Oh god, time to make a hypocrite of myself.
To play devils advocate, he was originally discussing Islam in isolation, referencing Christianity only as reformation - the whole mountain of Islam vs Christianity bollocks was brought in by everyone else attacking @Draeger as a bigot. Nobody here is acting particularly well.
I know it isn't my place, but if we're going to end up in a slinging match of bigot/not-bigot (which I was hoping to nip in the bud

) involving moderators, it'd frankly be a better idea to lock the thread right now. It won't make anybody look good.
Islam, and Muslims are three very different things.
Islam - A Faith
Muslim - Someone who follows the faith of Islam, or Identifies as such.
If you're discussing Islam, then you aren't directly discussing the people who adhere to it, and as I said previously, it normally ends up being a twisted literalistic interpretation rather than any specific school of thought that doesn't help begin discussion, and frankly devolves into the exact sort of p*ssing match we're seeing here. If it is fine to discuss the ideas of Keynesian Economics, without seeing it as an attack on the people who think it is appropriate, then you can do it with a religion, as they are both ideologies.
This means, that in a discussion of the history of a religion, you have two very import factors to consider.
1) What does the religion espouse - this is easily checked by looking at its texts.
2) What do the adherents do - whilst this can (and has) impacted the former, until such point as it is part of the religion, it cannot be considered an action endorsed by that religion.
I CANNOT STRESS THIS MORE THAN I ALREADY HAVE. Otherwise we might as well say that every demographic in the sodding world are thieves, rapists, saints and murders - because there are plenty in every demographic, or that every political or economic philosophy is awful because awful things happen. Proper attribution of events should be applied.
At the very least, Daeger hasn't mention Daesh. At all, not in this thread. That has been brought in by everyone else. For pities sake, I think he has a limited and largely ignorant (in the kindest way) understanding of Islam, and its history, but he didn't conflate Daesh with the original Caliphates. If he did, I certainly missed it.
Nobody has denied that adherents of both faiths have expanded their faith at the point of the sword, but as explained above, one is the action of someone who identifies as such, and the other is a philosophy that ostensibly supports it. If it doesn't actually support it, then it isn't the fault of the philosophy that didn't encourage it. It'd be like accusing Jainism of being responsible for wife beating because some of its adherents did - despite (AFAIK) Jainism being a furiously pacifist faith.
Regarding cultural superiority, if you can't make moral and value judgements on any belief system, then we're all (supposedly bigots) on this entire board. Completely - because we think it is a better way to spend vast amounts of our time discussing this, than say, playing football. Alt-history subculture in our eyes, is superior (seemingly) to footy-culture. Intellectual snobbery at its finest. A moral judgement is the only thing I can think of that you can't objectively rank, it is always personal. It is fundamentally qualitative.
Regarding your tirade against the west? You're doing a pretty good job trying to convince everyone that Western culture is pretty awful, and as such it seems you've made a value judgement regarding the moral actions of your forefathers, suggesting that you consider your morality and culture superior to theirs. Which according to you, is bigotry. How about we stop accusing each other of bigotry, and either lock the thread, or get back on topic.
Again, indicative of any period of cultural advancement - the enlightenment specifically? Probably the blend of various world views that might not have been melded together without colonialism, as it is common that schools of thought tend to isolate, hence why we have different cultures. In order to conquer/rule, someone at the very least needs to learn some of the ideas. This happened with the Caliphates uniting Persian, Roman, and Arab schools of thought, it happen in Europe importing technologies and political systems. Interestingly however, in the case we were trying to discuss, the Caliphate/Dar-al-Islam met most of these criteria - Slaves from Africa/Europe, control of the spice trade, colonisation of Sub-Saharan Africa. So what are the differences? Fascinating discussion, probably relevant to how to create a similar school of though appear in such a system. What must change.
Again, prior to people bringing this in and attacking Daeger, modern terrorism wasn't part of the conversation. We can actually point to Catholics doing it - the IRA. Yes, adherents will do desperate things that they want to justify, but if it isn't justifiable in their philosophy, then the philosophy isn't responsible.
If the first thing that happens when someone starts a topic of conversation that isn't popular, but isn't explicitly hateful, is just shout bigot at them, then there isn't a chance that we can actually get a greater understanding of the topic at hand. Yeah, when Cueg called him a bigot, Draeger defended himself with what he knew - his ignorance is not bigotry. He hasn't refused to entertain ideas, he hasn't been intolerant of other peoples opinions, other than the idea that he is a bigot, he is intolerant of that idea. He's been ignorant as most are when it comes to thoughts and ideas that we never discuss. Which will not change if people fall into this trap every time.
At the moment, we're at risk of breaking, or have broken the first three rules on the forum
1) Provide a civil environment for talking about alternate - considering that being accused of being a bigot (without immediate justification) isn't exactly good manners, that rule has been explicitly broken when trying to do so about this part of history. At least from my perspective.
2) Allow the discussion of any subject that wouldn't lead to the board being overrun by nuts and other wackos. This isn't conspiracy theory, Holocause Denial, etc.
3) It's not what you say, it's how you say it - this literally lists that religious discussion is not sacred ground. Saying something wrong, factually incorrect, is part of the discussion.
Now come on people, frankly, from what I've seen of the rules, Draeger hasn't broken any, although others explicitly have without even a second glance.