We are currently seeing the rise of fundamentalism in that religion. As with most religions they go through phases of fundamentalism and purging. Christianity has gone through similar phases as well resulting in the Inquisition and later a lot of persecuted Christian sects migrating to the Americas. We have our share of bizarre Christian sects but fortunately they never took off.
No. All the planet lives in the same timeline ( expect north corea ).
Persecutions, inquisitions, migrations were common all around the globe, the diffrence is that in our countries, we had archives, we have traces and evidences of the past. This is the same with slavery for exemple.
Islam had dark periods in the past too, and what happens ( the diffrence is that we lost evidences) now is not a " innocent " evolution or a scientific experiment that we all have to understand. they know what they are doing ( or not ).
you cannot tell that ISIS is equal to inquisition in the 16th century for example, time are diffrent. People cut hands ans stuff like that in europe too but in the middle ages : society was like that, this was the way of living. not now.
the inquisition for exemple is mostly unknown by people, and people against religion use that for their ideas but they are mistaken. Recent histoical reseach show that there were few people killed. some numbers here :
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition_espagnole#Les_condamnations_.C3.A0_mort
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition_médiévale#.C3.89l.C3.A9ments_statistiques















