When Muslims Commit Violence

Archangel M

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no movie producers, authors or cartoonists seem to fear Christian backlashes but outright say that they wouldn't portray a Mosque being destroyed out of FEAR.

If some director made a controversial movie about Mohammed (something like the Da Vinci Code) what do you think would happen?

I think that's where he is going.
 
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Big Don

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What's your point, Don?
Christians, even agnostics (who aren't Christians) are blamed loudly, and widely for everything but, the fall of Rome, oh wait, there was a thread about that...
Muslims commit atrocities and no one wants to blame the man, the religion, anything. Dr Tiller is murdered :"Why are Christians killing people?" 13 dead and 30 wounded:"It isn't about Hasan being a Muslim, how dare you, you bigot"...
 

Archangel M

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He has a point.

I think there are quite a number of threads here bemoaning the Inquisition, Crusades, Right Wing Christian beliefs and how they are the bane of education (evolution etc.).

How long would such a conversation about Islam and its association with current events last?
 
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Big Don

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Big Don

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Some Christians say they don't like homosexuality, and they are useless, morons.
Does the same standard get applied to Muslims?
Hell no.
IRAN, not the US, not the Roman Catholic Church, NOT, the Southern Baptists has in recent years EXECUTED people for merely being gay.
Is there massive outcry against Islam for this? Of course not
 

Archangel M

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Is it because we are so PC?

Is it because we are scared?

What makes one topic open for debate while another is declared bigotry before it even gets started?
 

Archangel M

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Han Solo: Let him have it. It's not wise to upset a Wookiee.

C-3PO: But sir, nobody worries about upsetting a droid.

Han Solo: That's 'cause droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookiees are known to do that.

Chewbacca: Grrf.

C-3PO: I see your point, sir. I suggest a new strategy, R2: let the Wookiee win.
 

Marginal

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What makes one topic open for debate while another is declared bigotry before it even gets started?
In this case, people knew nothing except the guy's last name when the news first broke.

That's not enough info to go running around screaming about terrorists etc.
 

Archangel M

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In this case, people knew nothing except the guy's last name when the news first broke.

That's not enough info to go running around screaming about terrorists etc.

Theres a LOT more known now and more to come Im sure.
 

Carol

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Is it because we are so PC?

Is it because we are scared?

What makes one topic open for debate while another is declared bigotry before it even gets started?


A few factors that I can see.

Christianity is a lot more familiar to us as a people, than Islam. The cultures of Christians around the world are more similar. Aspects to many Eastern cultures look strange to us, even if they are not patently offensive (think Cassius Clay becoming Muhammad Ali).

The threat of Islamo-fascism (for lack of a better word) is very real. And unfortunately that threat has spawned outward expressions of ignorance that result in indifference or outright hatred towards the Muslim faith as a whole, or even to people of Arabic heritage whether they are Muslim or not.

In addition, the existence of Islamo-fascism has made people afraid. Anyone want to live under police protection as Salman Rusdie has? Or receive death threats that push you in to hiding as the Jyllands-Posten cartoonists have?

It is a very complex issue.
 
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Big Don

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None of it supports some kind of islamofacist (such a laughable marketing term) plot.
But, everything about Tiller (the baby killer)'s murder was supported by some nefarious Christian plot?
Right.
 
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Big Don

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The civil rights organizations (NOW, NAACP, PFLAG etc) that are so quick to jump all over any Christian or conservative who dares step a toe out of line are pretty damn quiet when Iran hangs gays, or, other Muslim groups or nations subjugates women, etc, these groups stand SILENT.
That isn't a double standard?
 

Marginal

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But, everything about Tiller (the baby killer)'s murder was supported by some nefarious Christian plot?
Right.
That's what you're arguing for basically. You want to assign a global terrorist plot to the act on one person based largely on his last name and religion.

IIRC, you weren't willing to call Tiller's shooter a terrorist. Even though his crime was far more politically motivated.
 

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Jihad is a common arabic word, stemming from JHD. Which means to strive.
The inner jihad is often called the big jihad. Letting go of the ego and such.
The outher jihad (what everyone calls holy war) doesn't mean holy war. It means outward striving. War can be a facet of that.

Perhaps a better understanding would be that of takfiri. Although in its original meaning it is used against other Muslims who are considered to be impure, the tactics and rules that apply to them are very similar to the current tactics of the modern day terrorist.
 

Ramirez

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He has a point.

I think there are quite a number of threads here bemoaning the Inquisition, Crusades, Right Wing Christian beliefs and how they are the bane of education (evolution etc.).

How long would such a conversation about Islam and its association with current events last?

Well Islam is the favorite case in point for atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris on why they dislike religion, Harris even begins one of his books with an Islamic suicide bomber as an example.

So once again, I don't see how Islam is "immune".
 

Kajowaraku

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Whoah. I see alot of confusion and people mixing up the causality of things here.

Firstly: Islam was possibly a factor in the decisionmaking or justifications that lead the shooter to commit his heinous crime.

secondly: that does not automatically extrapolate to: Islam causes people to commit heinous crimes.

One can't simply generalise these things. That's another effect of fear. We fear islamic response (which means the reaction of a small, but visible minority of violent extremists) so we extrapolate our fears to the entire group. It's human, but also wrong. ANY religion is liable to abuse by madmen. When GWB called for a crusade against terrorism many people back here gasped for breath in fear of what he could be evoking (outright religious war). Luckily it didn't come to that. Fear of the muslim is rooted deep in our western minds, and goes back over 500 years, when the Ottoman empire was at the gates of Vienna. And the horrorstories told by the returning crusaders before that. Americans inherited that imagery from their European ancestors, rooted deep in the collective memory. And here we get stuck: the human mind often prefers to verify it's fears and prejudice, rather than falsify it. On a collective scale it's even harder to change such mental imagery. Arab culture produced the fundamentals of mathematics, great poetry, and science. Still, what do people know Islam for? Crusades and other wars, violence involving knives, people kneeling and speaking in tongues and more recently: brutal terrorism.

Ironically, these negative tropes equally apply to a number of other groups if you use the same scale of representation. We're probably looking at far less than 0.1 percent of all muslims being involved in such things (well, except the kneeling in prayer obviously). That seems to pretty much correspond to non-muslim domestic violence, and people of any other ethnicity doing bad things. Islam does get more media coverage, and is at this point probably the most acute motivation for violence in the media (and they often seem to seek media coverage).

What i'm saying is: It's not because a person commits murder in the name of Islam that it would be fair to blame Islam. In fact it would be silly. "Islam" never told him to do anything. Perhaps people that chose to interpret the teachings in a certain way motivated or "inspired" him, but still: that is not Islam.

I could go on about this for a while, and i'd probably need to write an entire essay to make my point more coherent and evidence driven, but I'm kind of hoping you see what i'm getting at. Ultimatly it's irrelevant whether the madman commited his crime because of islamic inspirations or others. I mean, what are you going to do except seeing your collective bogeyman confirmed? Ban Islam? We all know that would be ridiculous and completely besides the point.
 

cdunn

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The civil rights organizations (NOW, NAACP, PFLAG etc) that are so quick to jump all over any Christian or conservative who dares step a toe out of line are pretty damn quiet when Iran hangs gays, or, other Muslim groups or nations subjugates women, etc, these groups stand SILENT.
That isn't a double standard?

No. It's prioritizing. The abhorrent theocracies over there are over there. The abhorrent wanna-be theocrats here are here. The only difference is immediacy of the problem. Those groups are performing their exact purpose - Ensuring that all of us here, in America, have the rights of Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.
 

arnisador

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But, everything about Tiller (the baby killer)'s murder was supported by some nefarious Christian plot?
Right.

Wasn't he part of a group? If the major was part of Al-Qaeda, then it'd be yet another reason to assail that group.

ANY religion is liable to abuse by madmen.

Heck, it's their main reason for existing.

(Wait, are there Buddhist terrorists?)
 

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