Armstrong, where does this intolerant mindset come from?
I'd reiterate what I tried to allude to before - an intolerant mindset is part of 'human condition' and religion is just another thing through which it manifests itself. The best bet against intolerance is education..and perhaps not even that ! We're going to have Bin Ladens just as we're going to have war-mongers or (choose your pick)-supremacists !
You can even see in this forum that the less-religious people (I can only talk for the Turkish users) are less intolerant, whereas conservative folks calls me and especially Deno names. Seems like religion is a magnet for intolerant people.
On the contrary I've met many an atheists who are more extreme in their convictions, in their ridicule and very aggressive in their proselytizing then countless religious preachers that I do know of; and I should know...I was an atheist !
But tis also true that intolerant bigots do exist in the ranks of the religious; however again I'd say no-one has a monopoly on them and I've understood bigots and extremists to follow a said profile whatever their belief-system ! If you can separate the chaff from the grain, I can see more similarities between Anders Behring Reivik, a self-proclaimed cultural and irreligious Christian, and Osama bin Laden, a religious extremists, then I can between Osama and the average Religious Cleric of one of our Mosques. Similarly I can see more parallels between Al-Qaeeda's creed and that of Nazi-Germany than I can between Al-Qaeeda and most Muslim majority countries out there.
Even if I would put all my problems with the Quran beside, there is still a huge problem with those people who preach in the mosque and use the religion how ever they like and in most cases in their own interest. You religious guys need some kind of quality-control.
There is indeed a problem with such kind of preaching, however to single out religion as something, to overuse the term, as having a monopoly on it is to have a parochial view of things. The term religious intolerance very aptly describes how intolerance is the causation that finds religion as a mode of expression. And what is intolerance ? If it is the refusal to accommodate another's opinion and even forcefully change it under penalty of bodily harm....then every revolution, from that of the Bolsheviks to that of the French, were woefully intolerant. And yet barring the word intolerance, the French Revolution, the Rise of Nazi-Germany, the Consolidation of Power in Imperial Japan, the Creation of Israel, have no relation whatsoever with the term 'Religious Intolerance'. So unless we differentiate 'cause' from 'effect' we're going to incessantly beat about the bush so to speak but never go about addressing the problem. And so we must enact this 'Quality-Control' on a much more individual level then specifically addressed towards a particular movement ! In my opinion - Education and the Rule of Law, would be a very good place to start and it should mitigate either, on average, the development of an intolerant mindset or stifle its expression, and thats probably the best we can hope for without becoming extremely intolerant ourselves.