Check out the BBC's website treatment of the respective histories of Christianity and Islam. A former BBC CEO noticed something. There's one obvious difference between them. The people who wrote up the history of Islam are far more deferential to religious sentiment. Since when does the BBC insist on writing "peace be upon him" after every reference to the Prophet Muhammad? They demonstrate no such piety when discussing Judaism or Christianity. And this is one element that will at some point have to be tackled: Christianity has been reshaped and challenged by scholarly revisionism with respect to the books that became the Bible. We know far more now than we used to about how the Gospels were written, what influenced them, their cultural context, their political objectives, and so on. There is much less scholarship, especially in Islamic countries, about the origins of the Koran. We need more scholarship. And for that, we need less fear, and ... freedom. (Hat tip: Andrew.)