The five pillars of Islam are meant as a sign of submission to God, not man. Muhammad, living in a time and place that was riven with tribal warfare and strife, sought to end it by uniting his fellow men in submission to God, and not to each other. When these tribal factions came after him and his followers, he fought back. As Tariq Ramadan acknowledges in this interview, Muhammad was a man, and was not perfect. However, in the context of the time and place in which he lived, the violence, and politics, which he envoked was primarily for the purposes of self preservation.

I am aware that the Koran is the central document of Islam, and in fact, it was my understanding that the five pillars were derived from it in some form (correct me if I am wrong), but the five pillars are in fact the core practice of Islam. I haven't actually read the whole Koran, so I can't go toe to toe with anyone in a quote war. What I have read appears to me to be standard monotheism. However, I do know that the God of the Old Testament commanded Saul to kill every last one of the Amalekites, and he condemned Saul as king when he chose to spare just one. I believe that Jehovah also had a group of children devoured by a bear simply for mocking Elijah. He also had Moses kill the Israelites who built the golden calf. I believe that death for idolatry and adultry come from the old testament, as do stoning and cutting off the hand as a punishment (correct me if I am wrong about any of this). And yet, modern Jews have managed to use their interpretive capacity to see a greater, non-literal meaning behind their scripture, and to fit their religion (with its bloodthirsty God and bloody scripture) into modern secular pluralism. It is this interpretive capacity that Tariq Ramadan specifically envokes in this interview. "The Quran is what was revealed. But we still need our intelligence, our reason and our mind, to understand what was said to us."

I agree with you that Christianity, at its best, can be quite a bit different in spirit than this, although this capacity is mitigated by the fact that most Christians affirm the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. Whether or not Christianity had Theocratic origins, there certainly was a faction of it early on that had Theocratic ambition, and ultimately, they were the ones who won out. Under their roughly 1500 year tenure at the helm of Europe, Jews were persecuted, Heretics and Witches were tortured and burned alive, and the inquisition was set up to (a) torture and kill people, and (b) create a state of permanent fear in southwestern Europe. My own religion - Gnosticism - was one of the main victims of this intolerance. The downfall of this Theocratic form of Christianity, and Christianity's subsequent disentanglement from politics, is no small feat. It was the undoing of 1500 years of history. Islam hasn't even existed for 1500 years. If it happened here, it can happen there.

"I don't care what Muslims believe, but I do care how they behave."

First of all, this statement undermines your assertion that the notion of the Quran being divinely inspired is somehow exceedingly important in a way that makes it impossible for Muslims to interpret it in a non-literal way, or to adapt it to modern life.

Second of all, as I have previously stated, we live in a world of billions and billions of people, and in this very large world, Islam is the second largest religion. The vast majority of Muslims live lives of peaceful coexistence with their neighbors, whether they live in Muslim societies or Western societies. Throw whatever anecdotes you want at me, the fact remains that these are just anecdotes.

"I do think that the argument that Islam is immature and will mellow out in time..."

This undermines your statement that Islam is rotten to the core. Are you retracting that, and recognizing that there is something of value here, and that a quarter of the world's population (or whatever the statistic is) is not simply delusional, but attracted to something real?

To answer your question, I have been attending a Gnostic Church for about 4 and a half years now, and was baptized about a year ago. Visit http://www.gnosis.org/ if you are interested in it.

P.S. On your advice, I spent a couple of hours last night reading from my copy of the Quran. I read several passages from several chapters throughout the book, and did extensive skimming in between. What I saw confirmed my initial impression - standard monotheism. Actually, as far as monotheistic God images go, it was fairly mild, as it repeatedly emphasized the mercy and wisdom of God. It was certainly less violent than the Old Testament. I found very few actual references to violence or warfare, and I didn't see anything in it (including the violent passages) that couldn't be interpreted in personal or non-violent ways. Regarding interaction with others, the overriding theme seemed to be the ability to discern between believers and non-believers, and to not be tempted by the non believers. Ultimately, I found nothing in it that put it out of step with co-existence within secular, pluralistic society.