That phrase bothered me for a different reason - namely, the role of Christian evangelism in western imperialism. Christianity became a key justification for the racism and orientalism necessary to justify the imperialism, the idea that enlightened Christian Europeans were going to save the ignorant savages and degenerate oriental kingdoms from themselves. Without the racism and orientalism, imperialist ambitions become too morally difficult to maintain.

So I don't think the problem is Islam, or even Christianity. I think the problem is the political usefulness of evangelical religions.

Of course, the horror we talk about when talking about the violent nature of Islam is "terrorism"... which is, really, just a form of asymmetric warfare, all that's available when one side has tremendous military superiority. If the armies were more equal, the situation would be different.

This is actually related to another minor gripe I have about Mark Fisher. He talks a lot of the problems of left-wing online activism, and he's right, but the problem as it stands today isn't a new flaw of the left (this thinking has always been around, as he has noted). Rather, it's that the internet and social media make it so easy to be a mob. The right-wing Twittersphere is as bad as the left, and uses much the same tactics. The correct answer is for us to stay off of social media...