If this person were a Christian the excuses would be limitless from these same bigotted characters about how this could not be connected with his religion. But since he is of the immigrant Muslim background, it is Oh No Sharia Jihad Doom hook to justify their desire for the cleansing…
What you call “extreme versions of the religion” are actually the mainstream. Most Muslim countries have some level of oppression of women, apostates, gays and other groups. American Muslims are a small minority of Muslims.
60% of Egyptians support the death penalty for being an ex-Muslim. 60% of Palestinians support the death penalty for being an ex-Muslim. 80% of Afghans support the death penalty for being an ex-Muslim. (Pages 15 and 55)
These are not just a few bad apples, or just the kingdom that controls the cultural heart of their religion. These are entire countries where you have a better than even chance that anyone you speak to is in favour of a new Holocaust.
Okay, yes, that’s bad. We need to work to change this, to show them that this is a bad social policy.
Meanwhile, how many of those Egyptians (and so on) have actually killed anyone? How many have planted a bomb, or fired a weapon, or swung a cleaver, in order to kill an ex-believer? How many are just flapping their gums – like the Americans who want the death penalty for providing abortions but who haven’t actually set fire to a medical clinic?
I’m far less concerned for their bad opinions than for their bad actions, and only a small minority of Egyptians (and others) have committed violent crimes.
(And if you introduce the word “correlated,” I think I’ll need an antacid.)
From this you somehow managed to extrapolate that I was saying “most of the board’s posters” are okay with the aforementioned evils and are defending them. What they’re defending is the religion that’s given rise to these sexist, homophobic and punitive attitudes which have wide support among the Muslim populace in the majority of the world’s Islamic countries. You guys are always trotting out that Muslim extremists are ‘extreme’ and constantly reminding us that Islamic terrorists are outliers, but the truth is that most of the Islamic populations of most Muslim countries support the very evils I outlined above, evils which, like I said, would have all of this country’s liberals in a state of apoplexy were anyone to suggest their adoption here.
For your edification (and that of Ramira, who inexplicably has chosen to isolate Saudi Arabia as the presumptive target of my remarks), I present the following comprehensive assessment of widespread Muslim attitudes and support for many practices we find abhorrent but which have widespread support in most of the world’s Islamic countries. You’ll note that Saudi Arabia among a few other brutal countries have been left out of the study because asking its citizens for their opinion on these matters was deemed to sensitive (:rolleyes:) or (most probably) too dangerous. So you can add even more Islamic support to the numbers in Pew’s study because Saudi Arabia and few other Islamic countries have been deliberately left out of the study.
And to be fair, there is considerable information included that reflects favorably on many of the world’s Muslims. But still, you’ll learn from this study that:
The Muslim populations in most of the world’s Islamic countries overwhelmingly believe Sharia law should be the law of the land.
That significant numbers (generally from 29% to 50%) believe Sharia law should apply to all of their country’s citizens, not just Muslims.
That among those believing Sharia law should be the law of the land, support for whipping and lopping off hands ranges from 28% to 88%, with 9 of the 20 countries listed coming in at 50% or more in support of these practices.
That support for stoning as the punishment for adultery garners between 21% to 89% support among those favoring Sharia law in the twenty countries surveyed. 11 of the 20 listed show support for these practices in the 40% to 89% range.
That in 9 of the 20 countries surveyed, support for the death penalty for apostasy ranges from 42% to 89%. And in the remaining 11 countries it garners from 4% to 29% support.
That the belief that suicide bombings can be often or sometimes justified, 11 of the 20 countries listed come in at 10% to 40% who hold this belief.
That of the 36 countries surveyed, disapproval of homosexual behavior in 29 of them are in the high 80% to almost 100% range, with the remaining disapproval rates being in the 60% - 79% range.
I won’t go through the entire survey but you get the idea.
thanks for that great summary. Islam is communist savagery, and the apologists for it today are no different than the Bolshevik lovers of the Cold War; no moral compass, everyone is equal regardless of merit (Jews vs Palestinian Islam terrorists is a good example), America/Israel are all that is wrong with the world, capitalism is evil, etc. etc.
Christianity of two hundred years ago would be a more accurate comparison. That would put you around the end of the Inquisition and the end of witch hunts.
The Pew numbers certainly show that there is not an abundance of good news to recommend Muslim sentiments towards western societies and cultures. That said, Muslim attitudes change dramatically when they are welcomed successfully into western societies, like the United States, where they become much more mainstream.
But immigration of Muslims to western societies is trivial compared to those that are born, raised and live their entire lives in their own native countries. Typically, those countries suffer from poverty, oppressive regimes, marginal education and economic opportunities for most. To change hearts and minds of these populations is exceedingly difficult and there are no easy solutions. It’s going to take time, generations in many cases. In the meantime, the world will have to deal with the most radical terrorists on a case by case basis; proactively when possible and reactively when it isn’t. That’s the reality of the world and time in which we all live. Anyone advocating draconian measures such as isolationism and genocide is simply advocating for the same types of reprehensible policies as Islamic extremists and terrorists.
Not necessarily, I’m sure that you can find places in the most well-developed Christina countries right this moment where things like “Should biblical law be reflected in current law?” or “Are you opposed to homosexuality?” Would give you a very similar percentage of positives.
Anything, the point is, things change. It may take a long time and a lot of stable democracy to make them change, but things do change.
