Rewriting a post here. The Russian holidays kick in as the Western ones are winding down, and I have been run down to near total exhaustion. Then, while writing, I inadvertently closed the window.
I think we've been saying the same thing in that I've been talking about addressing the ideas, not the person and you say the post and not the poster, which I take to mean the same thing. No problem there.
Style, though, is subjective, and can vary greatly. If there is an actual link between cabbages and kings, it may take a lot of talking around things to get to the point. Many of the theological, philosophical, social, economic and other ideas are of sufficient complexity that they require exposition that exceeds the attention span of laboratory rats, and now of many humans, and that may be seen as style. (If anyone senses that I have GK Chesterton in mind, they are right. Amd as an example of appreciating and admiring one's philosophical foes, there is hardly a better teacher than GKC, the very model of non-abuse).
My concerns remain, though. The chief one is underscored by your reference to the Church. We don't agree on what that is, and as such, are doomed to talk past each other. This is a constant hindrance to mutual understanding. When you say "we are told how to address this" I take it you are referring to Scripture "telling" us, without a specific common authority to interpret it. Thus, we can never be sure there is an "us". Sometimes and on some things, we are sure there is not. That said, I still recognize that we do share vital things in common, as well, and suffering persecution is liable to be one of those things. Nevertheless, there will always be a problem with any moderation of things where the moderated may not recognize the authority to be moderated; specifically, if we think we have a religious mandate to condemn Islam, which specifically denies that Christ came in the flesh, then we're going to do it, the moderators will quash us because they think we are attacking individuals, or saying that all Muslims are evil scumbags, or whatever, and we will leave, one by one or en masse.
So that's the other concern: that the generalizations will be forbidden because relatively tiny minorities exist that are exceptions, even if they are the exception that proves the rule. Indeed, the very fact that we have to speak of "moderate" Muslims implies that they are not in fact representative of the majority. And the generalization is true in space and time, the vital difference that common interpretation of the source of Muslim teaching, above all, the Koran, blesses the Muslim ideas and practices that we condemn as evil and "extreme", whereas the common interpretations of Christian teaching forbid them, the spreading of the Faith by force or deception, the very existence of taquiyya (and yes, I know how they are now trying to get us to think of it), devshirme and jihad.
So an insistence that the generalizations be disallowed because a minority in the West disavows them (to our faces, at least) is effectively support of Islam. I, for one, am certainly ready to concede both what the Muslim in right about in his faith and teachings, and even that there are honest and sincere Muslims who think that the common interpretations of the Koran are wrong. I have no trouble imagining good in people. But what is true about the thing as a whole is not changed or denied by the exceptions to the rule.
