So much for the idea that only Muslims threaten violence over images they don't like

Great Debates
101

I agree that intrinsically, the Islam religion and MOST of the people that practice it are not lovers of violence, but it’s the hijacking (no pun) of said religion into the influential hands of hardliners, fanatics, clerics, Jew-haters and zealots that actually are in charge of governments and militaries in the Middle East that cause problems, not to mention non-state entities like Al-Quaeda, Islamic Jihadist Front and the like that gleefully (or grimly) instruct their followers to blow themselves up in the midst of innocent bystanders, many of whom may share their faith.

THAT to me is a mind-boggling example of why we fight fire with fire. What other choice is there?

102

While religious extremists exist from every religion as an inevitability of interpretation, your examples are clearly in the minority vis a vis Christians versus Islam in terms of the direct implementation of violence.

In the 21st Century, that is.

103

I think it’s fairly obvious that these days there is a greater overall tendency toward violent fanaticism among the world’s Muslims than among the world’s Christians, and those Christians who are the exceptions tend to be more isolated cases.

With Muslims, the debate seems to be “nature vs. nurture” as it were, but I don’t see why it can’t be both. I’ll leave it to others to argue that core Quranic doctrine lends itself to violence, but Islamic culture seems to have become rather hot-tempered and hair-triggered over quite a number of issues. For example, the Quran call upon women to “dress modestly”, but in practice, although it varies, women and girls are subject to extremely restrictive dress codes enforced with strictness that approaches… violent fanaticism. And of course there are these “honor killings” of women over the most trivial breaches of sexual morality.

It seems like religions–or ideologies in general–can sometimes get caught up a cycle where the various doctrinal points are enforced with greater and greater strictness. Perhaps they blame their current problems on the previous generation’s laxity, or come to believe that a fully “purified” and absolute expression is needed before the belief system will fully deliver on it’s promise (the Chinese Cultural Revolution also comes to mind).

At any rate, as the violation of a taboo such as on pictures of Mohammed becomes more and more unthinkable, it becomes more and more of an outrage if ever it is, and then it becomes inevitable that someone is going to get hurt.

The Quran does seem to place a great deal of emphasis on defending the religion from its enemies, and if you’re brought up to expect that you’ll do a lot of fighting against enemies, you’ll see enemies everywhere. And these days we see how common it is for groups to portray not just criticism, but the making available of alternative lifestyles as an attack on their ethnicity.

But add to all that the humiliation they say they feel due to the fact that, when their countries are not being ruled or dominated or invaded by Westerners, they’re being ruled by what they see as pre-Western puppets. They’re brought up believing that their culture is superior, then look around to see the decadent West has been running circles around them for lo these many years. In short, they’re losers, they resent it, and so they go apeshit with vengeance at the slightest provocation.

104

I’ll add to what I said by pointing out that there seems to be a much stringer sense of community or brotherhood among Muslims–the Shia/Sunni split notwithstanding–that makes them more likely to be vengeful on behalf of fellow Muslims. This applies obviously to the Palestinians, but also there were angry, anti-US protests in Malaysia in response to the invasion of Afghanistan.

By contrast, the US and Europe intervened against fellow Christians on Bosnia.