Thread: Anti-Arab/Muslim sentiment in the United States

Is there a question?

My question is: if the Koran is supportive or encouraging of violent, does that make Islam a violent religion?

Originally Posted by Syme

Plus, bear in mind that a religion's scriptural content apparently does very little to constrain the behavior of it's putative adherents; because Christianity's scriptural message is unambiguously pacifistic, yet the history of Christianity is drenched in the blood of religious warfare and persecution. So obviously a religion doesn't have to be even slightly violent in it's scriptural content in order for people to commit hideous acts of violence in it's name. I have to roll my eyes when people, often Christians, assert that Islamic violence/terrorism stems from the violent message of the Qu'ran; don't they realize that their own religion has acted just as violently despite having a completely non-violent message? The human ability to twist and rationalize is unlimited, scriptural content is almost totally divorced from how people actually act. The violence comes from non-religious sources.

Justifying violence in the name of one's religion (The Crusades, abortion clinic bombings, etc) is a far cry from carrying out violence because it is prescribed in religious texts (modern Jihadism.) The Christian violence stands in stark contrast to the teachings of the religion; the Muslim violence may stand in contrast to some teachings, but it honors other teachings to the letter.

Originally Posted by Syme

This one of the common misunderstandings that leads people to think of Islam as violent. Modern "jihadism" is usually going to be motivated by non-religious root causes, and cloaked in the veneer of religion to justify it and rationalize it (just like the Crusades were). They may not be obvious on the evening news, but they are there. There's no "far cry" seperating Christian religious violence from Muslim religious violence, they are fundamentally the same--motivated by non-religious factors, dressed up in the clothes of obedience to religious duty. The fact that some passages in the Qu'ran do actually prescribe violence might mean that Muslims don't have to engage in as much mental squirming to dress their violence up in those clothes, but those passages aren't the reason for the violence (and it's not like Christians who want to commit violence have ever had trouble justifying it to themselves despite the fact that they should theoretically have to engage in more of that mental squirming to do... again, the human ability to twist and rationalize is infinite). Anyhow, the anti-Muslim bigot's imagined scenario, where Muslims commit violence simply because the Qu'ran tells them to and they wish to obey Qu'ranic commandment, is ludicrous and unrealistic. Something else has to make people want to commit violence in the first place, then they get their religion into it.

I pretty much guarantee you that you can't cite instances of Muslim religious violence (or Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, etc. religious violence) that don't have underlying non-religious causes.

How is this a misunderstanding at all? The Crusades were justified by reclaiming the holy land, furthering the true religion, etc. There was no passage in the Gospel that said, "Those who disrespect Christianity by non-believing must die at the hands of the true believer," nor were their promises of rewards in the afterlife for those who die for the jihad. You can manipulate any system of belief to ignoble ends if you so desire, but the Islamic texts don't even require manipulation; they require quoting.

Originally Posted by Syme

This is kind of my point, the teachings of the religion are totally divorced from the actions of the actual people. It doesn't matter whether the religion prohibits violence or encourages it, people will act violently if they are inclined to do so by other factors, and they won't if they aren't. Yet again, the ability of humans to twist and rationalize is literally unlimited. A religion with non-violent teachings is, in practice, just as susceptible to religious violence on the part of those who wish to do violence as one with teachings that permit violence. So it's absurd to try to and pin religious violence on scriptural content.

It's no less absurd to reject it. You're not providing a counter-example, you're providing a red herring. The violent nature of Islam/Muslims must be measured not against other religions, but against the entire population (I'm hardly so crass as to suggest there is enough variability based solely on outward physical characteristics to try to compare Muslims to Arabs, etc.) Christians don't provide a control group; all people provide the control group.

Originally Posted by Syme

I appreciate that, on a theoretical level, Christianity universally prohibits violence in a way that Islam doesn't. What I'm saying is that this has no reflection in the real world and in the practical question of which religious groups behave more violently. When people say "Islam is a religion of violence", they are trying to suggest that Islam's scriptural content makes it more violent and makes Muslims more inclined to violence... not simply that it is theoretically more permissive of violence than say Christianity, but that in practice many other religions are just as violent.

This is a furthering of the Christian violence red herring. And even if it wasn't, you don't have any real data to support your conclusion that religious teachings have no impact on the behavior of either groups or of individuals.

I don't actually disagree with you, but you're making an inane argument.

Originally Posted by Syme

Right, that's exactly what I was saying when I said that Muslims have less theological squirming to go through when they decide to justify violence in religious terms. So, you have just restated what I already said.

My point isn't that Qu'ranic verse can't be used to justify violence (some of it can), but that this verse isn't what CAUSES the violence. And even if Qu'ranic verse didn't sometimes endorse violence, that wouldn't inhibit people who are inclined towards violence from using it's passages to justify their violence. Because Christian history very clearly demonstrates that even a 100% peaceful religion is readily seized upon by those who want a justification for violence. Yes, if Qu'ranic content was totally non-violent, violent Muslims would have to "creatively" interpret instead of simply selectively quoting it; so what? That doesn't make it harder for them.

The common misunderstanding I referred to was the idea that Christian religious violence has been motivated by non-religious causes but committed in the name of religion to justify it, whereas Islamic religious violence is actually religious in it's root causes (i.e. performed out of obedience to Qu'ranic scripture). That seemed to be what you were saying in your "far cry" post. If that's not the idea you were defending, then you're not guilty of this misunderstanding.

Uh are you kidding? Are you meaning to say that no Islamic religious violence is actually religious? Are you under some sort of impression that no one reads scripture, takes it at face value, and becomes a warrior of the jihad? Because if there is even one such individual, then Islam as a belief as well as a practice causes more violence than Christianity... as though comparisons to Christianity were relevant at all.

Originally Posted by Syme

I'm not sure what you're getting at. I wasn't trying to provide a "counterexample" to anything, I was stating that history makes it abundantly clear that religions with uniformly non-violent scriptural content are just as prone to violence as religions with mixed scriptural content. So your earlier argument--that Christian religious violence violates Christian scripture whereas Muslim religious violence doesn't violate (some) Muslim scripture--may be correct but it isn't meaningful.

Then you are making a blanket generalization based on a single, questionable example. Again, if you look at population-wide (and historical) examples, you'll find far more violence present in religions that promote religious violence than those that don't. Even the most refined societies of antiquity were predicated on religious-sanctioned violence (Rome, Greece, all of major South Americans.)

Originally Posted by Syme

If I was unclear, I'm sorry: I'm not necessarily saying that religious teachings have no impact on human behavior, I'm saying that the root causes of Islamic violence/terrorism aren't in the Qu'ran even though Qu'ranic content is sometimes used to justify them.

If you accept that religions were created by men in order to create mutually beneficial rules for society, explain the natural world, and define man's place in the natural world, then your argument is meaningless. Humans are violent and created a religion to justify the violence; does it matter a thousand years later?

Originally Posted by Syme

I don't have data supporting the conclusion that religious teachings have no impact on the behavior of human groups or individuals, but we do have a huge amount of evidence that religions with non-violent scripture are as prone, or more prone, to religious violence than religions with partially violent scripture. So while the contents and teachings of religious scripture certainly have an impact (many impacts, actually) on human behavior, one impact they clearly DON'T have is to make religious violence more difficult or less common by virtue of being pacifistic.

Do you? Do you really? You're already on thin logical ice using "Christianity" as a blanket term, so I would love to see this data. I think if you looked at actual data, you would find that religious traditions (including certain Christian sects) that condone violence are prone to widespread violence, either within members of the tradition or toward outsiders. Likewise, I think you would find that religious traditions that advocate pacifist and/or peaceful conduct are prone only to relatively isolated violence. Historically speaking, I think you would find that violence in the name of Islam is relatively rare when compared to other violent religions (probably in part because it's watered down and because, frankly, the world is smaller.)

Of course, I'm not the one who made the suggestion, so I'm not really inclined to find real numbers... but rest assured, you would have been looking for the wrong ones anyways.

Originally Posted by Syme

Also, the Tanakh contains plenty of violent and bloody-minded passages where people are told to kill others for religious reasons (often quite horribly), but no-one uses this as a basis to accuse Judaism of being a "religion of violence". So the fact that people try to label Islam a "religion of violence" has more to do with stereotyping, contemporary prejudices, and the current politico-cultural climate than with the actual content of the Qu'ran. If these people were honestly trying to identify "religions of violence" on the basis of scriptural content, they'd be denouncing Judaism right along with Islam. The fact that they're not proves that they're really trying to grind an axe against Islam, not honestly and objectively determine which religions are "violent" in their scriptural message.

Yeah, this is where I was going with that, but you've beaten me to it.