How does one become a muslim ?

[Abraham]

Originally Posted by DAB

Yeah...and I remember being expelled from Sunday School for suggesting Creationism was flawed.

Funny...fundermentalists seem to be there in ALL religions.

Sure, you being expelled from a Sunday school may have been a traumatic experience, but that can hardly be seen as a prohibition to your critical thinking and to express yourself freely in this Western society, as your posting proves. It was a Christian Sunday school and not a Public school that expelled you! The comparison is therefore invalid (and slightly ridiculous).
And yes, there are of course fundamentalists in every religion, people that take their faith serious. This goes for Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Its the fundamentalist interpretation of his religion that determinates the behaviour of fundamentalists. If that religion does not accept the separation between State and Church and considers itself and its rules superior to Western nations and their Rule of Law, like fundamental Islam does, we have a problem.

And it's not just a matter of translation. as you said:

Originally Posted by DAB

My point is that word empahsis is different in Indo European Germanic languages... certainly very different to a Semitic Afro-Asiatic Language which is Arabic.

I conclude that Islam stems from a culture widely different from our modern Western culture.

It is the vision Islam holds on its own dominant position in all aspects of society that is the crux of the problem. It can realise that position in predominant Muslim countries, but not in a 21th century Western society. That attitude causes much misery for its followers in such a society...
It's a challenge for Islam to modernize and accept its proper place in our society: next and equal to other religions.
Will it ever be able to survive as such? I sometimes doubt it...