Fundamentalism gets easier to accept once you realize what “fundament” means.
Otherwise, what Mosier said.
I don’t know any fundamentalist Muslims. The few Muslims I do know I consider friends and they are far from fundamentalist. They are just fellow Americans like me.
If someone in this country criticizes Christian fundamentalists, it’s generally taken as a call to oppose their agenda. When people criticize Muslim fundamentalists is this country, it’s likely to be taken as a call or justification to send the military to mass murder them. And also more often than not criticism of Muslims comes bundled with claims of the superiority of Christianity.
What are you talking about? Many, many people here in the heartland have no problem dissing the towel heads and camel jockeys, but speaking ill of the evangelicals down the street is verboten.
Thats a different demo entirely, like I said people comfortable dissing fundamentalist christians.
This. Except it is not a perception.
It is a perception within the confines of America’s borders, not so much elsewhere.
The real answers are primarily:
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Fear of violence, as Mangetout notes. People don’t like to acknowledge to themselves that they’re intimidated by others, so they make up other rationalizations, but it’s there.
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Muslims in general are identified as Opressed People, which garners them a lot of sympathy and empathy in Left Wing circles, which happen to be the circles which are most prone to attacking fundamentalists.
In addition to the above, while Christian Fundamentalists have more power in the US, Muslim Fundamentalists have significantly more power on a world-wide level, by several orders of magnitude. This means that many governments and other global entities have to tiptoe very carefully in dealing with them, and this translates further down the line.
Mostly as a Christian persecution fantasy, at least in America. Right up there with fearing that America will soon be subject to “Sharia law”.
Fighting my ignorance here, I know your friends are not violent but what do you think would happen if you showed them a picture of Mohammed, would they be offended?
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As long as Christian and/or Muslim fundamentalists stay in their own little worlds, and don’t try to fuck with the lives of the rest of us, I’m good with that.
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The fact that Christian fundamentalists/evangelicals/whatever don’t heed #1 is the main thing that gets me riled up about them.
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I also know enough about Christianity to know that it IS the fundamentalists/evangelicals who are pulling this shit; it’s generally not Episcopalians or Lutherans or Presbyterians.
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As a rule, I don’t know that about Muslims who get violent in the Muslim world. In fact, except when something like what happened the other day happens, I usually don’t know who’s doing what to whom over there.
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In fact, I don’t know that much about Islam, either. But I know a great deal about American Christianity, I’ve known a lot of fundies and evangelicals in my time, and I know enough about their brand of Christianity to critique it in some detail, completely aside from #2 above.
Summing up, I am in a position to criticize Christian fundies’ actions AND belief systems on an ongoing basis, but know little about Islamic beliefs (fundie or non-fundie) am only occasionally aware of Islamic actions that trouble me, and in those instances, I usually have no idea whether the actions originate from fundies. And while I am not exempt from criticizing from a base of ignorance, I do try to keep it to a minimum.
As others have said, for me Christian fundamentalists want to limit my daughters’ reproductive rights and screw around with science education. I know of no Muslims trying to do that, and it is not for lack of exposure - I live within walking distance of the biggest center of Afghan refugees in the US. (Not refugees any more.) I’m sure there a few fundamentalists there, none have ever tried to impose their beliefs on me.
I don’t know of a lot of specific Muslim fundamentalist bashing. Most I’ve seen have been bashing moderate Muslims by calling them extreme, like the opposition to the building of mosques and cultural centers. Perhaps most people don’t want to sound like haters.
Here’s Kevin Smith on it:
“So weird you should ask this, because ever since 9/11, I have been thinking about a sequel of sorts. I mean, the worst terrorist attack on American soil was religiously bent. In the wake of said attack, the leader of the “Free World” outed himself as pretty damned Christian. In the last election, rather than a quagmire war abroad, the big issue was whether or not gay marriage was moral. Back when I made ‘Dogma’, I always maintained that another movie about religion wouldn’t be forthcoming, as ‘Dogma’ was the product of 28 years of religious and spiritual meditation, and I’d kinda shot my wad on the subject. Now? I think I might have more to say. And, yes — the Last Scion would be at the epicenter of it. And She’d have to be played by Alanis. And we’d need a bigger budget — because the entire third act would be the Apocalypse. Scary thing is this: the film would have to touch on Islam. And unlike the Catholic League, when those cats don’t like what you do, they issue a death warrant on yer ass. And now that I’ve got a family, I’m not as free to stir the shit-pot as I was when I was single, back when I made ‘Dogma’. I mean, now I’ve gotta think about more than my own safety and well-being. But regardless — yeah, a ‘Dogma’ followup’s been swimming around in my head for some time now.” ViewAskew.com message boards via Wikipedia.
Penn Jillette from Reason interview
**Are there any groups you won’t go after? **We haven’t tackled Scientology because Showtime doesn’t want us to. Maybe they have deals with individual Scientologists—I’m not sure. And we haven’t tackled Islam because we have families.
**Meaning, you won’t attack Islam because you’re afraid it’ll attack back … **Right, and I think the worst thing you can say about a group in a free society is that you’re afraid to talk about it—I can’t think of anything more horrific. […]
**You do go after Christians, though … **Teller and I have been brutal to Christians, and their response shows that they’re good fucking Americans who believe in freedom of speech. We attack them all the time, and we still get letters that say, “We appreciate your passion. Sincerely yours, in Christ.” Christians come to our show at the Rio and give us Bibles all the time. They’re incredibly kind to us. Sure, there are a couple of them who live in garages, give themselves titles and send out death threats to me and Bill Maher and Trey Parker. But the vast majority are polite, open-minded people, and I respect them for that.
No, please, a thousand times no.
Yes, some Muslims are willing to retaliate against religious slurs with violence. What they are doing is trying to shut down freedom of speech, and give themselves a special status as non-criticizable (probably not a word, but you get the drift).
This cannot be allowed to stand. Each time we cringe about this issue, our freedom of speech dies.
I believe we will eventually have to go to war about this*. It will probalby be called a religious war against Islam. What it will really be, I hope, is a war to preserve the right to speak freely about any religion (and everything else). We, at least, need to be very clear what they are rioting about, and what we would be fighting to defend.
*The alternative is to give in, and give up our rights. Or maybe you think negotiation a) would work and b) is the right thing to do.
Roddy
Total agreement.
Perhaps a “cold war” or strategy of containment and opposition. Even subversion. Just as with communism, the ideology has made victims of its own adherents; they have been caught up in the way of thinking, but it hurts them, already, far more than it hurts us. An open and overt war only punishes them further, when, just as with communism, a major part of our long-term strategy is to free them from oppression.
Another good thing is that there are lots and lots of freedom-minded Muslims. If we work with them, rather than force them to ally against us, we gain their cooperation and contribution.
The counter-protest in Libya is a good sign; this is what we need to encourage.
There is no need for a war, cold or otherwise. With the World Wide Web becoming truly worldwide, education and understanding will create new generations of moderate, reasonable people. There will always be nutters, but your average person will be far less inclined to believe any other culture is simply evil.
I mostly hear people attacking fundamentalists of any faith, and tolerating moderate members of the same faiths.
Good points. I hope this approach could work (I didn’t know about the counter-protest).
Part of the problem, I think, is that the people who are hurting as adherents of Islam don’t know that is what is hurting them. They swallow what they are told by others, including their clerics, which makes us the enemy.
Maybe we need a Radio Free Islam…
**Bozuit **- I’m willing to bet that nutter Muslims have just as much internet access as everyone else; unfortunately it is also true that many people only see and read on the internet those things that match what they already believe. The progress from nuttery to rationality is slow indeed, and not always a steady march.
Roddy
this makes sense to me.
also, if Olives was wanting to do a “Ask the former Christian Fundamentalist” thread, I’d be in.
Penn’s quote that Jormungandr posted is spot on. I ain’t talking smack about anybody who would be willing to cut off his own precious daughter’s head with a knife in the name of maintaining honor. Also, the simple fact that they aren’t an influential presence in the US seems like a pretty obvious reason to me. Muslims just don’t come to mind when someone wants to religion-bash; there are so many Christians out there just begging for it.
What confuses me, though, is the “they’re already persecuted/they’re not bothering me, so I leave them alone” reasoning stated by olivesmarch4th, JackieLikesVariety, Voyager, Mosier and others. I guess this is a perfectly acceptable reason if you only hate Christianity, but if you believe religion as a whole is a big problem, I can’t make sense of it. Shouldn’t you be an equal opportunity hater, and when the opportunity presents itself you should be willing to make fun of the religious figures, gods, or beliefs of any faith in the interest of desensitization?
In other words, if you’re an outspoken atheist of the Dawkins sort, it seems like the best reasons to avoid slurring Islam would be 1) I don’t want to be killed to death 2) why bother anyway (or something similar). Saying anything else before those two just seems like an attempt to justify a double-standard.
I mean, wouldn’t it make sense to lay the mental attack on them now, while their numbers are low in the US, to let them know that some of us are hostile toward them in general as a way of discouraging Muslim immigration? Wouldn’t you like to make sure they don’t ever make up a significant enough percentage of our population to affect policy, because make no mistake, they would absolutely try if they had the numbers; it’s what religions do.*
The opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those held by A_Nested_Thorn. The poster is simply trying to play devil’s advocate* and make a point, and would prefer to not be violently killed to death.
**The poster does not advocate Satanism.