but they do, pretty much everywhere it’s not illegal, they do!!!
bad example. the color of your skin has no bearing upon how you think. your religious beliefs do, however.
Some of his statements were factual, and some were blanket-negative-statements that were not factual, if I remember correctly. I’m obviously criticizing the second type.
This is not a factual statement.
It’s a good example, because both of these kinds of statements take something true – like “black people have a higher representation among convicted criminals” – and twist it into something bigoted (and false), like “black people are more violent” or “black people are stupider”. It’s no different if done with a religious group. Yes, terrorists might be statistically more likely to be Muslim, and countries that are majority Muslim might be statistically more likely to have oppressive laws against women, but twisting that to “Muslims are more violent” or “Muslims oppress women” is both false (because there are obviously many exceptions) and bigoted, because it ascribes a negative quality to a broad group without making distinctions beyond this extremely broad categorization.
It’s just as possible to be bigoted against a religious group as it is to be bigoted against an ethnic or racial group.
If that was their point, it is a silly and trivial point to make. No one disagrees that many Muslims believe those things, just as no one disagrees that many Christians believe homosexuals should be jailed or killed.
In context, I think you have to understand them to be making some further claim about Islam and how Islam ought to be responded to. Their claim is that there is something about the content of Islam–the thing that is interpreted by different believers–that is more violent or intolerant than other religions. They believe that moderates are like cafeteria Catholics, that they are not really following the true religion. That claim is much harder to substantiate.
When I say that “we” impose this obligation uniquely on Muslims, I’m talking about American culture generally. You cannot watch the news over the last two months without seeing many appeals (or worse) for Muslims to condemn ISIS. By contrast, this was nowhere close to the focus of coverage over the Ugandan law. No one really cared whether the Pope denounced it or not, notwithstanding the fact that there is a much much better argument for why as the leader of his faith he had an obligation to do so that is quite different from Indonesian Muslims denouncing ISIS.
I appreciate your acknowledgment of the denunciation and clarification of your point. In the context of this thread, I had indeed read some of your posts to be implying things they did not say.
If you were a homosexual, female, atheist, would you want to live in any of these countries:
Libya
Somalia
Tunisia
Yemen
Oman
UAE
Saudi Arabia
Jordan
Lebanon
Turkey
Syria
Iraq
Iran
Afghanistan
Pakistan
So in other words, you’re more interested in making sure no one says anything bad about Muslims than you are in admitting there are some serious problems in Muslim dominated countries.
This has nothing to do with anything I’m saying.
As long as you qualify it properly, I’m fine with this, and it doesn’t contradict anything I’ve said. There are absolutely many serious problems in many Muslim-majority countries. There are many problems that are more common in Muslim-majority countries.
It has everything to do with it and your refusal to answer only proves my point.
No it doesn’t. The fact that those countries treat various groups poorly, on average, does nothing to refute my point. You’re just not getting my point. Maybe it’s my fault, but you’re not getting it.
yes but the point is it is the RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE that makes these problems exist. Ever hear of anyone getting stoned to death for adultery in a NON MUSLIM COUNTRY?
You’ve made your point just fine. My point is that you’re arguing against something that no one is doing. You’re taking umbrage with every instance, even if it’s only percieved, of the use of the word “Muslim” that doesn’t contain qualifiers, even if the qualifiers were used previously.
Also you seem to be miscontruing arguments against some of the forms of religion of Islam as being against all of the people who practice it.
Your posts also come across as denying that the religion itself commands it’s followers to do things that are reprehensible and unacceptable to the majority of the planet’s human residents. Then you handwave away the fact that millions, even hundreds of millions of people accept and condone and would act in furtherance of formalized government policies that mandate violence and death for apostates, blasphemers, etc.
You seem to be handwaving away a lot of facts with an unsupported cry of “bigotry!”. Your posts seem to take every instance, real or percieved, of a semantic problem and then you use that to try and characterize a post or poster as bigoted and thus worthy of dismissal. This tactic is making your posts look more and more intransigent and somewhat incoherent.
Earlier there was a comparison of Islam and communism; you dodged the question presented and tried to say they were different things, but the truth is they are different versions of the same thing: an idealogy. And people aren’t born with an idealogy like they’re born with skin color; they have to choose to have it.
I get your point!!! You don’t want me to say anything bad about Muslims!!! Your position would be admirable, if, it were not so far removed from the truth.
Look, in the 1800’s, both the Abolitionists (predominately) and the Slave Owners were christians. They got their inspiration from the SAME BOOK. I’m not so concerned about a book that inspires people to do good things, good, that’s great. What i am concerned about is a book that gives people motivation, and justification, to do horrible things.
Sorry but that makes almost no sense. There are many forms of socialism; does that mean we can’t refer to any of them as “socialism”?
The fact that there are exceptions doesn’t invalidate the statement.
“Police officers shoot people.”
“Well, obviously that’s not true because not all police officers shoot people.”
“WTF???”
You’re spending a lot of effort doing pointless semantic twists, IMO.
ETA: For instance, the fact that a Muslim isn’t doing something that the Koran and/or his religious leaders tell him to do isn’t evidence that Islam doesn’t involve those things anymore than a Catholic committing a sin means that Catholicism doesn’t include directive to not do those things that are labeled as “sinful”.
You don’t think Robert163 is doing it?
Sometimes I might miss past statements, but to me “Muslims are X” is a very different statement than “some Muslims are X”.
If so, then I apologize.
“Islam” doesn’t do this. Some forms of Islam do. Some Muslims do. But there’s no single “pure” form of Islam that commands murder, any more than there’s a single pure form of Christianity that commands murder of abortion doctors.
I don’t think I handwave it away – this is a serious problem, though I don’t read into poll results of countries like Egypt that this means most of the country are potential murderers. It’s definitely a bad thing, and says a bad thing about those that answer “yes”, that a big chunk of various Muslims say that apostates should be executed.
I’m pretty sure I haven’t denied any factual statements. If you disagree, please point them out to me.
Obviously I don’t think this is the case. I truly believe it’s different when people say “black people are X” or “Muslims are X” or “Islam is X”, when it’s a blanket negative statements. Such statements are always false, and always bigoted because there are always tons of exceptions.
There are certainly ideologies within Islam. There are political ideologies that spring from certain forms of Islam, as there are for every religion. But Islam is not an ideology, at least not any differently than any other religion as an ideology. Certainly some forms of Islam mandate certain political ideologies. But this is not nearly the same thing as Islam being a political ideology comparable to Communism.
This is true, but it ignores that religion is a choice.
You can say anything you like about Muslims. If you make sweeping, blanket, negative statements about Muslims as a group or Islam as a religion, then I will call it bigoted.
You’re willfully ignoring the social context of those comments.
If I keep talking about how black people are disproportionately likely to commit crimes and score lower on standardized tests, without any further discussion of context or why I think this is important or what we should do about it, you are safe in inferring that I am a racist.
The same is true for people who talk about how Muslims across the world have higher support for stoning adulterers, etc. Without more context, the safe inference is that these people are bigots who think there’s something intrinsic to the Quran or to being a Muslim that makes people disproportionately violent or regressive.
I’d criticize that statement as well, by the way.
I think this is the big point of contention here. There’s nothing in the Koran that’s worse than some specific text in the Bible. The holy texts and religious practices could be swapped wholesale, and people could just as easily find religious justification in the Bible for terrorism, oppressing women, death to apostates, etc., as in the Koran. The Koran is not special. The geopolitical circumstances of the Middle East are special.