There are different flavours, or sects if you want, of Agnosticism and Atheism. These do include what I like to think of as "born again atheists", who do treat it as a religion and spend their time trying to convert the heathen, rather than treating them as somewhat daffy. Personally, I'm a strict agnostic. Not only is the answer to "does God exist?" unknown, the question is largely meaningless, without a usable definition of "god", or what the word "exists" means in this context.
Personally, I believe that it is perfectly possible to be a good Muslim and a civilised person. The problem is that it is harder to do so than it is to be a good Christian and civilised (or Buddhist, Wiccan, Jew etc.), because Islam is an inherently political religion. The Muslim religion gained political power while it was still forming - within the lifetime of Mohamed. Accordingly, it never developed any equivalent to "render unto Caesar", which allowed the later development of separation of Church and State. The mingling of political power leads to religious rules being enforced by political power and laws based to religious teaching to be politically unchallengeable.
Admittedly, this was a problem for Christianity for a lot of European history and there are plenty of "Christians" who would like for it to revert to that way. However, we have to deal with religions as they are at the moment. I'd only have to worry about the Albigensian Crusade if I had a time machine.
Oh. According to traditional history, the loss of the traditional enlightened and tolerant medieval Islam was due to the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols.
Personally, I believe that it is perfectly possible to be a good Muslim and a civilised person. The problem is that it is harder to do so than it is to be a good Christian and civilised (or Buddhist, Wiccan, Jew etc.), because Islam is an inherently political religion. The Muslim religion gained political power while it was still forming - within the lifetime of Mohamed. Accordingly, it never developed any equivalent to "render unto Caesar", which allowed the later development of separation of Church and State. The mingling of political power leads to religious rules being enforced by political power and laws based to religious teaching to be politically unchallengeable.
Admittedly, this was a problem for Christianity for a lot of European history and there are plenty of "Christians" who would like for it to revert to that way. However, we have to deal with religions as they are at the moment. I'd only have to worry about the Albigensian Crusade if I had a time machine.
Oh. According to traditional history, the loss of the traditional enlightened and tolerant medieval Islam was due to the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols.