David,

I don’t think it’s a matter of PC, but of acknowledging the diversity of viewpoints under the Islamic umbrella. You’re describing a largely fundamentalist understanding of the Islamic faith, an understanding that, according to polls, does not predominate in the Muslim world writ large. See the Pew polling below, which tracks support for Sharia law, gender equality, women’s right to choose, etc.

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-women-in-society/

Do some Muslims still believe that Islam is a coercive religion that meets its true form under a theocracy? Yes. Is this the mainstream view in some Muslim-majority countries? Yes. Is this the mainstream view in most countries? No. Islamic thought, like Christian thought, has evolved tremendously since the era of Muhammad. Most, especially Western-oriented Muslims today, believe in secular rights and secular democracy. Think of the St. Petersburg Declaration, which unanimously affirmed the coexistence of Islam and secular democracy: “We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind.”

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/secularislam

Or the consortium of 120 Islamic scholars from around the world who signed an 18-page open letter thoroughly denouncing the beliefs associated with extremist groups like ISIS. It includes such dictums as “It is forbidden in Islam to ignore the reality of contemporary times when deriving legal rulings” and “It is forbidden in Islam to deny women their rights.” As of 2016, the letter continues to gain new signatories from leaders around the Muslim world.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/24/muslim-scholars-islamic-state_n_5878038.html

So lastly, I think the purity question is a red herring. I don’t subscribe to the notion that there is an undiluted form of Islam any more than that there is an unglossed version of Christianity. When we presume those who take the most literal approach to ancient sources are the most “true” form of a religion, we give too much credibility and leverage to fundamentalists, when it is the reformers and progressives we should be propping up. Equally inaccurate is it to assert that only those Muslims who follow specific passages are “true Muslims” or that Islamic teaching is bound by the emphases in its holy texts. Religious communities live out their faith in different ways and do not always practice, and are not bound by, the contents in its founding sources.

We are not being “PC” by pointing this out, we are simply hewing our speech to reality.

It is very difficult, however, to tell just *how many* Muslims do *not want to participate* in the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. If they are attending Mosques, where Islamic texts are taught and Muhammad cannot be spoken against, then sooner or later they will either decide to abandon Muhammad’s teachings – which, by the way, teach that they should be killed for that – or they will be more and more likely to decide that Muhammad really was what Islamic teachings *say* he was. The very *basis* of Islam *comes from* the Quran, the Sunna, and the hadiths, and ALL of these source texts for Islam continually uphold the supremacy of Muhammad as the final and holiest prophet. Muhammad by his own account was being bullied and terrorized by what he thought was a demon, and then he was convinced by his wife to go back to this thing – and he then decided that it was actually the Creator God instead of a demon.

From that point on, Muhammad’s “god” helped him establish a political-religious system whereby he was the prophet for a bloody army of Islamic warriors who were taught that God was pleased with them lying, killing, stealing, taking and selling sex slaves, and basically doing whatever they wanted within a loose set of guidelines, to all who would not join their demonic cult by submitting to the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. Basically, Muhammad pioneered the most antichrist religious-political system the world will ever know.

Unlike Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Agnosticism, Atheism, and all the other “isms”, Islam claims to be the SINGLE FINAL religion, while promoting a warlord “holy prophet” who is irreproachable – the prophet Muhammad, who claimed (and recited in the Quran) that the Creator God instructed them to bring all the world to submission to Islam. Historically, many Christians were persuaded to take a similar position for hundreds of years. Those who were thus convinced were mostly illiterate, but even if they could read they were taught that only priests were qualified to interpret the Christian holy texts, which were a vast undertaking for anyone in those days. However, in the last several centuries the translation and publication of the Christian Bible into the language of the people has *proven* to 99.9% of Christians that this was never the intention of the Christian God. The Bible teaches that God Himself will come and judge the world – and it never taught its followers to force the world to accept Jesus or to force them to accept the Bible as being from God. Most Christians today acknowledge that God’s love is their main “selling point”, so-to-speak, and that Biblical principles are designed to work APART from a Theocracy until Jesus returns.

In contrast, Islam was designed from the start to operate as a Theocracy. It is a religion and a political system in one. And its holy prophet was a murdering warlord who justified lying and killing, stealing and raping, as legitimate means of spreading Islam. Furthermore, Islam as a religion has built such a defense around the prophet Muhammad that it is virtually impossible within the context of Islam to challenge the character of Muhammad, or to suggest that many of his teachings will never be compatible with governing free nations. The Western concept of “Freedom of Conscience” is contrary to the teachings of Muhammad. At most, Islamic teaching allows unbelievers to manage their own conscience only until Islam can force them to do otherwise.

Islam, as long as it remains subservient to the teachings of Muhammad, can *never* be compatible with the US Constitution, or with the Democratic Republic we call America. Only a modified form of Islam (which arguably would probably not be “Islam”) in which many of the teachings of the prophet Muhammad are CALLED OUT as being INAPPROPRIATE for modern living, can be compatible with Western society and culture. And while I have hope, I do not hear Muslims ANYWHERE indicating that they want to move their religious system in that direction. (Maybe they are out there – it’s a big world.)

This is one of the primary reasons that I see Donald Trump winning by a Landslide in November. He is the only presidential candidate who had the guts to confront the PC nonsense that keeps avoiding and denying the seriousness of this problem.