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

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

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.)

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.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

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.

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.

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.