Well, except the One True Religion…
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You misunderstand my meaning. I’m not judging the faiths by their propensity towards authoritarianism (in practice, they are both totalitarian when allowed to) but by their attitude towards the state. Historically speaking, as you suggest, since the emergence of the modern state during the French and American revolutions, Christians have been mostly able to separate their spiritual and political lives. Muslims have not because the explicitly political aspect of Islam has been much more prominent and cannot be easily reformed away - which, by the way, was the main upshot the intra-religious wars of the 16th and 17th century you mention: the shattering of the doctrinaire monopoly and the opening up of free interpretation of the creed. Which is one of the foundations of political pluralism and by extension of our current democratic system. No equivalent event has taken place in Islam so far.
Well, you can’t DISPROVE the existence of a giant space lobster…
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So no real difference between Quakerism and Nazisms then, huh?
Of course there is, don’t be ridiculous. But we were talking about Islam and Christianity - not a sect of Christianity and the Nazis. My point is that the lived reality of Christianity wasn’t all about freedom and the lived reality of Islam isn’t authoritarian. Just wanted inject a little historical realism into the conversation.
Just saw the other comment… hold on, I’ll add on here:
Islam, historically speaking, actually had a much better track record regarding heterogentiy. The Ottoman empire was pluralistic, pretty much until the European powers began to insist (around the mid-19th century) that they adopt European mode of state craft. And while Many Islamic majority countries are not exactly bastions of religious tolerance (especially those that are Western Allies), Europe isn’t looking like a land of tolerance right now with regards to refugees. France has been especially keen to “integrate” immigrants from their former colonies in ways that are not helpful. Part of what makes the US so good at this sort of intergration is that at the end of the day, we don’t really care if one beccomes a specific kind of citizen, but that they become a tax-paying one primarily. Other than the extreme right, most people really don’t care if someone here speaks the language or becomes secular.
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I have no problem agreeing with that statement.
I am not even claiming Islam can’t produce a political system of general satisfaction and social well-being. But I am convinced such system would differ markedly from our own cherished western arrangement with which I deem Islam to be in some aspects (freedom of religion and expression, equality of sexes, LGBTQ rights - all as currently conceived by us) incompatible.
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Ah! It’s nice to agree, yeah! 
I think a good book on issues such as gender and LGBTQ issues and imperialism is Joseph Mossad’s Desiring Arabs, where he argues for a lack of understanding of these issues by those writing on the topic in the west and how queer practices that actually do go on in the middle east (and historically have) have been overlooked and dismissed as not being properly gay as defined by the west - it was quite a controversial book, actually, but worth reading:
Here is another in a simiilar vein about Iran by Namjambadi:
I agree that an Islamic system would be different, and there is a number of ideas about what a proper Islamic state should look like, from Daesh down to people like Irishad Manji. I’m not sure it’s the job of the west to dictate statecraft.
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Thanks, I’ll have a look at it.
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Seeing the USA descend into idiotic fascism doesn’t leave me exactly sanguine about the long-term compatability of crony capitalism and western liberal democracy.
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No argument there.
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STOP.
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Personally I think he falls somewhere between “medium ocher” and “apricot.”
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Have faith!
Trump will yet lead the faithful deeper into the pit
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