While I have no love for Muhammad or Islam; I don't think Christians should be too "holier than thou" either. We have some far- out fundamentalist Christian "redneck" types in the US and even Canada (an extreme, but not singular example is that of Timothy McVeigh, the domestic terrorist and practicing Irish Catholic who killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1995), and if we go back a few hundred years, Christian Europe did their share of killing in the name of their own "Mohammed", except they called him Jesus. They burned to death thousands of unbelievers, apostates, Jews and Moors (Arabs), and called it Inquisition instead of Jihad or Fatawa. The Radical Muslims today are just behind the times by a couple of hundred years or so. The last Witches-burning in North America was in Massachusetts in 1692-63.
The Salem witch trials were a series of prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1962 and May 1693. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned. The courts convicted twenty-nine people of the capital felony of witchcraft. Nineteen of the accused, fourteen womenand five men, were hanged. One man, Giles Corey, refused to enter a plea and was crushed to deathunder heavy stones in an attempt to force him to plead. At least five more of the accused died in prison.
The Jerry Falwells of today are perhaps not that far removed from Salem. "Witch-hunts" are still alive and well among some Christian fundamentalists. Just turn over some rocks, and there you are!
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