To smear "Christianity" in general because of what the Roman Catholics and early Protestants did is wholly wrong
Hmm, so to smear Islam in general because of what the Arab theocracies did is wrong? Or is that OK?
In the end Christianity has been a persecuting force, regardless who it persecuted. You cannot write the Catholics off, nor the Protestants, just because you don't agree with them without doing likewise with regard to Islam. Catholics and Protestants make up the vast majority of Christianity.
So either Christianity can be shown to have been historically barbaric
or
Islam cannot be shown to have historically barbaric (since we can just ignore the barbaric sects).
Religiously speaking Islam is comparable to Judaism from a 'barbaric' point of view, whereas Christianity is totally pacifistic and anti-barbaric. Historically speaking we see something else: any religion where power becomes mingled with faith fiercely protects its powerbase using various methods of brutality.
Christianity is not inherently barbaric, its inherently pacifistic. Rituals and practices have been added that were not given the green light by Christ. Barbaric acts have been committed in its name: 'Kill them all, God will know his own'.
Islam is not inherently barbaric. It does justify violent acts in much the same way as Judaism does (eye for an eye, stoning women for not marrying as a virgin (or rather not bleeding on the honeymoon) etc etc). Islam preaches peace unless oppressed, and if the transgressors cease, then peace should be resumed. Plenty of barbaric acts have been committed in its name and rituals and traditions have been added that were not cleared by Allah (indeed all of them were expressly forbidden by Allah from becoming part of Islam).
Many people seem to be convinced that Islam is inherently violent and barbaric. They use three prongs for this concept:
1)
Mohammed was a warlord.
Is problematic since in Islam Mohammed is not a perfect Muslim (he his chastised several times by Allah in the Qur'an).
2)
The cultural laws and traditions that Muslims passed have become integral to the religion
Expressly forbidden in the Qur'an (the Qur'an states that it is complete and nothing else should be added), this is more likely an overthrow from Arab culture that the religion wasn't able to entirely overcome.
3)
Muslims have been historically violent
So have Christians, Buddhists and Jews.
The bottom line is simple: integrate a religion into a power system and corruption follows. It doesn't matter what the principles of that religion are. If it is a retaliatory religion (Islam, Judaism), or a pacifistic one (Buddhism, Christianity) they will fall and become barbaric. Even individual leaders who are religious can soon neglect the important teachings of their religion in favour of temporal power - followers of pacifistic religions going to war being an obvious example, less obvious would be a follower of a 'complete' religion adding principles to that religion. One cannot serve two masters, power and God or money and God. Doesn't work.
What really gets people's goat though, is when Christians point at Islam and shout 'Barbaric', but refuse to accept that the majority of Christianity was involved in barbaric acts and persecution. Be they against Jews, Christians, Gypsies, women or Zoroastrians. Like randman here, they play variants of the 'no true Christian' (ie, Catholics were heretical, Evangelicals were/are true Christians), but refuse to accept that the same applies to Islam.