In a column in the Wall Street Journal (paywall) by Jon Shields and Yuval Avnur the authors quote the late Samuel Huntington (1927-2008), author of a 1996 book titled The Clash of Civilizations. Huntington, writing on the differences between Western and Islamic cultures, observed that, “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”
It's been years since I read Clash of Civilizations, so I don't recall everything about it and don't want to impute what follows to Huntington, but that one quote sums up a very serious problem the world faces today. Here are three reasons why.
First, as Huntington says, it is not just radical Islam that's the problem. It's Islam itself. Muslims will tell you that there's no radical, or extremist, Islam and no moderate Islam, there is only Islam. Anyone who seeks to moderate Islam is considered by "true" Muslims to be a heretic.
Ben Shapiro lays out some troubling math in this six minute video:
Second, a large number of Muslims are convinced not only of the superiority of their culture but also of the exclusiveness of their religion to the point that anyone who dissents from it deserves to be killed, especially if they convert from it to some other religion. There's no fault in believing one's religion to be true - many Christians believe that Christianity contains more truth than any other religion - but Islam holds that wherever Muslims have the power, Allah commands them to reduce non-believers to a subservient dhimmi status or be killed.
It might be replied that there are plenty of examples of Christians acting similarly in the Middle Ages, and although those examples are often not as dispositive as critics make out, nevertheless it's true that the Church has sometimes disgraced itself. The difference, however, is this: When Christians have oppressed and murdered they were acting contrary to the teaching of the New Testament and repudiating the message of Jesus. When Muslims oppress and murder, they're often following the instruction of the Koran and the example of Mohammad.
Third, the obsession with their inferiority - not only military but also cultural (compare the number of Arab Nobel Prize winners with the number of Jewish winners) - is a source of profound anger and hatred for all those kafirs or unbelievers in the West who seem to be thriving. It is that festering resentment and visceral hatred that is at the root of the Islamic obsession with destroying Israel and conquering the West.
As Ben Shapiro argues in the above video, there are an awful lot of Muslims in the world today who hold views in serious conflict with what Westerners generally hold, and as long as this is the case peace between Islam and the West will be very difficult to achieve.