Bob Sargeant has always been one of my favorite local editorialists (Arch DiPeppie and the late John Goolrick being among them), and he offers an excellent rebuttal for the short-sighted apologists for the whitewashing of Islam:
The Golden Age of Spain under the caliphs was a long time ago, and tolerance was spotty, at best. Look around: Beheading, the “honor killing” of female relatives who have sex outside of marriage (even if a, say, a sister is raped), punitive amputation, and stoning are no longer practiced in the West.
However, carrying non-Islamic religious texts in most Muslin countries will get you arrested, or worse. Thirty-seven percent of Turks (one of the most liberal Islamic states) support honor killings.
Of course, after a hiatus of a couple of thousand years, some Jews did get stoned, chief among them Lenny Bruce (who got very stoned) and Bob Dylan (who said that everybody must get stoned).
You can’t get much better than this!