Islam is the root cause as Islamism is a product of Islam

There are 40-50 Christian majority countries, that fall within liberal democratic norms, and only 5 or 6, including Russia, Venezuela, and Eritrea, which are totalitarian.

The populations of Islamic countries also tend to commit most of the terrorism in the world. With 24-25% of world population Islamic terrorism accounts for 65-80% or higher of terror deaths. Christians make up 31% of the global population but Christian acts of terrorism are so rare as to be effectively 0%.

Islamic terrorism is generally supported by some recognised strands of Islam. Indeed, as we have seen in Australia, there are Australian Muslim clerics who celebrated October 7, and others who preach violent Jihad.

There are no Christian equivalents.

It might be argued that the difference could be because Islamic countries tend to be less developed, but that would be to ignore the fact that in quite recent history countries like Iran and Turkiye were sophisticated societies on a par with European ones.

We have to look more deeply.

Most religious believers rely on stories more than theology – as in every other field, those who deal in abstracts are the elite minority. The stories of the founders of Islam and Christianity are instructive.

Tradition says that Mohammed owned as many as nine swords, and they all had names, confirming their importance beyond mere tools. Jesus owned none, and his followers may have owned a couple between them.

Mohammed the prophet was also Mohammed the merchant, the warrior, the legislator, and the ruler. Jesus the carpenter’s son relied on the charity of others, forswore secular leadership, and forbade his followers from using force to protect him.

Mohammed lived his later years as an important, wealthy person. Jesus was tortured and killed by the Romans.

From the beginning the Islamic story was one of community and submission to Allah, with divine law being enforced through history, and political authority only legitimate in so far as it enforces that law. Free will exists theologically, but it is not grounds for political pluralism. Moral equality is strongest within the Ummah, the community of believers, than outside.

By contrast Christianity believes the human being is made in the image of God, with irreducible moral agency (freewill), and is directly accountable to God, not mediated by the state. Salvation cannot be obtained through coercion, and ultimate judgment is outside history and belongs to God and the afterlife.