I don’t think Penn Jillette was making a joke at all.
Afaik, no religion does that. Of course there are many many churches and even cults in Christianity, so pretty much some group will be doing something foolish.
But that is the issue- tarring Christianity or Christians with a broad brush. Other than a belief in Jesus Christ, there are few consistencies. You can find a fringe group (that does not follow the teachings of Christ) which hates homosexuals. You can find another where a lesbian married woman is the pastor.
I can not find a single “bad” that all branches follow.
None that I know of, but all of China and most/parts of the Moslem world is hardly “isolated pockets”. And it used to be all of the Communist Block.
Right, good points.
The killing of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk has been followed by a string of arrests across the U.S. over alleged threats of violence in response to the assassination of the conservative activist.
Not a great cite.
< comes in to mention Apu >
< thinks better of it >
I should mention that in the UK there have been a shitload of shows - including sitcoms - about Muslims. Some have been really funny (eg Man Like Mobeen). Some less so (how did Citizen Khan get five seasons?). Strangely, no one has blown up anything in response.
But then Muslims are far more integrated into UK society and most people have friends, co-workers and/or neighbors who are Muslim. And when one discovers that they’re normal people just getting through daily life like everyone else, you stop seeing them as aliens and monsters. Which is also why the areas with the least diversity exhibit the most racism.
Anyway - sitcoms about Muslims are perfectly fine and don’t automatically result in violence. Dunno how many scenes were in mosques but then how many episodes of Friends were in churches (weddings aside)?
Are you saying Penn Jillette believes it is factually true that if you criticize the Quran on a television show, somebody will attack your family?
That’s true of any major religion. Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism - all have their liberal and conservative branches. And yet there’s a lot of wide-tarbrush wielding in those cases. Including by the folk here terrified of Muslims.
I expect Jillette believes the odds of someone murdering him or someone on his show for statements made about the Quran were more risky than the show they were willing to produce about the Bible. You may remember a few years ago there were some controversies over publishing depictions of the prophet Muhammad. One of the common arguments against publication was to avoid violence. Are you going to seriously argue Jillette’s fears are completely unwarranted?
No, the issue is Christians counting bodies (which supposedly show how large and powerful they are), while ignoring all those supposed Christians that espouse opinions, views and sometimes actions that go against their publically held beliefs. In a way it is the broad brush of “Judeo-Christianity” clashing with “Those aren’t real Christians, so what do you expect us to about it?”
Basically, if you want to pick up that broad brush, you better be prepared to get hit alongside the head with it.
They do?
That reminds me of another example - “Legends of Tomorrow” had a couple of Muslim characters ( Behrad and Zari).
Back in 2008, PZ Myers desecrated a Communion wafer, a Quran and a copy of the God Delusion (and he’s also been criticizing bogus claims that the Quran is scientifically accurate for a long time (here’s a 2024 example). This has resulted in a lot of annoying emails from Muslim fundamentalists and one death threat from a Catholic (I suspect that the problem isn’t with the particular religion, but with the fact that Myers lives in the United States - in a majority Islamic nation, he’d get annoying emails from Christians and threats from local Muslims. There’s always violent people - the cause they are willing to be violent for just varies according to the local environment)
I have more respect for Penn Jillette’s ability to do math than that. I’m sure he is aware that the odds of being murdered in the United States by a Christian are much higher than the odds of being murdered by a Muslim.
So if he was worried about the odds of being murdered, he’d have done an episode on Islam and the Quran and not done an episode on Christianity and the Bible.
I’m saying he doesn’t want to find out…
Ummm… okay…
I’m sure Penn Jillette is aware that the odds of being murdered in the United States by a Christian are much higher than the odds of being murdered by a Muslim.
So if he was worried about the odds of being murdered, he’d have done an episode on Islam and the Quran and not done an episode on Christianity and the Bible.
My experience as an exvangelical who was homeschooled and forbidden from consuming secular media because it was “of the world”, is that Christian nationalism has been with us for a long time, it just took it longer to become the most powerful bloc in one of the major political parties.
Evangelical Christianity has been the main engine of the reactionary movement that wants to tear away a century and a half worth of progress. They also have an ongoing project to control culture in a way that no other religion in the US could dream of.
This shows up in the chilled speech around the violent and relatively young “pro life” movement, the home school and private school movement that was a backlash to racial integration. Then there’s the absolutely bats*** levels of science denial on evolution, the age of the planet, medicine, and climate change.
All cults are bad. Mind control is bad. Distortion of history is bad. Faith is delusional. Hatred & violence as a result of faith is bad. Manipulation of those blinded by faith is bad. Rejection of science is bad.Intolerance is bad. Religion is bad. Humans are bad.
Yeah. But whaddaya gonna do…
Indeed.
I suspect people are more tolerant of Christianity bashing because a lot of us suffer under it personally.
OTOH, Christians bash other religions all the time, and I think they more than make up for the minority of people in the US who are precious about bashing Islam.
Heck, you should see how hard evangelicals are on Catholics.
To be frank, as a one-time evangelical raised in the US, I know more about Christianity than my own current religion (Buddhism.) I’m not going to bash Islam because I don’t know much about it and I don’t want to show my whole ass. When I criticize Christianity I am critiquing my own culture.
There seems to be an underlying assumption that Islam doesn’t get bashed because of a moral double-standard. I think it also isn’t bashed because some people don’t mess with religions they have no direct experience with.
I agree - and I, too, spent decades in evangelical Christianity. But as the above QueerMajority article showed, many people in the West aren’t just saying, “I don’t want to criticize Islam because I know little about it.” They were trying to squelch criticism of Islam even as far as it concerned LGBT people being oppressed by Islam in Islamic nations abroad, or as people who had grown up in such nations.
Quote from the article: “A message was communicated to the wider public that criticism of Islamic Homophobia is unacceptable. In this case it did not matter that some of the critics were Muslim and others Ex-Muslim. It did not matter that almost all the protesters were diaspora and refugees, individuals who had grown up and lived under Islam and were from Muslim families. It did not matter that many of them had fled countries and communities where imprisonment or death were the penalty for their sexuality. Any criticism of Islamic Homophobia was deemed Islamophobic (anti-Muslim) and racist.”
I think the key factor is the ability to distinguish between an individual and a member of a group. There are people who hear about a violent act committed by a Muslim and their response is “I now worry about Muslims committing violent acts.” These same people hear about a violent act committed by a Christian and they don’t have a similar fear that Christians in general are going to commit violent acts.
That’s why those cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo were killed for their caricatures of Jesus, right? After all, it’s far more likely to be murdered in France by a Christian than a Muslim.