Microsoft, presumably, could decline to sign Red Hat's bootloader. Then what? Suddenly it's not just a "whopping $99" that's the problem.

In my mind, I like to picture this spat ending with them shouting "INDUBITABLY!" at each other and throwing tea.

I got the reference wrong... oops. I was referring to the Massacre of Banu Quraiza. Info on Wikipedia is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banu_Qurayza

I don't think most of your examples were religiously motivated. They were just motivated by pure greed.

That is the crux (so to speak) of the matter. Christianity has moved past those days. Islam has not, and I believe Islam is structurally incapable of reform in the way that Christianity was.

The Bible does indeed talk about some pretty gruesome things. I'm unaware of any passage in the Bible that says we should emulate God or those who committed the gruesome things.

I don't mean to give Judaism or Christianity a free pass here. But as of today, the empirical evidence is that Islam inspires far more religious violence than any other religion.

If a religion's scriptures promote and extol violence, it is absolutely fair to blame that religion when its followers commit violence.

Religiously-inspired Islamic violence is off the charts compared to any other religion. I don't see how you can deny the empirical evidence.

"The moon may be made of green cheese"

"The Earth may be flat"

"A tech journalist may not be lazy"

According to Islam, the Quran is the ultimate authority and must be taken as truth. Other Abrahamic religions have their fundamentalist nutcases, it is true, but they have much less of a problem with people reinterpreting the religious texts than Islam does.

Also, giving any sort of religious text a free pass because it's "not meant to be taken literally" is a dangerous game. It allows religious adherents to present their religion as moderate to outsiders while revealing its true and violent face to insiders. I don't think any religious text, whether it's Islamic, Christian or Jewish, should be viewed as anything other than hateful if it promotes violence, genocide, etc.

I don't see what your Star Wars analogy has to do with it. Consider:

There are at least a hundred verses in the Quran that call for or justify religious violence. Many other Islamic writings do the same.

There have been tens of thousands of religiously-motivated attacks by Muslims in the last ten years, greatly outnumbering religiously-motivated attacks by any other religious group.

What is it you're failing to grasp?