Even someone who might theoretically be claiming that violence is endemic to Islam is obviously not claiming that even single Muslim is violent. So that’s not one of the two options we’re discussing here.
The two possibilities are 1) there’s something about Islam which makes its followers more prone to religious violence, and that’s why so many of them are violent today, and 2) there’s nothing about Islam which makes its followers more prone to religious violence, but for whatever reasons - not inherent to the religion itself - a rather high percentage of its followers today are predisposed to religious violence.
These are the only two possibilities under discussion, and there’s little practical difference between them. You’re just strawmanning.
What do you mean, “obviously”? If non-Muslims and non-specialists can’t or won’t distinguish between “Islam is inherently violent” and “Islam has a problem with its violent-extremist minority”, then why do you expect the same non-Muslim non-specialists to know the difference between “Islam is inherently violent” and “all Muslims are inherently violent”?
[QUOTE=Fotheringay-Phipps]
The two possibilities are 1) there’s something about Islam which makes its followers more prone to religious violence, and that’s why so many of them are violent today, and 2) there’s nothing about Islam which makes its followers more prone to religious violence, but for whatever reasons - not inherent to the religion itself - a rather high percentage of its followers today are predisposed to religious violence.
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Sounds like a pretty fucking huge practical difference to me. See, e.g., the Volkswagen analogy above.
No one seriously thinks that all Muslims are inherently violent. There are all sorts of non-violent Muslims around and everyone knows this. In the unlikely event you find someone actually making this claim then by all means attack it. But what you’re doing is pretending that anyone saying that Islamic doctrine encourages violence is saying that all Muslims are violent.
That’s a bad analogy. Volkswagon was caught in one scam, albeit a huge one. If Volkswagon was involved in a lot of these types of scams (as is currently the case with Muslims and violence) then there would be little to no practical difference as applied to Volkswagon either.
Exactly. Because people can tell the difference between Islam having a minority of violent extremists and Islam being inherently violent. I don’t know why you have such a low opinion of non-Muslims’ analytical abilities as to imagine that this is an obscure arcane distinction.
Now, there are plenty of people who want to claim that Islam is inherently violent and ignore or rationalize the inconvenient fact that most Muslims aren’t violent (e.g., by using waffle-words like “more prone to religious violence”, which neatly sidesteps the logical inconsistency of a religion being “inherently” violent and yet failing to produce violence in most of its adherents). Those people are called Islamophobes.
I have indeed. But none of them is synonymous with “inherently”.
What you want here is to be able to condemn Islam itself for being intrinsically violent (or at least excuse people for calling Islam intrinsically violent on the grounds that they shouldn’t be expected to know better) while managing to explain away the contradictory evidence that most Muslims aren’t violent.
So you reach for a quasi-medical analogy like “predisposition to”, as if Islam were analogous to a hereditary condition that somehow increases your chances of developing violence but doesn’t actually guarantee that you’ll develop violence.
This, however, is not how religions actually work. There isn’t some sort of conceptual equivalent of a “violence gene”.
A religion that encourages violence is inherently violent, in the sense that more people who follow that religion will be violent than people who don’t follow it, as a result of that religion’s teachings. But that doesn’t mean that every follower of that religion will be violent.
It’s the nature of religions that 1) they contain a lot of different teachings, and 2) that many of those teachings are open to interpretation. As a result, people with different inclinations (or in different circumstances) 1) will emphasize different teachings of that religion, and/or 2) will tend to interpret the various teachings in accordance with their inclinations. But that doesn’t mean that all religions are essentially blank slates, and that no religion can be said to be inherently anything.
So the question here is whether the Islamic religion has an inherent tendency to be more encouraging of religious violence than other religions, or if the current situation is purely the result of outside forces pressuring many Muslims to adopt violent interpretations that they could just as easily have adopted if they followed any other religion. But no one - to my knowlege has claimed that all Muslims are violent. But this is a claim is very easily refutable, so it serves your purpose to pretend that anyone who disagrees with you is making it.
You’re misrepresenting the context.
I’m not claiming that Islam is intrinsically violent. I’m saying that those who are making this claim are not claiming that all Muslims are violent, such that you can’t refute it by pretending that they are, and that the difference between the inherent claim and the non-inherent claim are not particularly relevant as a practical matter.
You’re really hung up on “inherently”. The GOP is “inherently” the party of Lincoln responsible for freeing the slaves. The NRA is “inherently” a rifle club committed to promoting safe gun use. They aren’t anymore. I don’t care what principles they were founded on, or what their ancient texts are stating. Not every member of the GOP is a racist plutocrat and not every member of the NRA is a batshit crazy gun nut. But, enough are that it is concerning, and I can’t support either group until the day comes that they reform their ways.
[QUOTE=Fotheringay-Phipps]
I’m not claiming that Islam is intrinsically violent. I’m saying that those who are making this claim are not claiming that all Muslims are violent, such that you can’t refute it by pretending that they are, and that the difference between the inherent claim and the non-inherent claim are not particularly relevant as a practical matter.
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Then you and I must be using completely different interpretations of the term “practical matter”. If all you mean by that is “some people are concerned that there’s a significant minority of violent extremists in Islam but they don’t really know or care why”, then sure, I readily concede that understanding the causes of the phenomenon is not a matter of practical concern to those people.
In that case, I withdraw the term “Islamophobes” and substitute “dumbasses”.
Failed analogy. The GOP and the NRA both have official positions that they support in the here and now, and I presume that it’s at least partly those positions you object to, and not just the presence of some awful individuals among them. Presumably what you want them to “reform” is their official support for those positions.
I see you have a habit of removing the parts of posts which make the points you want to dispute, and then noting that the remaining parts don’t make the point.
As Dorothy Parker once said, “you can lead a horticulture …”
If you’re deciding whether you need an umbrella and you see that it’s raining outside, do you need to understand the root causes of the rain, or just know that you might get wet?
Obviously, if I want to know how bad the rain’s going to be and how long it will go on and all the other factors that might affect whether I decide to take an umbrella, I need to know something about the causes of the rain. E.g., is it a settled low-pressure area or just a passing shower, etc.
If I don’t bother to find out enough about the underlying weather conditions to know whether an umbrella is needed, that would make me kind of a dumbass.
OK, but if you just knew enough to appreciate that you needed an umbrella and didn’t bother to find out anything further, you might not bother either. Even if you were not a dumbass.
And the same applies to a lot of people who are concerned about the practical aspects of the prevalence of radical Islam at this time.
I see. So according to your analogy, your role in this thread is basically that of somebody butting into a discussion about the physics of the low-pressure system causing the current rain, merely to point out “Most people don’t need to know the cause of the rain just to decide whether or not they need an umbrella!”
Irrelevant; she was talking about whores, of whom I presume we have none among those present.