What you think is not based on what I wrote. I didn’t mention either “small government” or “business” at all.
No offence, but this is incoherent. A government which aggressively enforced an establishment of religion would be “taking an active role in social affairs”, wouldn’t it? And your list of “things like feminism, LGBT rights, science, etc” is bizarre. What do LGBT rights and science have in common? They are sufficiently unlike one another that you could add pretty well anything else to that list on the basis that it is as much like science as LGBT rights is.
And the claim that “in most cases” pursuing liberal causes means “going against religion” is nonsense. There are plenty of liberal-identified causes, from peace studies to economic and social justice to gun control to anti-slavery movements, where liberal views line up very closely with plenty of vocal religiously-inspired opinion. You manage not to notice this because, for some reason, you need to believe that liberalism must be inconsistent with religion, but that may tell us more about you than it does about liberalism.
I’m the first to admit that liberalism is a fairly hazy concept that can be, and often is, claimed by people who hold inconsistent views. But ultimately liberalism does have to be about liberty; about protecting and increasing freedom. Within that, there’s plenty of room for disagreement; do I maximise Freedom by keeping taxes low and economic regulation light, as economic neo-liberals would assert? Or do I maximise freedom by levying the taxes necessary to provide universal high-quality education and healthcare and by regulating the power of oligarchs, so that as many people as possible are put in a position where they can flourish, and realise their potential? FWIW, I myself would incline to the latter view, but I can at least understand why people who favour economic liberalism call it “liberalism”.
But the notion that the state has the role of promoting atheism and discouraging religion can’t be dressed up as having anything to do with freedom. In a liberal democracy, the beliefs and values of citizens will be expressed in their engagement with public affairs. The opposite process, where the state seeks to inculcate officially-approved beliefs and values them in citizens, is neither liberalism nor democracy. It’s more like totalitarianism.
Unless you mean Muslims living in third-world dirtbag countries. But that seems less to do with being Muslim than being in a third-world dirtbag country, where violence and oppression tends to be more or less the norm.
Because liberalism is a big tent that involves some conflicting interests. I do find it remarkable, though, that Islam tends to win tiebreakers against feminism and the LGBT movement.
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.-G. Washington
His error is to equate resistance to religious influence in government with hostility towards religion as a social institution.
A liberal approach is more like “you can believe anything you like, as long as it doesn’t prevent others from living their lives as they see fit.”
A liberal is normally opposed to any religious extremist having political power, whether that is an Islamic or a Christian extremist.
The OP is also unable to accept that most of the billions of Muslims in the world are no more devout than the majority of Christians, despite the press attention being given to the violent extremists at this time.
I’m no fan of Islam; I rank it right down there with Christianity and I agree with the OP’s generalizations about the inherent politics of Islam (which are, in fact, the inherent politics of any rigid orthodoxy).
I don’t quite identify as a liberal (although my voting record sure does a good imitation of one) so add as many grains of salt to this as you see fit. But in my opinion there’s a rich vein of mindless recipe-following and rule-following on the left—much of it no doubt originating with the frustration of having to re-explain the same damn perspectives over and over again, but regardless of understandable reasonfor its existence, it takes the form of “this is a known truth and it’s not up for debate any more and if you’re not on board with it you’re participating in the oppression”.
Some of it takes the form of literal boilerplate content (“sexual orientation is innate and genetic”) (“referring to an adult female as ‘girl’ is sexist”) (“people who act crazy have a sickness called mental illness and it’s not their fault and it’s a chemical imbalance”); some of it, on the other hand, is constructed more as a kind of formula that can then be applied to any qualifying situation (“any category of people that constitutes a minority is oppressed”) (“in any social conflict where an entrenched oppressive group singles out some other group as ‘enemy’, the group they single out are the ‘good guys’”). That latter one equates to some extent to “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
The knee-jerk “don’t question stuff we’ve all already decided (what, weren’t you here for that meeting?)” attitude of some tends to silence others from dissent. In the case of Islam, it’s the formulaic attitude towards minority combined with the identify of those who have been picking on them (intolerant Christians, flag-waving jingoistic Americans, right-wing zealots). Islamic folk are a minority, they’ve definitely been picked on in ways that are plainly because they are a minority and therefore “not like us”, and the people doing a lot of the picking-on are Bible-pounding socially conservative assholes. In the shorthand world of formulaic truth that makes them “good guys”.
Note that liberals are not by any means worse at silencing dissent or maintaining an attitude of “you aren’t allowed to question that, if you don’t already agree with it you’re a Bad Person”, but liberal ideology itself means that this is internally inconsistent, whereas when the right wing folks do it it sort of dovetails with their non-pluralistic non-relativistic idea of What Is Right.
Or, liberals merely support the right to free exercise of religion, and oppose mistreatment based on sharing a characteristic with other people. Nothing about “good guys” and “bad guys” or cartoonish moral formulae required, let alone a refusal to discuss anything. This board has thousands of pages of discussion about Islam in particular and religion in general.
IMO it is a good bit of the enemy of my enemy is my friend BS reflexive thinking. Throw in some political correctness and the idea if some group is on the tail end of the socio economic curve some evil white conservative is totally to blame and there you go.
Actually I was thinking more in terms of positive discrimination in favor of Islam. And you’re right, that’s not what the OP / thread title says. Reading comp fail on my part.
With that disclaimer, the example that comes to mind is the fairly-recent initiative for non-Islamic women to don the chador / veil / etc in sisterhood-in-common support of Muslim women who had been subjected to various forms of harassment and mistreatment. This was proposed and promulgated with very little discussion of the extent to which women who dress that way have, in large portion, not made the choice to do so but have had the requirement to do so shoved down their throats. And when the latter was raised in one discussion, the concern was shouted down and labeled culturally insensitive, religious intolerant, anti-Islamic, ethnocentric, etc.
I don’t see the connection to positive discrimination. The point wasn’t to encourage people to be Muslim, or show any special favors to Muslims, but instead to treat Muslims like you’d treat anyone else, and thus to discourage religious discrimination. The niqab happens to be a way to (imperfectly, of course) visually convey Muslim-ness, so regardless of what baggage it may have with it, what else could have been used?
Only to the degree that conservatives oppose them. The op might just as well asked why conservatives are so opposed to Muslims since they have so many of the same approaches to things, admittedly in service to a different invisible sky buddy.
I think the more accurate title for this thread is, “Why don’t liberals hate Muslims as much as I do?”
The OP has been asked many times in his/her other thread to give examples of pro-Muslim bias in the press. The OP hasn’t provided one shred of evidence to support a massive pro-Muslim conspiracy by liberals or the press.
Next we will probably see a thread asking, “Why do Hollywood movies always make Muslims out to be the good guys?”
Absolutely. Every post I’ve read from this OP is some variation on “Why don’t more people hate Muslims and/or Pakistanis, when they are so clearly terrible?” At some point, he or she will hopefully start to question his or her premises and cultural assumptions. It’s sad that this unthinking hatred has persisted, one generation and thousands of miles removed from the Indian/Pakistani conflict.
I saw Room the other day, which includes an ethnically-Iranian character, who may be a Muslim, and he doesn’t murder anyone! Not one person, in the entire movie. Talk about pro-Muslim bias!
I think what causes people to see “pro-Muslim bias” is certain double standards or cognitive dissonance:
If Christians required women to wear hijabs, that might be considered oppressive, but when Muslims do it, it’s defended as cultural expression.
Liberals defend feminism and the LGBT movement, but then also try to defend Islam which is, how shall we say, not the friendliest world religion towards feminism or the LGBT movement.
Etc. etc.