This was going to go on to Testy’s thread (best of luck to you), but it got closed as I was writing it, if a Mod wants to edit out my profuse F-bombing and move it to GDs feel free, but for now I hope most of the Dopers who posted on Testy’s thread give this a read:
Any extensive ideology can be used to just about any ends; it’s pretty hard to place accurate objective judgments about which ones are more or less predisposed to violence.
That being said, Islam is particularly volatile (not that any other religion isn’t) and can be easily interpreted to back violence and terror – this interpretation isn’t necessarily the correct or proper one, but it’s one that’s being embraced. Terrorism in the name of Islam is occurring on an international scale, an international scale which is greater in terms of total kills than any other religion in the present generation.
For a long time Christianity would have held this dubious mantle, today Islam does. That doesn’t make either one less a “religion of peace,” even the spiritual leader of freaking Hezbollah publicly condemned 9/11, and although many other average Muslims were less than sympathetic following it – they weren’t the only ones.
Islam isn’t the enemy – terrorism is. By attacking Islam and Muslims in general we’re giving the terrorists’ violent interpretation legitimacy, which only helps them. The ideology is a coincidence, of course Islam can and is being used to justify violence, but that doesn’t necessarily etch a Islam as a violent ideology any more than any other ideological justification to violence changes the inherent character of that ideology. An ideology’s nature is malleable; it’s created by our collective perspective.
Attacking the terrorists as Muslims gives weight to the terrorists’ take on the ideology - if the KKK were attacked for being “Christians” instead of “worthless fucking murdering bigots” that would lend weight and give legitimacy to their sick interpretation of Christianity and excuse their actions as being pardoned by their religion. The more people who call Islam the root of terrorism, or focus on the terrorists being Muslim instead of “worthless fucking murdering bigots,” the more the terrorists win; the more legitimacy their interpretation of Islam gains – they want to excuse their actions through Islam and by attributing their actions to Islam we’re allowing them to do just that.
Terrorists are worthless fucking murdering bigots, by characterizing them as Muslims instead of as worthless fucking murdering bigots we are aiding them by giving them a mask to hide behind – their twisted ideology, and hardening that mask. By labeling them for what they are, without their ideological mask, we destroy their ideological credibility, strip it of any legitimacy - and our perspective then makes Islam a religion of peace, and makes the terrorists nothing but worthless fucking murdering bigots.