Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Numbers

Proportions
Mary Anne — (archived)

Muslims number, literally, in the hundreds of millions. How much violence, proportionally, are we talking about?

To propose that Muslims as a group are more violent because sociopaths who happen to be Muslims are effective killers doesn't make sense. We might as well make similar suggestions about the Italians and organized crime. And, in fact, we have, in the good old days when Italians and other southern Europeans were the "out" group.

That's probably where the sore spot is with liberals: "out" groups. They fluctuate. Right now, it's Muslims.

Don't know why SDF or anyone else would drift off into a general anti-religion thing.

Don't you?

The hard fact remains that, here and now, radical Muslims are committing religious-based violence in numbers that dwarf every other modern occurrence of ethnic violence. [emphasis mine]

If the violence is based on Arab cultural abberations,

[Much of what radical Muslims believe as far as how society should be organized isn't even in the Koran, but based on Arabic cultural norms.]

then it isn't really Muslim religion that causes it, but rather is an excuse for it. If you can go back and forth without even noticing it in the same 4-paragraph post, why are you surprised that others can take the overgeneralization one step further?

If I had the power to make a required reading list, and enforce it, Karen Armstrong would be on it. A scholar on the history of religion, she points out time and again that fundamentalist movements grow when believers feel persecuted. We'll always have some fundamentalists, because we'll always have some people whose attachment to order is greater than their curiosity. When we attack and condemn people for having religious beliefs, the believers will consider the Doubters to be their enemies (with justification), and will make common cause with those who have given up curiosity and have already identified Doubters as their enemies for other reasons.

And another "out" group is born.

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