Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to No, no, no

Using this reasoning...
Mary Anne — (archived)

...there must be something inherently violent about men, because the vast majority of violent crimes are committed by men. Therefore, let's blame all men for the violence. And fix them.

It just doesn't work that way.

I suggest you revisit your link and look at the number of nations with a long history of colonial or imperial exploitation and think about the prevalence of violence in terms of lack of political power and the skills of self-government. Remember Romania (mostly Orthodox Christian)? Croatia (mostly Roman Catholic)? Serbia (mostly Orthodox Christian)? Sri Lanka (mostly Buddhist, for crying out loud)? Have there not been massacres and atrocities there within living memory?

You may not recall this from your study of history, but in India during the struggle for independence, there were widespread incidents of massacre by Hindus, killing Muslims. Vice versa, too. India was saved by its outstanding cadre of British-trained statesmen, by the great good fortune to have had Mountbatten as its last viceroy, and by Gandhi, a Hindu who was assassinated by a Hindu extremist for being soft on the Muslims. Violence doesn't belong to one religion.

Does it only matter when atrocities are associated with a religion (especially with Islam) by words, even though the deeds have political or military objectives? Even the Irish, owners of the most obvious and long-lived example of sectarian violence in Europe, have reduced "Protestant" and "Catholic" to political parties based on imperial behavior from the 18th and 19th centuries. If either group were practicing their religions as religions, there would not be any killing because the Gospel forbids it.

If there were really something "wrong" with Islam, we would not have an assortment of terrorist attacks by small groups of zealots. We would have over a billion people taking up arms against those who are not Muslim. This is not the case.

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