Christians then? Does the Old Testament count for nothing? Was Christianity never used to defend slavery? The reality is that as recent as the last century Christianity was used to justify racial discrimination (e.g. denying the right of inter-racial couples to marry). (2) You limit “women’s rights” to abortion which was not at all my intention; the rights of women have been restricted based upon religious interpretations of the role of women in society and religion was and continues to be used to justify denying equal enfranchisement among other basic democratic rights. (3) Your personal moral (read religious) view on homosexuality alone is not an adequate basis for making same-sex marriage illegal. The reason we have laws against murder is because killing other people has a clear harm to others and to society at large; those harms do not exist in any form whatsoever with same sex marriage. The sole basis of denying equal rights is religious.Christianity was also used to justify the Conquests of the Americas and to oppress the Native American population as settlers pursued their divine right to westward expansion. I could go on listing examples, but it is an incontrovertible fact that undemocratic acts of oppression and violence have been justified using Christianity for as long as Christianity has existed. It is not uniquely Christian to be democratic or undemocratic; just as it is not uniquely Islamic to be democratic or undemocratic. Finally, consider the absolute fact that there are many Muslims who are born citizens of the U.S. who believe in and practice democracy concurrently with their faith. Clearly this is proof that the two are not antithetical to one another.