But all of your points are excellent. I responded to the proselytization issue in my reply to NordicStorm above.

I was aware when I wrote this that what I listed aren't necessarily real similarities. (Male circumcision however is male circumcision, regardless of whether it is a Jew or a Muslim who does it.) What I was trying to get across is that to me as someone who was raised in the Christian tradition, Judaism is every bit as strange and alien as Islam. In some respects, Islam is less alien than Judaism. Islam at least recognizes that Christ spoke God's word, even if it denies his divinity. Furthermore, Islam recognizes that God is God for everyone, whereas according to Judaism (and to a lesser extent the dispensational premillenialist variety of Christian fundamentalism), God really only cares about Jews. I find the idea that God would have a special interest in a particular ethnic group utterly bizarre and pre-modern.

When it comes to Islam, I am bothered by the current Western tendency to see it as an Other. I miss the days when a group like Siouxsie and the Banshees could employ Arabian motifs in their music, and everybody thought it was cool.

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns