Those are the same polls. But I think gay marriage is a reasonable approximation for openness to gay people.
Many leaders of the American Muslim community have signed onto a statement about the attack, here: http://orlandostatement.com
It does not go as far as some other prominent statements from American Muslim organizations and Imams. And it is, at moments, overly defensive. But for a consensus statement, it strikes me as being decent–at least as good as the statements by national GOP people as to the fundamental equality and inviolable rights of gay Americans.
It can definitely encourage homophobia in an individual. Islamic teachings deem homosexual relations a “sin”. The same goes for Christians.
Thanks so much for the clarification. In all honesty, I never shared Valteron’s fears about immigration and Sharia, only his fears about individual crazy homophobes in general. But I do have to disagree with your comments about relative risk factors. Your other examples were isolated incidents, yet homophobic violence goes back as far as I can remember, including specific incidents in my own history.
But please bear in mind that this thread has already been closed once, and reopened. It’d be a shame to have it closed again because of your problem with the OP, hundreds of posts ago.
What you said is that the only reason the FRC was listed as a hate group was because they oppose gay marriage. This is incorrect. They don’t merely oppose gay marriage. They’ve been working for decades to spread hatred about gay people.
The full list of the FRC’s activities include support of ex-gay Conversion Therapy, working to create legal protections for discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation, and supporting the efforts of some African nations to criminalize homosexuality. These are all factual factual activities that the FRC has genuinely done.
Reporting factual instances of the FRC creating and promoting hate speech qualify the FRC as a hate group. This is not a difference of opinion. This is a factual assessment of the FRC’s activities.
Blaming the SPLC for creating a list of groups who factually engage in hate activity is to blame the scribe for the noting the actions of others.
Terrorism takes lots of different guises. It’s not just splashy things like blowing up a school bus (although that is certainly a hateful act). Burning crosses on the lawn, hanging nooses from a door, making a coworker uncomfortable over their religion or “accidentally” touching their boobs - even when no one actually gets hurt, this are terrorist acts because they are intended to intimidate their victims into shutting up and running away. It’s often more effective because the subtle terrorist will claim he was only joking, and what’s the big deal and so on. The subtle terrorist makes it into a chance to isolate the victim as the person who can’t take a joke. The subtle terrorist will make the victim to be the odd one out.
That’s why rape is often said to be about power, not sexual need. Raping women is a way to keep them afraid and make them avoid public notice. It’s a way of silencing voices.
Also, terrorism flourishes in environments of hate and deceit. Groups like FRC spreading lies, such “Gay scout leaders can’t be trusted with your sons” encourages people to hate and isolate gay men from participating in community activities. By reinforcing homophobia ina community, the FRC causes damage to gays by making them grow up feeling shame and fear. In that atmosphere of shame, some like Omar Mateen, will turn to self-hate (and may or may not seek external victims to relieve the psychic conflict.) Others, encouraged to hate gays by their Churches will seek to victimizes those they’ve been taught to think (falsly) week and dangerous to the community.
It’s correct that not all hate groups will spawn mass shootings - but terrorism is not limited to gunpowder. Terrorism starts quietly, with attempts to intimidate others, to frighten the vulnerable and teach them “their place”. Terrorism is an outgrowth of bullying, and hate groups are where bullying start.
Which is not to say that hate groups never turn to blood shed, of course. As that Vox article I posted pointed, right-wing extremists are more likely to conduct violent terrorism than Islamic terrorists are, in this country. Omar Mateen’s homophobia was not nurtured by the Family Research Council. But the FRC is responsible for promoting homophobia in our country. If we want to prevent atrocities like Mateen’s we can’t excuse the homegrown bigots who promote hatred for our most vulnerable citizens.
This articleis relevant.
It’s completely fair and valid that Christianity and other faiths / cultures demonize gays. There was never really a debate about whether Islam was somehow alone in its opposition to gay rights.
The original question was whether Islam drives homophobic violence, and clearly it does. Whether other religions or cultures do it, too, wasn’t the question, and moreover, I don’t think we’re really helping gay rights or Islam by deflecting attention away from modern Islam’s flaws.
I am more than happy to confront the evils of Christian fundamentalism, and I have no doubt that those will reveal themselves in the near future. It’s probably a matter of time before another Christian zealot attacks abortion rights protesters or doctors who perform these services. I’m more than happy to take Christians to task over everything from being global warming deniers to pushing intelligent design in schools to justifying violence against any number of ‘enemies’.
But that’s not the subject of this thread. The fact that Christians can be intolerant doesn’t somehow remedy the fact that some Muslims have a penchant for violent conduct themselves.
“Each page’s comment section…”
Well, there’s your problem right there.
And chilling.
If multiple groups are capable of promoting violence, what is the point of singling out one group to bear the brunt of a rant? That borders on selective fear/hatred/anger/opposition.
Your definition of terrorism is incorrect. The correct definition of terrorism, according to the U.S. code, is “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience”. So if something isn’t violence, it isn’t terrorism. Making people feel uncomfortable is not terrorism. Isolating a person is not terrorism. Touching someone’s boobs is not terrorism. Telling jokes is not terrorism. That’s why the State Dept’s list of terrorist organizations contains groups like Al Queda, Hamas, and Boko Haram, but not The Second City or The Daily Show.
You’ve written many posts on this message board attacking people and groups, obviously with the intent to intimidate and isolate people in some cases. Does that make you a terrorist? If not, then apparently you understand why the definition of terrorism you just posted is so obviously wrong.
Do you have those goalpost motorized, or what?
Perhaps because the sample populations used were taken from the most conservative end of the spectrum:
If you’re wondering why British Muslims appear to be such outliers, this is a far more likely reason than “all British Muslims are reactionary zealots”, particularly when the purpose of the poll was to fuel a “controversial” television show. Consider:
A little context goes a long way.
God forbid the author ever discovers YouTube.
Because the 50 people who were killed in an Orlando night club weren’t killed by members from multiple groups. If Muslim after Muslim after Muslim commits acts of mass murder in societies that are generally considered not to be war zones or areas of political unrest, it is a completely natural question to ask, “Is there a problem with this particular culture that needs to be examined further?”
I really don’t understand how progressives who would not waste a second to call out the incendiary religious rhetoric that leads to abortion clinic violence can express discomfort when we’re making similar criticisms of Islam. And the criticisms of Islam are similar – not extraordinary. Sure, bigots will take it further and exploit the situation for their own benefit, but not everyone who criticizes Islam is anti-Islam, just like not everyone who criticizes Zionism is anti-Jewish, or everyone who castigates anti-abortion rhetoric is anti-Christian.
Sure, but that’s exactly why it’s so dishonest as well as counterproductive to refuse to consider the parallels of such attacks with similar attacks by members of other cultures.
If right-wing Christian after right-wing Christian after right-wing Christian commits acts of mass murder in a society that is generally considered not to be a war zone, for example, that may have something important to tell us about why Islamist extremists are doing the same thing. It may not tell us why at present there are more Islamist-extremist mass murderers than right-wing Christian ones, but it allows us to look beyond superficial differences in the trappings of fanaticism to understand more about fanaticism in general.
Contrary to what you obstinately imagine, anti-Islamophobes aren’t making these points to try to excuse or diminish or trivialize Islamist-extremist violence or to disguise the acknowledged fact that the prevalence and severity of this sort of extremist violence these days are much more marked in Islam than in other religions.
Rather, what we’re doing is trying to avoid the superficial essentialism that ignorantly scapegoats aspects of Islam that aren’t actually the root cause of modern Islamist-extremist violence.
That sort of ignorant superficial essentialism is what produces Chestertonian idiocies like imagining that Eastern scripts obviously embody evil text because their letters are “the wrong shape”, like twisting serpents. Or, less drastically, like Magiver’s silly notion that Islamist-extremist homophobia can be explained by the Muslim “belief system” containing a “specific law” against homosexuality, disregarding the fact that other belief systems also have similarly specific laws:
So does Judaism, and by extension Christianity. The “specific law” in Leviticus prescribing the death penalty for homosexuality—and in many other cases where we liberal moderns consider its application to be a barbaric violation of human rights—is accepted by Jewish and Christian literalists as part of the teachings of Moses directly inspired by God.
In fact, Leviticus 24:10-23 describes Moses in person proclaiming a death sentence in a blasphemy case and decreeing that it must be applied in all such cases.
So when you simplistically try to argue that many Muslims today support executing homosexuals or blasphemers or adulterers etc. just because their God’s Word as recorded by Muhammad tells them to, then you have to be able to explain why so many fewer (though not zero) Jews and Christians today support executing homosexuals or blasphemers or adulterers etc. even though their God’s Word as recorded by Moses ALSO tells them to.
See what I mean? You can’t logically put the blame for modern Islamist-extremist violence on some particular aspect of Islam, if that particular aspect is not in fact unique to Islam but is shared by other religions that don’t exhibit the same level of extremist violence.
It continues to baffle me that so many Straight Dopers can be so resistant to that fundamental level of recognition for basic logic, at least when it comes to talking about Islamic-extremist terrorism. Bigotry is truly a mind-altering drug.
[QUOTE=asahi]
I really don’t understand how progressives who would not waste a second to call out the incendiary religious rhetoric that leads to abortion clinic violence can express discomfort when we’re making similar criticisms of Islam.
[/quote]
That’s because you refuse to distinguish between the concepts of “incendiary religious rhetoric” and “a religion”, at least when the religion in question is Islam.
For confirmation, check out the Pew Poll I posted earlier. It has two relevant questions - one on “% who say homosexuality should be accepted by society” and the other on “support for same-sex marriage”. You have to scroll down.
No more detail, though it is reporting the conclusions of a poll that it cites as its source - the “2014 Religious Landscape Study, QB2a”.
Looking into it further, the poll had four positions: homosexuality should be accepted; homosexuality should be discouraged; neither/both; or don’t know.
Thanks. To spare a lot of scrolling for others, 36% of evangelical Christians (and also Mormons) believe homosexuality should be accepted by society; 48% of protestants in general; and 45% of Muslim Americans. So Muslim Americans are significantly more accepting of homosexuality than evangelical Christians and Mormons (in America), and about as accepting as protestant Americans.
Atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, and Jews top the list in terms of accepting homosexuality, at 94%, 94%, 88%, and 81%, respectively, while Jehovah’s Witnesses, evangelical Christians, and Mormons are at the bottom with 16%, 36%, and 36% respectively.
Perhaps some of those many Straight Dopers have studied comparative religion, and are aware of differences between how Jews, Christians, and Muslims interpret their respective scriptures.
Let’s just focus on Judaism for a moment. You quoted from Leviticus, one of the five books of the Torah, the original source of what Judaism refers to as the Law. But their understanding of the law from the Torah is filtered through countless generations of interpretation, as collected in the Talmud. This is true, in fact it is most true, for Orthodox Jews. It is true today. It was true 50 years ago, and 500 years ago, and 1000 years ago.
One could trash the Jews for what their scriptures say till the cows come home, but the fact is that, through much of ancient and medieval times, the Jewish legal system was actually more humane than most others existing at the same time. It provided for trial by jury, guarded against mob mentality, kept executions relatively rare and didn’t include the gruesome forms of torture that so many other ancient civilizations used. All true because of the traditional teachings collected in the Talmud, plus others.
Now when we consider Islam, many people, if they haven’t studied comparative religion, don’t understand the extent to which the Koran and Hadiths dictate Islamic belief and practice. All the major Islamic denominations have interpretive traditions, which one could think of as playing a similar role to what the Talmud provides for Orthodox Judaism. But comparatively, in Islam, the scripture plays a very strong role, the interpretive tradition plays a weak one. In Judaism that’s reversed.
Try reading this article: What ISIS Really Wants. It lays out in detail how every bizarre form of torture and execution and every call for terrorist attacks from ISIS has a clear basis in the Koran, which ISIS leaders drive home constantly.
Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail.
If we want to understand why thousands of youths from western countries have run off to join the Islamic state, but there’s no similar movement of young Jewish people to a similar Jewish terrorist group (or a Christian or Buddhist or Shinto or …), we have to start by studying and understanding the ways in which Islam is different from other religions.
“Caused” doesn’t seem like an accurate word to use. He selected his target by using their list - that’s very far from “He did it because their name was on that list” or “He was moved to do what he did because of the list” or any other such thing which would fairly allow us to assign “cause” to the SPLC.
Unless there’s reason to believe this guy would not have carried out his attacks somewhere without that name on that list - not just that he selected targets for his planned attack via that list - then “They’ve certainly caused one” is a tremendous slur.