What's sad about Islam is that Muhammad had good intentions about revealing a loving, caring deity to the pagan Arab population. Deconstructing the randomly assembled Koran into a consistent temporal sequence, we find the prophet's early statements to be aligned with the kind of direction toward compassion toward others found in the Christian New Testament. After he approached the Jewish hierarchy, and was mocked and rebuffed, he became increasingly bitter, reflected in the later passages, which reflect anger and violence, particularly toward Jews.

The worst offenses against compassionate human behavior come not from the Koran, but from the Hadiths, which are supposedly based on informal conversations with the Prophet. Some reformist Muslim scholars think the Hadiths were assembled to win over those Arabs who wanted to cling to some of their pagan practices, and should be regarded as less binding than the Koran to the faithful.

To cling blindly to religious texts, or the interpretations expressed by rigid ideologues is unworthy of a species with a mind as capable of rational thought as we are. Righteously spouting scripture, or political statements based on it, is a weakness, when we are fully capable of deciding what is right and wrong when we consider all aspects of a situation. That is not a support of conditional morality that progressives are so fond of, but of the human mind to recognize all aspects of a situation without reliance on racial, cultural, or religious differences. Omar is very guilty of using her religious upbringing, with all of the antisemitism inherent to justify her defiant, abusive behavior. White supremacists are very fond of selecting biblical statements as justification for their violent behavior as well. Both of those tendencies are definitely pathological.